Looping -- December 8

Ah, looping. To some people looping is fun. To others it's difficult, tedious, and undermines the original performance of the actor. As you may know, it is replacing or adding some of the original lines of dialogue before they put together a final edit. To me, it could be fun if I could just get over the pressure of the technical aspects of it. The trick is to listen to a sequence of beeps that occur in a pattern right before your line and then speak where the next beep would be. The effect, if done correctly, is to match the words you're saying in the studio with the lips on camera saying the line. If done correctly.

This is where I start to feel the pressure. You are standing there with headphones on listening to these beeps, trying to get the timing for the start of your line, plus you're trying to remember the cadence of the line itself, plus you want to turn in a good acting job. All this makes me feel like I'm in the testing booth in grade school where they play different pitches to test your hearing and you have to raise your hand when you hear a tone. I always wanted to be the guy who heard a couple extra that no one other human could identify, but then when I got in there I actually became more afraid of not hearing a tone or two that all the other cool humans could pick up. Pressure, man. Pressure. (Add to that my experience looping for Deep Impact, and this whole experience is a powder keg waiting to go off.)

Today, however, went very well. I got to see a few of the scenes from the show and they were very funny. And by that, I mean that they were funny to me. As was true during the shoot, there's still the sense that they might not be funny to anyone who was not on the set with us. I had to redo a few lines and add a few lines. None of them was particularly hard and the gentlemen running the session seemed pleased with my readings. We got it all done in an hour, half of the time they had scheduled for me. It was fun.

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