subject: Do You Realize That When The Harry Potter Audiobooks Were Recorded By Jim Dale, He [print this page] Do You Realize That When The Harry Potter Audiobooks Were Recorded By Jim Dale, He
Many people know about the degree of detail that was put into the making of the Harry Potter books and motion pictures, but rather few people know what went into Dale's reading of the seven Harry Potter audiobooks.
Do you realize that when Dale read the audiobooks, he...
1. Would not read the book cover to cover before he began recording. Dale would normally be given the manuscript for a new book just two or three days prior to being slated to commence his reading. This means that when he would start narrating a soon to be released Harry Potter audiobook, he would not know how the plot was going to end. More to the point, Jim has said that he would normally just read about one hundred pages in advance of where he was recording. That is very cool as it ensures that when you are playing the audiobooks, you can be quite sure that Dale is not accidently suggesting a particular storyline direction through the tenor of his voice & accents.
2. Designed over two hundred voices & accents for each of the various characters in the seven books. He actually has a Guiness World Record for the greatest number of voices used in an audiobook - one hundred and forty-six distinct voices in book seven, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
3. Incorporates his knowledge of tens of accents taken from all around the British Isles. Some characters accents are even built from friends and family members of Dale's (for example, an elderly Aunt of his is the foundation for Minerva McGonagall's voice and a very large uncle of his who managed a farm in Devonshire is the foundation for Hagrid's voice).
4. Was sent a table of each new word or new character's name and its pronunciation. It seems that the publishers held to a really rigid interpretation of the books and Dale would need to read new words (which were mistakenly left off his list) in every single pronunciation possible.
5. Would spend two to three weeks performing each new book. He would normally record from around 10:30am to 5:30pm during this period, resulting in almost one hundred hrs of performance per audiobook.
Pretty cool stuff huh? Hope you liked the little known facts on Jim Dale's performance of the Harry Potter audio books!
