The appointment was made on a hot summer day in July, and he was waiting early in the office of Otokuma Lianmeng. When I first met him, he was wearing a crisp vest with short sleeves, and told me that he would go downstairs to dub after the interview today.
Comfortable dressing, but quite in line with the norm of voice actors. After all, voice actors spend most of their time in recording studios.
Soundbear Lianmeng Studio is a dubbing company in Shanghai, with many well-known voice actors and audio production teams, such as Xia Lei, Xie Tiantian, Feng Junhua, co-founders of Soundbear Lianmeng, etc. The studio has undertaken a lot of dubbing and audio post-production work for animation, games, film and television dramas, radio dramas, etc., and has achieved remarkable results. In the office building where the interview was conducted, the sound bear Lianmeng occupied several floors, and there were several recording studios.
Dreams begin to sprout
For different people, being able to work in a dubbing company like Sound Bear Lianmeng is what every newcomer voice actor yearns for.
Back in 2016, he studied broadcasting and hosting at Sichuan Film and Television Institute. The school opened a dubbing improvement class, and the teacher was Teacher Lu Yanting, who dubbed Nezha's children in "Nezha's Demon Boy Descends to the World".
At that time, there was no formal recording studio in the classroom, and the students sat around and were deeply moved by the charm of dubbing. "I was fascinated by the variety and possibilities of dubbing," Fukichi recalls, "especially for anime, which was a new way of expression that was different from the broadcast hosts, and I was eager to explore." ”
That year, I didn't follow the teacher to audition all over Chengdu at the beginning, and when I could hear my voice presented in the work, even if it was only one line, I would be happy about it. He found out that he really liked voice acting. But whether you can really step into this industry and become your own career is unknown for different people.
So, don't look for opportunities at first. In the second semester of the sophomore year, Mr. Xia Lei, the co-founder of Soundbear Lianmeng, came to Sichuan Film and Television Institute as a guest to give a lecture. At that time, Xia Lei was already very famous in the dubbing industry, and he didn't think that he could not miss this opportunity, so he rushed directly to Mr. Xia Lei and expressed to Xia Lei his desire to intern in the company, and even directly added Xia Lei's WeChat. "Looking back now, I was really a bit of a newborn calf who wasn't afraid of tigers." Don't smile and laugh.
It was such a brave move, and I got the opportunity to go to Shanghai for an internship. It's an internship, but it's actually sitting on the bench and listening to how other voice teachers work in the studio. Slowly, occasionally the studio needs a cacophony of voices, or an outlet, and interns can give it a try.
That time, only one of the dozen interns stayed. But this person is not different. He was not reconciled to return to school, and he was well aware of his shortcomings, so when his senior year was about to graduate, he took the initiative to contact Xia Lei again in the hope of being able to go to Yinxiong Lianmeng for an internship, he gave himself a "dead line", just this year of internship, if he didn't succeed in learning anything and couldn't stay, he would give up the road of dubbing.
When it comes to the time of this year, I fall into deep memories. It was a very difficult time, with no income after graduation, no future, family members did not understand, and there was a lot of pressure on me. He didn't say that he was not a smart person, he began to think about what his problem was, and he began to repeatedly absorb how the voices of the dubbing teachers were performing, and he was grinding his ears day after day, and suddenly one day, he seemed to be enlightened.
"Listening to the studio is the only way for every newcomer, I listened to it repeatedly, pondered repeatedly, this teacher is very good like this, and that teacher is also very good like that. I'll take everyone's strengths and use them for my own use. This thing really has to be realized by itself. "No, I don't know.
If this was a bleak time, then a year later, a light appeared in that bleak world, slowly tearing open a crack, and finally this crack became bigger and bigger, and it ushered in his own light. He got a very important role and stayed in the sound bear Lianmeng.
"I was under a lot of pressure and uncertainty," he said frankly, "but it was that experience that shaped me and taught me how to stand out in a competitive industry." ”
The world of voice acting is full of variety
Dubbing is not just an imitation of voices, it is an art that combines acting, emotion and creativity. Noi knows this: "Voice actors not only need to have good verbal and vocal control skills, but also need deep professionalism and acting skills. "Before each dubbing, he does his homework to understand the background and personality traits of the character and give life to the character.
Every time in the recording studio, he shuttles between different characters, from Xiao Yan, the protagonist in the animation "Breaking the Sky", to the teenager Yu Liang in the game "Book of Undetermined Events", to Li Xun, the main agent of the radio drama "The Wind in the Ear" and so on. No, at the beginning, I had my own masterpiece.
The completion of a work is the result of the joint efforts of many parties. Not only the dubbing, the director's guidance, the screenwriter's script, and the post-editing all work together to create a three-dimensional image of a character. Not to mention, dubbing alone requires repeated polishing to achieve the best effect of a character, and even sometimes it is too deep into the play, and there will be a short lack of oxygen to the brain, which is very energy-consuming. But it is precisely this kind of meticulous craftsmanship that brings the character's voice to life.
From 2018 to the present, he has been engaged in the dubbing industry for six years, from a once ignorant newcomer to a mature voice actor who can take charge on his own. He deeply realized that dubbing not only requires solid basic skills, but also needs luck and opportunity. The uniqueness of the timbre often becomes the key to deciding whether you can get the desired role. Bu Yi said frankly: "As a voice actor, I can match both a 5-year-old child and an 80-year-old man." But timbre is a very talented thing, and some people are born with timbre that is very suitable for the big male protagonist. "So in the face of rapid changes in the market, voice actors need to be ready to take on new challenges.
With the prevalence of two-dimensional culture, Shanghai has become one of the cities with a very high concentration of two-dimensional culture. And dubbing, as a part of the two-dimensional culture, gives voice actors more opportunities. More and more comic exhibitions allow voice actors to come to the front of the stage from behind the scenes, and the difference that has just participated in 2024BW (BiliBiliWorld) once again feels everyone's enthusiasm for two-dimensional culture. As participants and witnesses of two-dimensional culture, they believe that voice actors need to keep learning and maintain sensitivity to young culture in order to better understand and interpret their characters.
When it comes to the future, he is full of expectations: "I hope to continue to work in the field of dubbing and create more works that are deeply rooted in people's hearts." Of course, in addition to work, I wish I could have more time to travel and experience life, because life itself is the best source of inspiration. ”
The different stories are the epitome of the struggles of countless voice actors, who use their voices to depict the colorful world and their talents to light up their dreams, as he said: "The road of voice actors is a journey full of challenges and surprises." ”