Working On Your Speech
Michael Port, Amy Port
Lessons
Steal the Show
04:52 2The Principles of Performance
14:08 3Communicating Without Words
04:16 4Find Your Voice: Breathing
26:37 5Find Your Voice: Build your Voice
04:52 6Working On Your Speech
10:52 7Finding Your Big Idea!
13:56 8Sorting Your Big Idea
04:32Lesson Info
Working On Your Speech
So there are different sounds that we make. There are. Plus sieves. Never heard that word before. PLO sieve implosive is a P. Sound. What are other PLO sieves? T. Sound has you here? Plus it sounds like explosion. It's a sound a kind of consonant where the air is trapped and prevented from coming out and then it opens so the air is stopped and then released. So for example on stage you might need to over emphasize implosive so that they can hear that P. Or that T. But if you're doing a webinar or a voice over or an audiobook recording, if you're teas are splashy so that they sound like this, then it doesn't sound good to the person who's listening. Or if your peas pop too much, it can be jarring to the ear. So then you start to learn how to soften up. So instead of saying tongue you might say tongue, can you hear the difference between tongue and tongue? Neither one is good or bad. It's just which is more useful for your medium on stage. You may need those bigger sounds. And as Michael...
said, if you're doing a recording, you're going to need a subtler and we have free captives, free captives negatives. What do you think might be a free captive F. What other free captives might there be? P. H. V. These are the big ones to remember the F. And the V. This is N. Z. Of course we don't have as many Z's in our language, but the F. And the V. Are very important to consider because the F. Some and the V. Often don't get enough attention. If you don't give enough attention to a V. It doesn't get the feeling because the sounds have feelings. So the word, trying to think of a non curse word for this, The word fun has a very different sound, then Love. Love has a very different sound than cut and you can make people feel very specific things with the words you say, not just what they mean. So if I say cut, you're going to feel that very differently than if I say love and so you start to learn how to use those sounds more and so you start to chew on your words more and when you have thousands of people in an audience you need to chew on those sounds. So if you end, you say the word love love and it may seem a normal conversation too much and if you are doing tv it's too much. So when we come out of graduate school, usually the casting directors and directors say you need about a year or so to get rid of your training to work in tv. We're all really primed for things like Shakespeare because that's a place that you have to use the sounds of the words because otherwise the audience will not understand because the language is so different. So someone can understand, someone can know what you mean by when you use a word that they don't actually know if it sounds like the way that it feels and most words do and Shakespeare. Of course, yeah, was the best at this. Now, the way that you use sounds often is dictated or determined by where you're from. So there are dialects and accents. Those are two different things. An accent is say if you are from another country living in the U. S. You might have an accent. The way you speak english is with a french accent or with an indian accent or with a a dialect is a regionalism. If you're from new york, you might talk like this, right? Like, oh, shut up, Get out of here. Right, you have a totally different way of talking. He noticed how my teeth start to splash a little bit and it's a little more civil than to. But you know, if you're from the south, you're going to have an entirely different way of talking. You know, I mean when I met my friend Dave Blakey on the first day of college, he's from lubbock texas. He said, are you fixing to go to dinner? I didn't know what fixing that. I had no idea. I was from the Bronx. So words you use might not be understood by some audiences because they're not familiar with them. So we have to start to adjust. Not only the way we speak, but the words we use. So I wouldn't go into the south and pretend that I have a southern accent in order to connect with them will be inauthentic, but I would start to recognize that there may be some expressions or phrases that wouldn't connect with them. So you start to adjust and if you can put aside your dialect because it helps you connect more with that audience that can serve you and the audience. So one of the reasons you work on speech, you try to develop the ability to use a standard american speech is because then you have the ability to connect with more people. So that's one of that's primarily why we train in speech two reasons one, so we can connect with more people and two, so we can make people feel specific things with the words that we use. And I guess if I was going to add a third so that they could actually understand all of the things that we're saying before you came here. If you had either watched anything that I've done or listen to me before, would you say that I chew on my words? Would you say he, I really can't understand him when he speaks. He's very clear. I don't miss a lot. That's in large part because of the speech training now of course we also know how to use rhetorical devices to repeat. That's something else. So let's do this, let's stand up and let's do a few exercises to start to warm up our our articulate ear's okay, so starting very simply just making sure you're hitting all the sounds, release your arms. If you got the jewels covered and let the arms go, everybody just say red leather, yellow leather, red leather, yellow leather, red leather, yellow leather, red leather, yellow leather keep going. Red, red leather, yellow leather, Man chew, chew on it, chew on it, breathe when you need to breathe. Okay let it go. Okay what are we finding one at a time with with microphones? It slurs together, starts to slur together. So you want to say red. Ah So you see how they are, starts to elongate instead of red leather. Because you might, you might thought I said dead letter. You don't if you don't hear that first sound, you don't know what the word is. So it's red leather. I also found myself trying to say too fast because the tongue twisters I like immediately went into like fast. I could, it doesn't have to be fast. The point is not fast. The point is articulate. So let's try the next one. Okay, bad good blood. Bad blood. Good blood. Bad blood. Good blood. Bad blood. Good blood. Bad blood, Good blood. Bad blood, Good blood. Bad blood. Now the next one that you do send forward. So your speech wants to go forward, Not drop back forward. You're trying to reach people out there. Good. What's the next one? Unique? New york, unique, unique new york, unique new york, unique. Okay, so now notice because we can like anything in performing overdue. So are you doing unique? New york, unique new york use exactly how much you need to get the sound out, but not more. Yeah, let's do it again. Good, unique new york, unique new york. You can do this new york, unique new york, unique new york. Good one more. We'll do one more for them. Do you have one in mind? Um Peter piper picked a peck of pickled peppers with implosive with implosive. Peter piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. Peter piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. Hit the T to. Peter piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. One of the reasons you'll see actors often do this or this and singers when they're rehearsing is because they're trying to move the sound forward. So if you don't use any of your body, then the sound, it doesn't move forward in the same way when you're presenting your moving, this tends to drop down. Do you see often when I'm talking to you, Do you notice? I'm, I'm not always just standing like this, I might be standing like this, I might move over here and I'm moving forward all the time now. This is a different environment where we're standing, we're talking, we're hanging, it's a little bit different than say, key noting something. But you will rarely ever see me just stand here and talk like this unless it's to hit something really important. But then I'll move you see so you can use your body when you're doing this unique new york, unique new york. Good. All right, have a seat, Okay. Oh, how you doing? You see how much bigger your voices are already.
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