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Dub over Can a robot write a symphony?

3 lines 2 characters 0:15 of footage Free · no account · phone or desktop

Still from Can a robot write a symphony?, a scene in I, Robot

Can they?

The scene

Fifteen seconds and three lines, which is either the easiest scene on the site or the hardest. Detective Spooner puts two rhetorical questions to the robot Sonny about symphonies and paintings, meaning to prove machines can't create. Sonny asks whether Spooner can. That's the entire exchange, and it has outlived the rest of I, Robot as a reaction clip because the reversal is so clean: a smug question, a pause, and the question handed back.

Spooner gets two lines, Sonny gets one, and the meme lives in the gap between them. Will Smith delivers his half with the swagger of a man who thinks he has already won; Alan Tudyk's Sonny answers with the mild, curious tone of someone who genuinely wants to know. There's no shouting, no overlap, no sound effects. It's a scene about a single beat of timing, and it's a good one to try when you have half a minute and want to land something rather than survive something.

Who you'll be playing

🎭 Detective Spooner · 2 lines 🎭 Sonny · 1 line

Lines you'll be taking

Detective SpoonerCan a robot write a symphony?
Detective SpoonerCan a robot turn a canvas into a beautiful masterpiece?
SonnyCan you?

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Performing it

Everything rides on the pause before the comeback, so resist filling it. Spooner's two questions should escalate slightly: the second is longer and more pleased with itself. Sonny's answer wants to be quiet and level; the moment you make it a zinger it stops working. The comic angle is contrast, so try a wildly confident Spooner against a Sonny who sounds almost apologetic. It works fine solo, and in a two-player room the split is two lines to one, which means someone gets the better job. Do it three times in the time other scenes take once.

The dialogue is muted and everything else stays — the score, the room, the picture. You record each line over the silence and the scene plays back with you in the cast. How a dub is made · what the score measures.

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From the gallery

42 dubs of this scene have been posted so far. The most voted, in the performers' own words:

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