Dub over Erwin's Speech
32 lines 2 characters 1:44 of footage Free · no account · phone or desktop
Take over every line of Erwin's Speech and see how close you can get.
The scene
Erwin Smith tells his soldiers they are all going to die, agrees that nothing they do matters, and then sends them anyway. Twenty-five of the thirty-two lines are his; Floch has seven, and Floch's are the ones that force the speech out of him by asking whether disobeying would make any difference.
The argument runs in a straight line: every hope and dream is irrelevant to what a speeding rock does to a body, so were the deaths of their comrades meaningless too? The answer arrives as a shout, and the last third is a series of declarations at increasing volume about soldiers who do not buckle, who push forward, who scream out, who rage.
Who you'll be playing
Lines you'll be taking
Ready your horses on the double
Be honest, are all of us... riding to our deaths
Yes we are
There are 29 more waiting in the studio.
Performing it
Start quiet. The most common mistake is opening at the volume the ending needs, which leaves nowhere to go across twenty-five lines. Erwin's first half is administrative — ready your horses, yes we are, I am — and the honesty in it should be almost gentle. "They were not" is the hinge, and from there each declaration steps up. The final line is a sustained roar, so warm up and give your throat the room. Floch is the better small part: play him frightened and reasoning, not petulant, because he's the one asking the question the speech answers.
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.