Dub over Banana Song (Barbara Ann)

32 lines 2 characters 0:47 of footage Free · no account · phone or desktop

PO-TAAA-TOH-OH-OHHHHHH

The scene

The Minions' rendition of Barbara Ann from the Despicable Me shorts, forty-seven seconds, thirty-one Minion lines and a single closing word from the film's announcer. There is no dialogue in any language you can look up. It is Minionese — banana, potato and a run of made-up syllables — sung to the Beach Boys' tune by three or four voices trading verses, one of whom gets progressively angrier, and a fourth who contributes nothing but a party horn at four separate points. The cue sheet is a chorus.

This is a singing scene and a nonsense scene at once, which makes it strangely liberating: there are no words to get wrong, only a tune and a temper to keep. The structure is call-and-response — one Minion sings a phrase, the others echo it — then an increasingly furious solo that ends in a shout about potatoes and a last, unified wail on the final syllable. The horn player is a real part. It is one of the few scenes where the character list is a single collective name, so in a two-player room the lines are split arbitrarily, and whoever ends up with the angry verses has the best job.

Who you'll be playing

Lines you'll be taking

There are 29 more waiting in the studio.

Performing it

Learn the tune first; the words will look after themselves because they are not words. The echoed phrases come in sets of three — the same syllables from different Minions in quick succession — so keep them short and identical rather than embellishing. The angry verses are a cluster of five and the potato line in the middle is the peak; save your loudest voice for it. The party horn cues are not optional: a mouth-trumpet or a raspberry works, but leave nothing silent. The announcer's tag is a completely different voice — low, smug, a film trailer in two words. Group play suits this better than almost any other scene.

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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