Dub over Steamed Hams
41 lines 3 characters 2:49 of footage Free · no account · phone or desktop
Take over every line of Steamed Hams and see how close you can get.
The scene
Principal Skinner burns his roast, buys fast food, and spends the next two and a half minutes lying about it to his boss. Forty-one lines — Skinner twenty-one, Superintendent Chalmers eighteen, and Skinner's mother two, both of them shouted from somewhere off-screen about the house being on fire.
Everyone knows this one. The steamed clams become steamed hams, the regional dialect is from upstate New York, Utica specifically, except that it's an Albany expression; the burgers are patented Skinnerburgers despite being obviously grilled. Chalmers keeps almost catching him and keeps letting it go, and the kitchen is visibly ablaze behind them. It ends with the Aurora Borealis, localised entirely within this kitchen, and Chalmers concluding that Seymour steams a good ham.
Who you'll be playing
Lines you'll be taking
Well, Seymour, I made it, despite your directions.
Meh.
[Gasp]
There are 38 more waiting in the studio.
Performing it
The most-quoted scene in this batch, which means everyone listening knows the lines — so accuracy of rhythm matters more than accuracy of impression. Skinner is fast, nervous and over-explaining; every lie should arrive slightly too quickly. Chalmers is slow, flat and increasingly suspicious, and his two big shouts (SEEEEYMOOOOUR!
and the full Aurora Borealis line) are the scene's landmarks — do not blow your voice before you get to them. Mother's two lines are offstage screams and can go to a third player or be doubled. A superb two-hander for a room.
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.