Dialect Coach Chris Lang

Dialect Coach for Film, TV, and Live Performance, TED Talk Coach, Media Coach for Athletes. I want to help you rise to the top, be the best, and inspire!

[Dialect Coach Chris Lang @DialectCoachCL]

Breathe.

[Dialect Coach Chris Lang @DialectCoachCL]

The workshop won't give you a Belfast accent for a tape due Thursday.

It teaches what sits underneath every accent, so the hour with a coach goes to your accent instead of to learning how to feel your tongue.

[Dialect Coach Chris Lang @DialectCoachCL]

"I've got it for a line and a half, then I'm gone."

That's how long you can hold a posture by squeezing it.

The answer isn't an easier posture. It's going deeper into the one you're after until being in there is comfortable.

[Dialect Coach Chris Lang @DialectCoachCL]

Take a line you know. Move exactly one vowel and leave everything else alone.

Harder than it sounds. Your mouth wants to move the neighbors.

That's the skill. Not sounding Irish. Changing one thing on purpose.

[Dialect Coach Chris Lang @DialectCoachCL]

In your kitchen, the accent is the thing you're doing. In a scene it has to be one of the things that's true about you while you do something else.

You don't close that gap by trying harder. You close it by going further in.

[Dialect Coach Chris Lang @DialectCoachCL]

Say a sentence and freeze at the end. Where's your tongue? Your jaw? Your lips?

That's your posture, and it's why every accent drifts back toward home.

You can't leave a room you don't know you're standing in.

[Dialect Coach Chris Lang @DialectCoachCL]

Your accent falls apart in the emotional moments because the accent and the feeling are still two separate things and there's a seam between them.

The work isn't surviving the emotion. It's the accent being part of it.

[Dialect Coach Chris Lang @DialectCoachCL]

Say a line you know by heart, tapping the stressed syllables on the table.

Now move one tap somewhere else.

That wrongness you feel is the accent. Rhythm gives actors away long before vowels do.

[Dialect Coach Chris Lang @DialectCoachCL]

The way you talk to your mother isn't the way you talk to casting.

Nobody taught you that. You did it to belong to the person in front of you.

The machinery already works. Coaching just gives you the aim.

[Dialect Coach Chris Lang @DialectCoachCL]

Say "see."

Now pull your lip corners back toward your ears. Say it again.

Now push them forward like you're about to whistle. Again.

Three sounds. You only moved the corners of your mouth.

[Dialect Coach Chris Lang @DialectCoachCL]

An accent is a physical skill, like roller skating or using a spoon.

You were bad at those for a while too. Then you weren't.

You've done this tens of thousands of times already.

[Dialect Coach Chris Lang @DialectCoachCL]

The workshop teaches the skills underneath every accent.

It doesn't teach you your accent. That's a different job.

Anybody selling you the second one in a video course is selling you something else.

[Dialect Coach Chris Lang @DialectCoachCL]

Let your jaw hang a little lower. Let your tongue sit back and flat. Now say "hey."

These are the building blocks that accents are made out of. You move body parts in a different way, and the sound is the result of that.

[Dialect Coach Chris Lang @DialectCoachCL]

Nobody wants you to lose your accent.

They're asking whether you can set it down for one role and pick it back up afterward.

Different question. Kinder one.

[Dialect Coach Chris Lang @DialectCoachCL]

Happy Labor Day.

One adjustment. Same line, three times. Watch what moves.

It isn't an ear. It's a muscle, and you can move it on purpose.

Last day, 40% off the Universal Accent Skills Workshop. Code TAFTHARTLEY.

https://t.co/9opQPBSlHA

[Dialect Coach Chris Lang @DialectCoachCL]

Your brain can't hear a sound it has no physical distinction for.

That isn't you not trying hard enough. It's incapable of it.

Work to create the distinction first. Hearing comes after feeling.

40% off the Universal Accent Skills Workshop through Labor Day. Code TAFTHARTLEY.

[Dialect Coach Chris Lang @DialectCoachCL]

There's no such thing as an ear.

There's a tongue that's been somewhere before, and one that hasn't.

40% off the Universal Accent Skills Workshop through Labor Day. Code TAFTHARTLEY.

https://t.co/9opQPBSlHA

[Dialect Coach Chris Lang @DialectCoachCL]

Nobody starts accent-ready. Every actor who books accent roles consistently started at zero.

The difference is they decided to build. Before anyone asked them to.

https://t.co/DT88HZQQlp

[Dialect Coach Chris Lang @DialectCoachCL]

The best time to build Universal Accent Skills was six months ago.

The second best time is now.

They compound with practice. They dull without it. Start.

https://t.co/2PqHlAvabC

[Dialect Coach Chris Lang @DialectCoachCL]

In a self-tape, the accent should be the least interesting thing about the performance.

If casting is thinking about the accent, something is wrong.

If casting is thinking about the character, the accent is working.

[Dialect Coach Chris Lang @DialectCoachCL]

Mid-August. Breakdowns coming in daily. "Accent required."

The actors who invested in Universal Accent Skills this summer aren't scrambling.

They're working. From a foundation. With a coach. With a process.

That's the payoff.