Dubber Elena Perino has often worked with 3Cycle, recently on Mirage and Unicorn Store (both Netflix productions), but she’s also an old acquaintance of Marco Guadagno, who recently directed her for Captain Marvel and Damien Chazelle’s First Man.
«Marco is very demanding and I’m a little anxious, so I often get the impression I’m not realising what it is that he wants exactly, or how I should go about it. He tells me to follow the original track, but sometimes I get stuck here and there, perhaps because something is misleading me and takes me off the path. You see, in our job, even a minor expression at the very end of the line can affect your tone of voice What you hear from the original source differs from what you see on the screen; it seems to break away from the actual meaning of the line and leads you astray.
Then again – and that’s what I always say when I’m asked about how we worked – Marco is one of the few people who can really get me stressed, but it’s only when I’ve worked with him that I’m not able to recognise myself when I go to the cinema to see the film we worked on. It just doesn’t sound like me, my tones of voice are very different, they don’t belong to me. It means I really detached myself from my usual way of speaking. I talk like I would never talk normally… What I’m saying is that if I didn’t know that I actually dubbed a specific character, I probably wouldn’t notice it. And this is almost relaxing, it helps me enjoy the film.
At work I always try to follow the advice a dubbing director gave me when I was a child: ‘never lose your spontaneity’. I believe I have always stuck to that piece of advice and I think it turned out to be a key factor in my career.
What makes this job so fun? A lot of things. But what amuses me is the actual effort of dubbing, meaning that it always varies. It makes you want to put yourself to the test, you get to learn a whole lot of new things and you can make suggestions. You never get bored. But it also gives you a protected environment, made of lifelong friendships, strong bonds, a relaxed atmosphere. I love this combination of the ‘unknown’ that this job entails and the way the working environment makes me feel safe.»