Film-making:The Madness -DUBBING

Ah, my favourite topic: Dubbing aka Dupping in Kollywood baashai. I am not talking about films like Aparachitudu, Shivaputrudu, Idhu dhaanda Police which are dubbed from the master language into another. This post will talk about dubbing artistes who dub for actors and actresses in films.

You can't give full credit to an actor whose voice dubbed by another for his/her performance. Their job is probably just 60%. 40% of the effort is put in by the dubbing artiste who scream, shout, cry, laugh, smile, talk infront of the mike.

In a hero dominated industry like ours, no one really cares whether the heroine knows tamizh or not." Ellam dubbing la pathukallam pa" is one term you will hear most often on the sets of a tamizh film when there is a dialogue oriented scene filmed. It means that during a dialogue shot, the usual imports from Mumbai like Payal Agarwals, Pooja Khandelwals and the Neha Mehtas will say 1-2-3 or a-b-c-d if they are convent educated, their voices are later dubbed usually by Savitha Reddy, Priya or Renuka Kadhir. No wonder Simran and Jyothika sounded the same. Real life sisters Radha and Ambika had the same voice too - Durga R. Sundarrajan zindabad! Blame Meena or Kanaka's irritatingly cute cute "poangaa mamaaa" on Uma Bharani. The brief for these dubbing artistes is plain and simple. "Oru love-oda tamizh ponnu madiri pesunggammaaa!" Seriously, listen to Meena in Muthu - yikes! Radha in Mella tirandadu Kadavu - One slap on her face when she kozhanjufyes with Mohan with that over-cute voice. The most irritating of all - Jeya Geetha for Kolangal Devayani saying "Precchaaanai" and "Tollssss". The most popular is Anuradha who is Khushboo's aasthana dubbeee. Khushboo was one of the few actresses who came out in public and gave credit to Anuradha. No dubbing in Kollywood is complete without two mentions. 1. The first family of Kollywood dubbers - Hemamalini who was a queen bee dubber dubbing for most actresses in 80s, her brother M S Bhaskar, their children, grandchildren etc. 2. Average playback singer S N Surendhar's claim to fame was that he dubbed for Mike Mogan. No concert of Ganghei Amaren in the 90s was complete without SNS saying "poranda kuzhanda en teriyuma azhardu..." dialogue from Mouna Ragam. But when Mike Mogan started dubbing himself without SNS, down went his market along with the mike.

Most of the villians like Andhra imported like Kotta Srinivasa Rao or Mumbai irakkumadi Aashish vidyarthi probably say sa-ri-ga-ma-pa-da-ni if they have to say "yeeei.. unnaa summma vida maatendaaaa..." and Rajendhar, Sai kumar, Sai ravi etc do the honours for them. Watch the blockbuster film Dhill and see Ashish Vidyarthi's lips saying "ya ya ya ma ma ma ya ya ya" for everything.

Having said that, I must give credit for some film-makers who make an effort to get new voices to dub for the cast. Actress Kaniha dubbed for Sadaa in Anniyan and for Shriya Saran in Sivaji. The sync - less said the better. But I quite liked the voice that matched the face. A whole bunch of people were auditioned to dub for Suman in Sivaji. Finally, Subbu Arunachalam whose voice, in a way sounds similar to Suman's real voice with a nasal tone was used. Deepa Venkat was fantastic for Simran in Kannathil..Singer Chinmayi had dubbed for Bhumika in Sillunnu oru kaadhal, Tanisha in Unnale Unnale and now Padmapriya in Sattham Podathey. I will not bore you guys again talking about the sync in the above films because it was indeed terrible but again a different voice. Yet to watch Sattham... so can't comment on that.

A lot of popular actors and actresses have dubbed for other actresses. Saritha for Naghma in Kaadhalan and other films, Revathi for Kajol in Minsara Kanavu and Tabu in Kandukondein, Banupriya for Urmila Matondkar in Indian and Sripriya for Jayasudha in Alaipayuthey. Rare actors like Jayashree [of thendrale ennai todu fame] dubbed for Geetha in Azhagan, Jyothika in Pachaikili. But when popular character actors dub for other actors, you can't but visualize the dubbing actor's face instead of the one on screen. When I watched Mallu actor Murali, I could only see actor Rajesh who dubbed for him because of his distinct voice... Nasser for Nedumudi Venu in some film - Again it was nasser's nasal voice + nose was what I was thinking of, not Nedumudi+nose. Delhi Ganesh is one lucky fellow. He has dubbed for two big superstars in tamizh films -Kannada actor Vishnuvardhan in Mazhalai pattalangal and Chiranjeevi in 47 naatkal. I always think that Suhasini as Thalapathi's heroine, not Shobhana.. may be it is because I visualize Suhasini automatically whenever I watch Shobhana's scenes in the film. But I was happy to see the hindi film Guru in tamizh visualizing Surya instead of the boring Abhishek Bachchan...he he he. Actress Rohini's voice matched Jyothika in Vettaiyadu better than the usual Savitha Reddy voice. Rohini is one person who has a nice, natural, un-dubbey tone to her voice. Vikram has this distinct credit of dubbing for both Abbas and Prabhudeva in V.I.P.Vikram dubbed for Abbas in Kandukondein as well.

Ah! Gautam Menon and his hitchcock-tanam. Not only does our man show his face in all his films but has also started dubbing for his villians- Jeevan in Kaakha Kaakha and Milind Soman in Pachaikili. Gautam, you are a decent director not dubber. Ditto Bharathiraja. Do you remember Nizhalgal Ravi's face in Vedampudidu or Bharathiraja 's voice? Bharathiraja for Manivannan in Kodi parakkudu was bad.

Kudos to Ameer for letting tamizh-terinja actress Priya mani to dub for herself in Parutthi veeran. I believe they took 22 days to dub but it was worth the effort. It sounded very natural and rustic. I like Asin better than Trisha for the simple reason that Asin dubs herself. Our convent-educated "naa church park la padichen-enakku tameeel teriyadu" Tamizh girl Trisha - Shame on you! I also wonder why Padmapriya did not dub herself in Sattham... Vasanth had to dub lead actor Prithviraj twice for the film (he mentioned this on a Podhigai show) to cut the mallu accent. In that case, why not half the effort for your lead actress as well, Sir?

Guys, isn't it irritating to listen to the same dubbing artistes' voice and most of the times badly dubbed? Why can't film-makers put some effort to sync the dialogues better during dubbing especially for actresses? Why can't they get their heroines to learn their lines by-heart prior to the shoot so that it does not look bad on screen when dubbed later? The heroines' dubbing looks awful on screen with lips saying a-b-c-d and voice saying "enna mannichuddungaaa....",doesn't it? Vasanth, Shankar, Selvaraghavan - are you all listening?

Bollywood is way ahead when it comes to dubbing. Watch Jism and you will never be able to make out the fact that both Bipasha and John Abraham's voices were dubbed by professional voice-over artistes Mona Ghosh and Viraj respectively. I am waiting to watch Om Shanti Om to see how Deepika Padukone's voice has been dubbed by RJ Prachi.

Ps: The funniest of all dubbings - Anita Raj in Thaai veedu. She says all her dialogues in Hindi. yes.. a tamizh film with the lead actress mouthing her dialogues in Hindi with a completely different voice dubbing for her in tamizh. It is hilarious! This DVD is one collector's item. Buy it, watch it .. now!


Updated - Please check the comments for more inputs from the comments