![]() ![]() He takes into account the aging of the main characters, who started out as 10 and 11 in “Sorcerer’s Stone” and are now 17 and 18 in “Deathly Hallows.”įor new characters Mr. Dale can recreate those voices for the latest book. I don’t know who the villain is because I am just reading 100 pages at a time.”īy now the publisher has digital files of all the voices he has used for long-running characters like Hermione Granger, one of Harry’s sidekicks, as well as more minor recurring characters like the Death Eaters, so that Mr. Dale said, is that: “I don’t ever know how the book is going to end so I can’t unconsciously lead you in the direction that the book is going. So he read about 100 pages ahead, and noted all the different voices he needed for the first few days of recording. Dale, who does not possess the 13-year-old megafan’s ability to inhale the book in a weekend. “That makes it impossible for me to actually read it before recording it,” said Mr. Dale received the manuscript only two or three days before he was scheduled to begin recording. “Deathly Hallows,” which runs to 784 pages in the ink-and-paper version, took about two and a half weeks, working six-and-a-half-hour days, recording about 18 to 20 pages an hour, to finish. Dale has won a Grammy Award and holds the record for creating the most voices in an audiobook in the Guinness Book of World Records. Including sales of CDs, cassettes and digital downloads, the audiobooks have sold more than 5.7 million copies, according to the Random House Audio Publishing Group, which now owns Listening Library.įor his work on the “Harry Potter” series, Mr. Dale has recorded every single word of the “Harry Potter” series, amounting to 117 hours and 4 minutes of reading time across the seven books - or a lot of long car rides. Since he first went into the recording studio in the summer of 1999, Mr. “I think it’s just one of those combination factors of luck and just going by your gut,” Mr. Dale had recorded only one audiobook, which was never released, Mr. Dale’s performance in “Barnum” and a few other Broadway shows. (In Britain the audiobooks are produced by Bloomsbury, and Stephen Fry, the actor, author and comedian, reads them.) Timothy Ditlow, the son of the company’s founders, was at a dinner party with a group of avid theatergoers who recommended Mr. Dale the part of reading “Harry Potter.” Back in 1999, Listening Library, then an independent company, acquired the United States audiobook rights to “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” the first book in the series, for just $15,000. Dale, 71, was born in central England and has had a long and storied career as a stand-up comedian, a pop singer and an actor in everything from the British “Carry On” series of films and Shakespeare at the National Theater in London to Broadway productions of “Joe Egg” and “Barnum,” for which he won a Tony Award. “Let the child find out for himself by opening this gift.” Dale, whose apartment could easily make a Hogwarts professor feel at home with its eclectic collections of Victorian cake decorations, pewter plates and Persian swords. “For those people who say, ‘C’mon, Jim, how does it end?,’ it’s like parents who say: ‘There’s a surprise gift for you in the next room. Dale really believes that readers - and listeners - should discover the end for themselves. Dale signed a confidentiality agreement so that he will not breathe a word of the plot.īut after spending eight years creating more than 200 voices for all the characters in the “Harry Potter” books, Mr. It is not quite four days until Harry Potter’s legions of fans can procure a copy of “Deathly Hallows” - in hardcover, CD or cassette - and find out for themselves exactly who does what to whom. “It’s a surprise ending,” he said on Friday, during an interview in his Park Avenue co-op. Everywhere he goes, people want to know What He Knows. ![]() His grandchildren, who visited from England after he completed the recording, literally twisted his arms trying to get him to divulge a clue. ![]() Dale, the veteran Broadway actor turned voice of Harry Potter, finished recording the audio version of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” the seventh and final installment in the colossally successful series by J. Jim Dale is either one of the luckiest men in America or one of the most tortured.Ī little less than two months ago, Mr. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |