Remember Remember

I consider myself to be pretty damn good with names. Introduce yourself to me and it's likely that my little brain, which is generally only concerned about what my next meal will be, will note your name down and hand it to me discreetly the next time I need it. Of course, this method isn't foolproof and has lead me to constantly call someone Max for a whole day of rehearsals until they finally corrected me and told me they were actually called Matt. And I'm used to constantly being called the wrong thing. While not massively unusual, people struggle with the pronunciation of my name meaning that I get called all manner of things. I've described such occurences here so why not have a read of that rather than me going over the same old stuff again.

But why am I chattering on about this now? Well, today I had to go and do some ADR for a shoot I was part of last year. It's very close to being released and the director just needed to correct a few bits that oddly sounded like we'd temporarily submerged ourselves under litres of tar for certain lines. So off I went, not really considering that there might be any of the other actors there. But as I was just climbing into the director's car to be driven to the studio, I see one of the other actors coming out of the station. Avid readers will remember him as letchy Actor 1, a particularly troublesome being who was very much the down point for much of the shoot. I applied my fake smile, gave him an actor type hug and cheek kiss and it was only then that I realised I couldn't remember his name. I'd spent so much time referring to him as 'Letch' when discussing him that his real name had packed it's bags and flown away months ago without me even noticing.

Oddly, the deepest depths of my brain that is mainly reserved for 90s indie lyrics and people's birthdays who I don't even speak to anymore, had kept hold of just his surname. Great. I could sound like some old schoolmaster when talking to him. Thanks brain. Now thankfully, unless you need to introduce the person to someone else (and then, forgetting their name is hell on mouldy toast) so it wasn't too much of a problem. And all was resolved when the director finally slipped his name into conversation which I then followed up with that wonderful thing of dropping his name into every sentence until I left.

And a quick note about ADR...even if your Irish accent is pretty poor anyway, it's damn hard copying your awful attempts from two months ago. And I'm sorry to say that there is now a video out there of me breathing heavily into a microphone in a room full of men. Your eyes are no longer safe, people...