VIDEO – The profession of dubbing in the cinema with the French voice of Leonardo DiCaprio

Damien Witecka is an actor specializing in dubbing. It is he who lends his voice in the French versions of the films of Leonardo DiCaprio, Giovanni Ribisi or Tobey Maguire. So you could hear it in Titanic, The Wolf of Wall Street, Saving Private Ryan, Avatar, Spider-Man… (the films and actors he dubbed
). During a studio session in Mont-de-Marsan where he recently produced part of theFrance Bleu Gascogne branch cover
it was an opportunity to meet him to discover this profession of dubbing in the cinema.

France Bleu: Your path to succeed in dubbing?

Damien Witecka : I started the theater when I was 17 when I was in Dijon. I did the conservatory and then I went to Paris where I did the National Conservatory of Paris. I did a lot of theater where I met people who did dubbing.

How does a dubbing session take place?

It’s very rare that you can see the film before. Anyway, now, for hacking stories, everything is very protected. Above all, you have to listen carefully to what the actors you are going to dub are playing. And then you jump into the bath and try to live up to it. In dubbing, you are asked to do in a few days what was done in a few months, so without any preparation. An actor arrives, he works upstream, he prepares his character, his whole interiority. In dubbing, you have to capture that very quickly. And not only do you have to do like him, but at the same time you have to appropriate him enough so that it’s also a bit like you. That is to say that at some point, if you’re not a mynah, if you just reproduce what it does, it doesn’t work. At the same time, you have to put your little human touch and your sensitivity. Me, I would say that you have to get naked, that is to say that at some point you have to forget all about yourself and swing in the most immodest way possible.

Your “filmography” with Leonardo DiCaprio

I started with Leonardo DiCaprio in Romeo and Juliet with good, good scenes… It wasn’t easy all the time. I would even say that titanic could be simpler. A great memory of dubbing, it remains The wolf of Wall Street which was still quite difficult, but a wonderful memory and a very nice team around me. It was a lot of happiness, a lot of intensity. Fifteen days of intense work.
I have already remarked to myself by saying to myself: hey, if I had tried less to stick to what he does in VO to pay homage to him, to restore what he plays. And if I had appropriated it more by saying but in fact, yes, that’s how we would do it in life too or how it seems, how I would feel it. I realized that in fact you have to find the right balance between playing what he plays and at the same time doing it in his own way so that at some point we say to ourselves “Oh, that’s awesome!” We forget that it’s a foreign version and it becomes a French version. At some point, we no longer ask the question.

The richness of this profession of dubbing in the cinema?

The diversity, the fact of never doing exactly the same thing, sometimes coming across characters where you say to yourself “Oh lala, what is he doing? How am I going to do this?” And then to struggle and not necessarily get there right away, but to persist. And at some point, anyway, we get paid to find it. So you have to do it, you have to find it. But it doesn’t necessarily happen right away. Sometimes, we know that when we start a film, very often we will come back to the first scenes because we had to warm up, practice a little. And then once you’re in it, it’s good, it goes more easily and you can come back to certain things. It takes a little time to tame the work.