Hollywood
Napster documentary Downloaded to be streamed free
MUMBAI: The movie has been directed by Alex Winter and AOL On has acquired the film for marketing and distributing along with producer VH1 Roc Docs. The movie will be available for live streaming on Thursday on AOL On.
This is the first feature got by AOL for free streaming. It will be available on downloadeddocs.com as well as its mobile app. The Thursday online premiere will have Winter as well. VH1 Roc Docs is producing the movie too.
Viewers can watch it at a go or watch it in seven parts. AOL On is looking to grow its base of premium video content.
MUMBAI: Jacques Barreau has spent two decades helping Hollywood speak the world’s languages. From The Lord of the Rings to Harry Potter, the dubbing specialist at TransPerfect Media has built a career on making stories travel seamlessly across borders. Yet nothing in his global playbook quite prepared him for Mumbai’s streets.
On his first trip to India, Barreau is not sightseeing but sprinting between workshops and conferences, evangelising the craft of localisation. “I’m not enjoying it at all; I’m just working,” he says cheerfully. “Work, work, work. But I’m very happy and excited to share my knowledge. I just have to come back to discover more of India.” For now, India remains largely unseen beyond studios and seminar rooms.
The culture shock, however, has arrived in full force, on the roads.
“What surprises me is how people don’t get killed every day while riding their motorcycles in the traffic,” he says, still sounding incredulous. He has seen congestion in Vietnam, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Mumbai, he insists, is another league. “Everybody is crossing in all directions. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”
Food, at least, poses no such puzzle. Barreau approaches Indian cuisine the way he approaches dubbing: as variation on a universal theme. “Indian food is just a local variation of world cuisines,” he shrugs. “It’s all the same with different variations. Overall, it’s all good.”
That instinct for finding common structure beneath surface difference runs through his philosophy of sound and storytelling. As a classically trained musician and jazz player, Barreau leans on ideas from The Golden Number, a book on proportion he studied at the conservatory. The same ratios, he argues, shape concertos, paintings and even a snail’s shell. Art, at its core, follows patterns.
“Proportions are very important. They’re very similar across different art forms all over the world,” he says. A concerto has an introduction, development and conclusion; so does a well-built story. The principle travels.
Voice acting, in his view, is no different from music. The task is to grasp the creator’s intent, then reinterpret it without betrayal. “I understand how a character works, then I adapt it to my language, to my culture,” he explains. Indians, Chinese and Italians do the same for their audiences. Local flavour, global skeleton.
Barreau’s mission in India is to pass on that thinking to a new generation of voice talent. The Taj Mahal remains on his wish list, deferred to a future trip. For now, the classroom calls louder than the tourist trail.
He may help films cross borders for a living, but Mumbai has reminded him that some crossings, especially at rush hour, demand more courage than craft.
