Were you conscious of that when you approached the English dub?
How long did the dubbing process take, and what challenges did you face?
How patient were the actors you used?
Did their age work in their favour?
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As I remember we always had a good time and the actors worked very hard.
I would say that the age of the children worked in favour of the series.
Only in extreme circumstances did I ever use an adult to do a childs voice.
I say this because as much as possible I always tried to book the young actors after school hours.
Were you always going to dub Mendoza yourself?
How I got to play Mendoza came about in a strange way.
It was already 2am in the morning.
I said I am sure we have enough voices to send.
Besides we have some great voices that would be terrific and I dont know about you but Im pooped.
Doug persisted and said he wouldnt feel comfortable without sending another voice.
You have to realise we always sent the voices without names.
I hauled my weary bones up to the mike and laid a voice track down.
It was made part of the package and they were all sent off to Europe in the morning.
Was there ever any pressure to dilute some of the harsher moments in the story for the English version?
Yes, but not what you might expect.
There were actually three forms of pressure that were brought to bear.
One was from the BBC who was always particular in the use of language.
We were to avoid contractions as much as possible.
We also sent the scripts, in advance, to Nickleodeon.
Three, the toughest and harshest critics were ourselves.
I have a second family and my current children areabsolutely engrossed in the series.
They just adore it.
I am amazed at how well it holds up after all these years.
How long did you get to complete the dub?
And that was really moving in those days.
Howard Rysphan, thank you very much!
