Timing, Performance and the Craft of Live Action Dubbing

As foreign-language content becomes more common on streaming platforms, live action dubbing has become a more specialized and demanding corner of the craft. It takes a combination of skills to make a foreign performance feel seamlessly native: cold reading under pressure, following a dynamic scrolling script while staying connected to the performance on screen, matching lip sync with precision, and honoring the emotional truth of the original performance, all in real time. Tools like VoiceQ and Rhythmo Band replace static paper scripts with a dynamic scrolling guide, functioning as a kind of karaoke for dubbing, but the technical demands are only part of the story.

Join a panel of working professionals including Nicholas Fluhr, Carlin James, Andria Kozica, Dorit Simone, Destinee Stewart, and Philippe Van Doorne as they discuss what makes this work distinct, how the collaborative process with directors and engineers unfolds in the booth, how these projects are cast, and what actors need to know to build a career in this quickly growing field.

Moderated by Ted Sroka, SAG-AFTRA Foundation

BIOS:

Destinee Stewart is a director, writer, and dubbing creative lead whose work explores identity, transformation, and belonging. She has collaborated on international dubbing productions for Netflix, helping bring global stories to English-speaking audiences on titles including Love Is Blind, Firebreak, In His Shadow, and Bandi.

As a filmmaker, Stewart's short film The Other Partners premiered at the Oscar-qualifying RiverRun International Film Festival in 2024. Most recently, she directed The Inheritance through the AFI Directing Workshop for Women+, a proof-of-concept short exploring ancestral trauma, memory, and erasure.

A Satellite Collective Fellow, Stewart is committed to creating expansive stories that center underrepresented voices, both in her original work and through the art of performance localization.

Carlin James, born and raised in Long Beach, CA., started out as a hip hop dancer before entering the world of acting. He has appeared in numerous commercials, TV shows, and films. Most notably, he can be found scaling an icy volcano in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, beating up Saul in Better Call Saul, and has guest starred on 3 different shows within the NCIS Universe -- NCIS, NCIS: New Orleans, and NCIS: Hawai'i. In 2019, he found himself happily stumbling into the voiceover world, and has since racked up over 175+ live-action dubbing roles and lent his voice to projects like Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Prime Video’s Secret Level.