Can You Believe That When The Harry Potter Audiobooks Were Performed...

Many people know about the degree of detail that was put into the making of the Harry Potter books and motion pictures, but rather few people know what went into Dale's reading of the seven Harry Potter audiobooks.

Did you realize that when Dale read the audiobooks, he...

1. Would not read the book cover to cover before he began recording. Dale would normally be given the manuscript for a new book just two or three days prior to being slated to start his performance. Meaning that when he began reading a soon to be released Harry Potter audiobook, he would not know how the story was going to end. More to the point, Jim has said that he would typically just read about one hundred pages in front of where he was recording. That is very cool since it ensures that when you are playing the audiobooks, you can be fairly sure that Dale is not accidently suggesting a particular storyline direction through the tenor of his voice & accents.

2. Developed over two hundred voices & accents for each of the various characters over the seven books. He actually has a Guiness World Record for the greatest number of voices used in an audiobook - one hundred and forty-six distinct voices in book 7, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

3. Applies his knowledge of hundreds of accents taken from the entire United Kingdom. Several characters accents are even built from friends and family members of Dale's (for example, an elderly Aunt of his is the foundation for Minerva McGonagall's voice and a very large uncle of his who had a farm in Devonshire is the foundation for Hagrid's voice).

4. Was sent a table of each new word or new character's name and its pronunciation. Evidently the publishers wanted an extremely rigid interpretation of the books and Dale would need to read new words (which were mistakenly left off his list) in every single pronunciation possible.

5. Would spend two to three weeks reading each new book. He would typically go from around 10:30am to 5:30pm during this period, resulting in almost one hundred hrs of performance per audiobook.

Pretty crazy stuff huh? Hope you liked the interesting facts on Jim Dale's performance of the Harry Potter audiobooks!