学进去

What do you think of when you see the word “actor”? Actors, many people would say, are the people who perform up on a stage （在舞台上表演）, on television or in films. They are all about being seen. However, there is a group of actors who are never seen. They are only heard and hardly seen.

Meet loopers. Their job is to record what people in the background of a scene could be saying. The work begins only after the show or film has been shot and edited （编辑）.

One recent Sunday, on a sound stage at Fox Studios in Los Angeles, seven loopers were recording dialogues for a TV show. They were working on a restaurant scene, speaking lines （台词） that people at background tables might speak. As they recorded, the loopers stood in a circle under two overhead microphones （话筒）. A scene was played silently on a big screen. At exactly the right moment, they started to walk around and talk. Later, the dialogues would be mixed into the scene they were watching.

David Betancount, a mixer explained why looping was necessary. “The dialogues appear meaningless, but they improve the experience of what you are watching,” he said. “A show without these dialogues just feels dead.”

To fill in the background sounds, loopers watch the movie or show, take notes and then discuss how they should do their research. For example, when they were working on Bones, ad film show, the loopers researched the language of forensic （法医的） scientists.

The next time you watch a show or film, pay some attention to the background dialogues. Imagine what scene would be like without the loopers. You will then realize how important these “unseen actors” are.