Lucy Quinto revisited

When we decided to visit Lucy Quinto after three years of not hearing anything from her, we didn’t expect any changes from her. We found her at the same home in Violago Subdivision in Quezon City, the same welcoming smile on her lips and the same dubbing studio she had constructed in her home. However, there were some changes we noticed and appreciated.

At the gate of her house, Lucy had posted a schedule of events she had to take care of, the deadlines for submission to clients, much like what we ourselves need to meet at The Philippine STAR — except that her duties were much more complex and demanding. We followed Lucy around her home talking to the dubber situated in another room. We found out that she is a strict boss who will not accept a simple “pwede na.” We watched her ask her dubber (on this particular day, a man named AJ Constantino) to repeat one particular sentence until Lucy was contented with the outcome. We asked AJ how he got into the practice of dubbing when he was a Law graduate at the Ateneo. He explained that it could be his experience in theater that convinced him to try out dubbing, especially when a friend pointed out that dubbing is simply vocal acting.

This business of dubbing sounded simple enough to us, but sitting inside the dubbing studio, watching Lucy explain to AJ the exact mood one sequence was supposed to convey, doing the sequence over and over again, convinced us it wasn’t simple at all. One has to be drawn to the work it entailed, and not be content until he got a perfect score. It had occurred to us that lawyering would have brought AJ much more money than dubbing could ever bring. And yet, here he was, enduring the long hours of repeating three lines until Lucy would give him a passing grade.

She explained to us the reason for her demand for repetition. Lucy said, “In this particular instance, Juana had just been denied acceptance to the post she had applied for. She will be sad and unhappy, and will have tears dripping from her eyes, but she will need to convey this mood through delivery of the lines. She will need to sound unhappy through dialogue.”

We continued our conversations with Lucy and discovered new things about her and the business we did not know before, or had the time to investigate. For instance, No. 1, Lucy had started in the business of dubbing in 1978 as a radio dubber, then graduated to teleserye dubbing and even wrote stories that ended up on the dubbing floor. No. 2, Lucy reads all the scripts presented to her and decides on which dubber would be perfect for which role. No. 3, in scenes involving a man and a woman, these are dubbed separately, then put together to determine if any changes will be needed. No. 4, for the first time since she started in the business, Lucy is now offering free dubbing lessons.

(E-mail your comments to [email protected] or text them to 0917-8991835.)