She Has Been Her Voice for Fourteen Years
A short story, told in studio memos and text messages, about a Kadıköy voice actress asked to hand over the soap opera heroine she has voiced for fourteen years to a younger woman.
Drafted with AI; reviewed by Azka Shahid on . How we work.
Story Time is original short fiction. The characters, places and events in this story are invented.
MEMO — Moda Ses Dublaj, Kadıköy
To: Nesrin Aydemir; Haluk Erdem (sound); Ceren Yalçın
From: Selim Tunç, dubbing director
Date: 7 March 2016
Re: Quiroga Kardeşler, final season
The channel has asked for a younger sound for Luz for the final season. This is not a reflection on anyone's work. Ceren Yalçın will take over Luz from Episode 1. Nesrin, we would ask you to sit in for the first weeks and help Ceren with continuity: pronunciations, the family names, the way Luz says “anneciğim.” And the laugh. Viewers still write in about the laugh. Booth 2, Monday, 10:00. Tea is on the house as always, which is to say on me.
SMS — Nesrin to Haluk, 7 March, 21:14
Nesrin: Did you know?
Haluk: Since Thursday. I told them the booth would sound empty without you. They said the booth isn't on television.
Nesrin: Fourteen years. I started her when she was nineteen and stealing her sister's fiancé. They kill her father in episode 40 and I won't be the one to cry it.
Haluk: You'll be there. Behind the glass with me. I'll give you the good stool.
Nesrin: The good stool has a crack in it.
Haluk: That's how you know it's the good one.
Margin note — Nesrin, Ep. 1 script, p. 3, beside LUZ: (ríe)
She laughs on the cut. Not after. Girl is late by four frames, every take. Haluk keeps fixing it in the edit. He shouldn't.
Margin note — Ceren, Ep. 1 script, p. 3, same line
Laugh ON the cut. Tried 11 times. N. Hanım watching from the desk with arms folded. She takes her tea without sugar and stirs it anyway. Foam in booth 2 smells like old cigarettes from before the ban. Don't think about it.
SMS — Ceren to Nesrin, 14 March, 23:02
Ceren: Nesrin Hanım, sorry to write so late. Can I ask how you breathe before the laugh? I watched old episodes all weekend. My mother laughs like Luz now, honestly, she learned it from you twenty years ago without knowing. I can't do it.
Nesrin, 23:40: Fourteen years, not twenty. Watch the actress's mouth, not the screen. And sleep.
Recording log — Haluk, 15 March
Ep 1, sc 4, Luz laugh. Takes 1–23. T4 ferry horn, retake. T9 sync good, laugh wrong (too pretty). T17 Selim says “closer.” T23 Ceren's voice going. Break, linden tea, honey. Note to self: at T12 N. mouthed it with her from the desk. No sound. She knows exactly what's missing.
SMS — Haluk to Nesrin, 15 March, 19:20
Haluk: I saw you at take twelve.
Nesrin: I was yawning.
Haluk: You were laughing with no air in it. Like a fish on the counter at the market.
Nesrin: Thank you, very flattering.
Haluk: Selim says if the laughs don't land by the end of the month he'll ask the channel to bring you back for the season. He told me, not you. So now I'm telling you something I shouldn't, which means you owe me a simit.
Nesrin: You're telling me so I'll know what I'm choosing.
Haluk: I'm telling you because you'd find out anyway and then you'd never trust me with the good stool again.
MEMO — Selim Tunç, 21 March
Re: Episodes 1–3 status
Dialogue for Episodes 1–3 approved except Luz laughs (12 instances). Channel delivery date is 15 April. Ceren is doing excellent work on everything else; the channel is pleased with the “brightness.” On the laughs: Haluk, please do not patch from Nesrin's archive takes. The channel can hear it. I can hear it. Let's not.
Margin note — Nesrin, Ep. 2 script, p. 11, beside LUZ: (ríe, nerviosa)
Nervous laugh is the same laugh, half as long. She hasn't got the long one yet, so she can't have the half.
Margin note — Ceren, Ep. 2 script, p. 11, underneath
Found N.'s note on MY page. Is she helping me or grading me?
(Below, in Nesrin's pencil:) Both. At your age it's the same thing.
SMS — Ceren to Nesrin, 28 March, 01:12
Ceren: I took the ferry to Karaköy and back this evening and laughed into my scarf the whole way. A man gave me his seat because he thought I was crying. I don't think it's in the breath. I think she's laughing at something and I don't know what it is. You do. I'm not asking you to give it to me. I know what it costs you. I'm only saying I know it's there.
(Read 01:15. No reply.)
Recording log — Haluk, 29 March
Ep 3, sc 2. Takes 1–31. T6 tea glass knocked over on desk, mic 2 fine, Ceren's script wet, pages 2–4. T14 sync good, laugh hollow. T22 Ceren cried after the take, not on mic. Selim left 18:40 to call the channel. N. stayed in booth 2 after, alone, light off, maybe twenty minutes. Did not record her. Wanted to.
SMS — Nesrin to Haluk, 29 March, 22:05
Nesrin: Did Selim call them?
Haluk: Tomorrow afternoon. He'll tell them you're available.
Nesrin: Am I?
Haluk: You tell me. You're the voice nobody's ever seen.
Nesrin: A taxi driver in Beşiktaş knew me once. 2009. I said “Kadıköy, please” and he turned all the way round and said “Luz?” He had to pull over. I've lived on that for seven years.
Haluk: Sounds like you'd like it to be eight.
Nesrin: I'd like to cry her father. I'd like to say her last line. It's four words. I've known what they'd be since 2004, because the writers always do that.
Haluk: What are they?
Nesrin: Not telling you. You'd put them in a log.
Haluk: I put everything in a log. It's how I know what happened.
(Read 22:31. No reply.)
Margin note — Nesrin, Ep. 3 script (Ceren's copy), back of p. 2, the page the tea went on
Ceren —
It starts on the in-breath. Everyone laughs out. Luz laughs in. The actress in the original catches her breath before the laugh, so her mouth opens a beat early, and you have been filling that beat with sound. Don't. Fill it with air. One short sip, like you've been caught with your fingers in the börek tray.
Second: put the back of your tongue up against your soft palate and let two puffs go through the nose. Ha-hn, ha-hn. It isn't pretty. Pretty is what you've been doing.
Third: drop it. Let the jaw hang and let it fall into the chest, low, lower than you think a girl of nineteen should go. That is the part that made the letters come.
Then the part I never told Haluk. She stops before she's finished. Watch the picture: her mouth is still open and the sound is already gone. In 2002 I didn't know why the actress did that, so I decided. Luz stops laughing because she has remembered something she is going to lose. Every time. Fourteen years. Her sister, the farm, the fiancé, her father.
So before each laugh, choose the thing. Don't tell anyone what it is, not Selim, not your mother. Laugh until you remember it, then stop.
The first year, mine was my mother's kitchen on Moda Caddesi, which had been sold. This year it was this.
You'll need your own. Take 1 is yours tomorrow morning. I'll be at the desk on the cracked stool and I won't move my mouth.
Episode 40, last line. Four words. Say them however you like.
— N.
Recording log — Haluk, 30 March, 10:52
Ep 3, sc 2, Luz laugh. Take 1: CLEAN. In-breath on the open mouth. Two through the nose. Drop to chest. Stops two frames before mouth close. Sync on the cut. No patch, no edit.
Selim: “Print.” Then went out to cancel his call to the channel.
No ferry horn. Window shut for once.
Ceren didn't say what she was thinking of. Didn't ask.
N. at desk, stool 1 (the good one). Tea untouched. Mouth closed the whole take. Afterwards she picked up the Ep 3 script, turned to sc 4, and said, “Eleven more. Go.”
Ep 3, sc 2, T1 archived as LUZ_LAUGH_REF_2016. Old reference LUZ_LAUGH_REF_2002 (N. Aydemir) kept in the same folder. Not deleting.
