The coach's tasks may include researching real-world voices with an ear to regional, social or idiosyncratic patterns, curating primary source recordings for the actor's exploration, providing guidance and feedback during the actor's vocal design process (sometimes with input from directors or writers), running lines and monitoring vocal performance whether on set or in post (film/TV/commercials), during recording sessions (voiceovers), or at runs and previews (stage).
Sometimes dialect elements are in place primarily to add texture to character or to the world, but occasionally authenticity is also flagged as a concern by a production.
In such cases, the dialect coach will be tasked with monitoring the vocal transformation as it might be experienced by a native speaker in the audience.
Coaches may also be consulted by members of other departments including, for on-camera productions, writing, post, graphics, props, camera scenic and even wardrobe (for instance, when language elements appear on costumes).
), to coach non-actor public speakers in presence and delivery, and to support singers, for instance, with diction challenges and in balancing tone and articulation in an unfamiliar language.
Many practitioners believe that such exercises reduce the likelihood of vocal strain, most especially during expression of high intensity emotion outdoors or in a large performing venue in the absence of electronic amplification (e.g., microphones and a PA system).
On a film or television production, dialect coaches are typically hired by the line producer during pre-production to begin preparing cast far in advance of the first day of principal photography.
Later, the coach may be brought back for dubbing or to pick up new lines during the post-production process, sometimes via a feed from a remote studio when the actors are no-longer available in person.
Coaching typically takes place throughout the rehearsal process, but especially before the actors begin memorizing their lines and again after the show is loaded into the performance space.
In Australia and New Zealand, dialect coaches who are employed on a film or theatre set are covered under the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance.
Dialect coaches are not unionized for live performances in Canada, the Republic of Ireland, South Africa, the UK, or the US.
Due to budget constraints, producers of student films and low-budget stage plays, showcase theater and slimly financed independent films and web series may avoid hiring a dialect coach, and instead substitute the services of a low-paid or volunteer native speaker model in hopes that the actors will be able to learn mimetically, retain the accent and act in accent without expert guidance or monitoring.
In other cases, actors may attempt to self-study the dialect using commercially available training materials or web-based voice archives[7][8][9] which host native-speaker recordings of oral histories or interviews or other scripted speech.
[10] Many such archives also provide native-speaker recordings of phonemically balanced narrative passages, especially Comma Gets a Cure,[11] which is structured around the lexical sets of English and other phonological patterns of potential interest to the student of dialect.