palettes for colorful speech

March 31, 2010 8:35 AM

I need short, generic readings designed to model the diction, cadence, and inflection (and to a smaller extent the demeanor/character) of the speaker so that I can record demo clips to use in my voice-over portfolio.

My favorite example of what I'm looking for is the paragraph that Tom Cruise made Phillip Seymour Hoffman read on MI:III so that the nuances of English could be captured sufficiently to parrot his entire verbal palate at will digitally.

I've also seen others, but the remarkably non-intuitive nature of google is smiling its black-toothed grin hard at me this morning.

Essentially, I'm looking for the spoken version of "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet" (text used as filler for web templates and other places where the shape, font, and placement of the text is what's important, not the content).

I'm interested in all sorts of examples: short and long, light and somber, straight and animated-- the more the better, as I'm looking to show some flexibility as well. thanks, hive

posted by herbplarfegan to Writing & Language (3 answers total)

Best answer: I think what you want is "Arthur the Rat." It is the quick brown fox of the phonemes in American English. The project was an outgrowth of the Dictionary of American Regional English. There's also Comma Gets a Cure, The Rainbow Passage, The Grandfather Passage, and The North Wind and the Sun.

I hope you're not sweating bullets over this.
posted by adipocere at 9:22 AM on March 31, 2010 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: :) for the things I haven't got to yet. thanks
posted by herbplarfegan at 10:47 AM on March 31, 2010

Smething like this?
posted by aqsakal at 12:22 AM on April 1, 2010