Simon Roper
Director | Writer | Dialect coach
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Film Directing
Simon's films aim to explore different kinds of human experience, transporting the viewer into somebody else's life through naturalistic portrayals of historical and modern settings.
Like the others at Lipmouth, Simon also often acts in projects, taking a similarly naturalistic approach.
Current influences include Ken Loach, Mike Leigh, Natasha Kermani, Benoit Delhomme and Gary Oldman.
Simon Roper and I worked on a feature film called ‘The Dreadful’ in autumn of 2024 in Cornwall. Simply put Simon is one of the most intelligent, nuanced and original accent and dialect coaches I have had the fortune of working with.
For the movie Simon constructed an entirely original accent based around how English speakers in the 15th Century may have sounded. He spent time with me teaching me and working alongside me to get the voice and dialect consistent and truthful as possible. This was a very specific task that I don’t know of being done in any other movie and even if so…. Incredibly rarely.
Simon is clearly uniquely placed for this work having studied phonics and dialect throughout the centuries but I would gladly come to him for other ‘present day’ dialect instruction.
The man is a wonder and a joy to work with and I have the utmost respect and admiration for him.
He became a good friend on the film and we will continue to stay in touch.
Kit Harington
Dialect Coaching
Simon has a keen interest in phonetics and an MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience, with a focus on speech perception.
He is interested in both modern and historical accents, and has worked to incorporate historical dialect work into both high-profile features and short films. He works closely with actors to modify their pronunciation, keeping the specifics of the character in mind.
YouTube
Simon runs a YouTube channel where he makes educational videos spanning historical linguistics, phonetics, anthropology and filmmaking.
With around 240,000 subscribers, he aims to make information-dense research more accessible to viewers who may have a casual interest in these topics.
