Dubbing
Post-production process used in filmmaking and video production / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:
Can you list the top facts and stats about Dubbing?
Summarize this article for a 10 year old
Dubbing (re-recording and mixing) is a post-production process used in filmmaking and video production, often in concert with sound design, in which additional or supplementary recordings (doubles) are lip-synced and "mixed" with original production sound to create the finished soundtrack.
This article may be too long to read and navigate comfortably. When this tag was added, its readable prose size was 17,000 words. (February 2018) |
The process usually takes place on a dub stage. After sound editors edit and prepare all the necessary tracks—dialogue, automated dialogue replacement (ADR), effects, Foley, and music—the dubbing mixers proceed to balance all of the elements and record the finished soundtrack. Dubbing is sometimes confused with ADR,[further explanation needed] also known as "additional dialogue replacement",[clarification needed][1][2][3] "automated dialogue recording" and "looping",[4][5] in which the original actors re-record and synchronize audio segments.
Outside the film industry, the term "dubbing" commonly refers to the replacement of the actor's voices with those of different performers speaking another language, which is called "revoicing" in the film industry.[1][further explanation needed] The term "dubbing" is only used when talking about replacing a previous voice, usually in another language. When a voice is created from scratch for animations, the term "original voice" is always used because, in some cases, these media are partially finished before the voice is implemented. The voice work would still be part of the creation process, thus being considered the official voice.
Films, videos, and sometimes video games are often dubbed into the local language of a foreign market. In foreign distribution, dubbing is common in theatrically released films, television films, television series, cartoons, anime and mexican telenovelas.[6]
In many countries dubbing was adopted, at least in part, for political reasons. In authoritarian states such as Fascist Italy and Francoist Spain, dubbing could be used to enforce particular ideological agendas, excising negative references to the nation and its leaders and promoting standardised national languages at the expense of local dialects and minority languages. In post-Nazi Germany, dubbing was used to downplay events in the country's recent past, as in the case of the dub of Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious, where the Nazi organisation upon which the film's plot centres was changed to a drug smuggling enterprise.[7] First post-WWII movie dub was Konstantin Zaslonov (1949) dubbed from Russian to the Czech language.[8] In Western Europe after World War II, dubbing was attractive to many film producers as it helped to enable co-production between companies in different countries, in turn allowing them to pool resources and benefit from financial support from multiple governments. Use of dubbing meant that multi-national casts could be assembled and were able to use their preferred language for their performances, with appropriate post-production dubs being carried out before distributing versions of the film in the appropriate language for each territory.[7]
ADR/post-sync
Automated dialogue replacement (ADR) is the process of re-recording dialogue by the original actor (or a replacement actor) after the filming process to improve audio quality or make changes to the originally scripted dialog. In the early days of talkies, a loop of film would be cut and spliced together for each of the scenes that needed to be rerecorded, then one-by-one the loops would be loaded onto a projector. For each scene the loop would be played over and over while the voice actor performed the lines trying to synchronize them to the filmed performance. This was known as "looping" or a "looping session". Loading and reloading the film loops while the talent and recording crew stood by was a tedious process. Later, video tape and then digital technology replaced the film loops and the process became known as automated dialogue replacement (ADR).[10][11]
In conventional film production, a production sound mixer records dialogue during filming. During post-production, a supervising sound editor, or ADR supervisor, reviews all of the dialogue in the film and decides which lines must be re-recorded. ADR is recorded during an ADR session, which takes place in a specialized sound studio. Multiple takes are recorded and the most suitable take becomes the final version, or portions of multiple takes may be edited together.[12] The ADR process does not always take place in a post-production studio. The process may be recorded on location, with mobile equipment. ADR can also be recorded without showing the actor the image they must match, but by having them listen to the performance, since some actors[who?] believe that watching themselves act can degrade subsequent performances. The director may be present during ADR, or alternatively, they may leave it up to a trusted sound editor, an ADR specialist, and the performers.
As of 2020,[update] the automated process includes sophisticated techniques including automatically displaying lines on-screen for the talent, automated cues, shifting the audio track for accurate synchronization, and time-fitting algorithms for stretching or compressing portions of a spoken line. There is even software that can sort out spoken words from ambient sounds in the original filmed soundtrack and detect the peaks of the dialog and automatically time-fit the new dubbed performance to the original to create perfect synchronization.[13]
Sometimes, an actor other than the original actor is used during ADR. One famous example is the Star Wars character Darth Vader, portrayed by David Prowse; in post-production, James Earl Jones dubbed the voice of Vader.[14] In India, the process is simply known as "dubbing", while in the UK, it is also called "post-synchronization" or "post-sync". The insertion of voice actor performances for animation, such as computer generated imagery or animated cartoons, is often referred to as ADR although it generally does not replace existing dialogue.
The ADR process may be used to:
- remove extraneous sounds such as production equipment noise, traffic, wind, or other undesirable sounds from the environment
- change the original lines recorded on set to clarify context
- improve diction or modify an accent
- improve comedic timing or dramatic timing
- correct technical issues with synchronization
- use a studio-quality singing performance or provide a voice-double for actors who are poor vocalists
- add or remove content for legal purposes (such as removing an unauthorized trademarked name)
- add or remove a product placement
- correct a misspoken line not caught during filming.
- replace "foul language" for TV broadcasts of the media or if the scene in question has a young actor involved.
Other examples include:
- Jean Hagen provided Debbie Reynolds' voice in two scenes of Singin' in the Rain (1952). Ironically, the film's story has Reynolds' character, Kathy Seldon, dubbing the voice for Hagen's character, Lina Lamont, due to Lina's grating voice and strong New York accent. Hagen used her own normal melodious voice to portray Kathy dubbing for Lina. The film, which takes place in Hollywood as talking pictures are taking over from silent films, also portrays another character, Cosmo Brown, played by Donald O'Connor, as inventing the idea of using one actor to provide the voice for another.
- Marni Nixon provided the singing voice for the character Eliza Doolittle, otherwise played by Audrey Hepburn, in the 1964 musical film My Fair Lady. Nixon was also the singing voices for Deborah Kerr in The King and I and Natalie Wood in West Side Story, among many others.
- Ray Park, who acted as Darth Maul from Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, had his voice dubbed over by Peter Serafinowicz
- Frenchmen Philippe Noiret and Jacques Perrin, who were dubbed into Italian for Cinema Paradiso
- Austrian bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger, dubbed for Hercules in New York
- Argentine boxer Carlos Monzón, dubbed by a professional actor for the lead in the drama La Mary
- Gert Fröbe, who played Auric Goldfinger in the James Bond film Goldfinger, dubbed by Michael Collins
- George Lazenby's James Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, dubbed for a portion of the film by George Baker, since Bond was undercover and impersonating Baker's own character.
- Andie MacDowell's Jane, in Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, who was dubbed by Glenn Close
- Tom Hardy, who portrayed Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, re-dubbed half of his own lines for ease of viewer comprehension
- Harvey Keitel was dubbed by Roy Dotrice in post production for Saturn 3
- Dave Coulier dubbed replacement of swear words for Richard Pryor in multiple TV versions of his movies
- Doug Jones was dubbed by Laurence Fishburne in post production for Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
Rythmo band
An alternative method to dubbing, called "rythmo band" (or "lip-sync band"), has historically been used in Canada and France.[citation needed] It provides a more precise guide[further explanation needed] for the actors, directors, and technicians, and can be used to complement the traditional ADR method. The "band" is actually a clear 35 mm film leader on which the dialogue is hand-written in India ink, together with numerous additional indications for the actor—including laughs, cries, length of syllables, mouth sounds, breaths, and mouth openings and closings. The rythmo band is projected in the studio and scrolls in perfect synchronization with the picture.[citation needed]
Studio time is used more efficiently, since with the aid of scrolling text, picture, and audio cues, actors can read more lines per hour than with ADR alone (only picture and audio). With ADR, actors can average 10–12 lines per hour, while rythmo band can facilitate the reading of 35-50 lines per hour.[15]
However, the preparation of a rythmo band is a time-consuming process involving a series of specialists organized in a production line. This has prevented the technique from being more widely adopted, but software emulations of rythmo band technology overcome the disadvantages of the traditional rythmo band process and significantly reduce the time needed to prepare a dubbing session.[citation needed]
Translation process
For dubs into a language other than the original language, the dubbing process includes the following tasks:
- Translation
- Dialog writing:
- Take segmentation
- Insertion of dubbing symbols
- Dialogue writing and the emulation of natural discourse
- Lip-sync
Sometimes the translator performs all five tasks. In other cases, the translator just submits a rough translation and a dialogue writer does the rest. However, the language expertise of translator and dialog writing is different; translators must be proficient in the source language, while dialog writers must be proficient in the target language.
Dialog writing
The dialogue writer's role is to make the translation sound natural in the target language, and to make the translation sound like a credible dialogue instead of merely a translated text.[16]
Another task of dialogue writers is to check whether a translation matches an on-screen character's mouth movements or not, by reading aloud simultaneously with the character. The dialogue writer often stays in the recording setting with the actors or the voice talents, to ensure that the dialogue is being spoken in the way that it was written to be, and to avoid any ambiguity in the way the dialogue is to be read (focusing on emphasis, intonation, pronunciation, articulation, pronouncing foreign words correctly, etc.). The overall goal is to make sure the script creates the illusion of authenticity of the spoken language. A successful localization product is one that feels like the original character is speaking the target language. Therefore, in the localization process, the position of the dialogue writing or song writing is extremely important.