Filming for Easy Dub: Difference between revisions

{{quote|'''Extra''': "Bad news. It seems our animation budget has been seriously depleted by excessive robot battles! To correct for it, we've given strict orders to eliminate all lip-synching from the remainder of this movie!"

[...]

 

Maybe the characters are having a heartfelt conversation while looking out over the horizon. Maybe they're monologuing in a corner of a darkened room in an over the shoulder kind of camera shot, or at a [[Dutch Angle]].

 

See also [[No Mouth]].

 

== [[Advertising]] ==

* In an online musical commercial for Burger King's breakfast menu, you are prompted to enter your name. During the commercial, the song will have your name dubbed into the lyrics, but every time it is sung, a breakfast sandwich will conveniently be covering the mouth of the main singer.

* Advertisements for lotteries require this trope: since the jackpot increases as it it remains unclaimed, the new dollar amount must be re-dubbed to show it changed.

 

* ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'' was ''in''famous for this kind of cost cutting. One example had characters with their backs to the camera while in an elevator... without even any dialogue or music.

** In fact, one can pick the precise moment that their budget began to run out. At one point, during a briefing, one of the techies holds a clipboard up to cover his mouth. After that point, if the sequence isn't going all-out with the animation, it'll be this.

* ''[[.hack]]'' occasionally had people talking slightly out of shot.

** "Occasionally?" .Hack//Sign could be renamed as .Hack//Radio Drama and Accompanying Panorama; no one would notice.

* Characters in ''[[Noir]]'' sometimes spoke while holding their handguns in front of their mouths.

** They take the whole thing [[Up to Eleven|a step further]]: when the characters know someone is trying to lip-read their conversation, they pretend to say things while having a completely different conversation in their heads.

* The English dub of ''[[Area 88]]'' [[Lull Destruction|added brevity codes during combat that weren't present in the Japanese dub.]] This was possible because, during all the air combat sequences, pilots are wearing oxygen masks that cover their mouths.

* What's that, ''[[Death Note]]'' art team? It's time for a series of monologues? Time for close-ups on Light's magazine collection, L's food, Near's toys, Misa's Gothic junk, Mello's hands...

* ''Trail of [[The Pink Panther]]'' did this because [[Peter Sellers]] died before the film was finished. The first half is built around unused footage from ''[[The Pink Panther]] Strikes Again.'' The second half is mostly a [[Clip Show]]. And twice this trope is invoked with a new-footage stand-in (once in the very last scene) to connect the material.

** When Sellers was alive, this trope was used to switch between him and stuntmen.

** Don't forget ventriloquism.

** One character in particular had long stretches of saying only "eee-ooo-eee-ooo-eee-ooo" when they ran out of material for her to say, but her mouth was still moving.

** ''Suitable for little''...ERROR...does not compute...does not compute...

*** It's not as stupid as it sounds, since in the Sixties age ratings didn't exist and it was common to take the entire family to see a movie, regardless of how appropriate or comprehensible it was for the children. A bit of kid-aimed fanservice might keep the things from screaming in boredom during the good bits.

** This is less jarring as Black does play guitar and we often see his hands during the remainder of the film.

** Earlier, ''[[Bill and Teds Excellent Adventure]]'' did the same thing with Rufus's amazing guitar solo at the end of the film.

* Every scene in the first ''[[Harry Potter (film)|Harry Potter]]'' film which mentioned the title stone by name was filmed once with the actors saying "Philosopher's Stone" and once with them saying "Sorcerer's Stone". When the trio goes to confront Hagrid about the stone, they say the stone's name after his door has obscured their mouths.

 

* In the Fifth Doctor ''[[Doctor Who]]'' story ''Black Orchid'', there is a character named Latoni who is a South American Indian complete with a large plate massively extending his lower lip. Despite this, he is somehow able to converse in perfectly normal BBC English... but only long shots or when shot from behind.

** The non-talking variety happened in ''Time and the Rani''. When the Doctor regenerated from his sixth form to his seventh ([[The Nth Doctor]]), Colin Baker (the sixth Doctor) refused to film his last scene of falling to the ground and regenerating due to the unpleasant circumstances of his being let go by [[The BBC]]. Therefore, Sylvester McCoy, the seventh Doctor, was forced to don a blonde curly wig and lie face down, before turning over just as the regeneration effects conveniently obscure his facial features with a bright glowing light. The truth is it doesn't even work: if you look closely you can see that it is Sylvester McCoy under the glowy effect, and you can see the line between the wig and his head.

** A similar situation led to Quinn and Colin having to awkwardly keep their heads down until they reached the portal in the fifth season premiere of ''[[Sliders]]''. Quinn's voice was also noticeably not his own, even though all he says is "Go! Go!" Then a portal accident leads to Colin's disappearance and Quinn's getting [[The Nth Doctor]] and a [[Suspiciously Similar Substitute]] at once.

** As [[SF Debris]] points out, this is at least partly because TV screens in the sixties were much smaller, had much poorer reception and resolution and you were only seeing the episode once (no VCR or DVD). It was much easier to get away with this sort of thing back then.

* This was used in ''[[Red Dwarf]]'' when Lister's love interest Kochanski (Clare Grogan) was in a scene but had no dialogue, so "somehow it was forgotten that she would need to ''be'' there" [DVD commentary]. Her role was filled by the sound editor in a big hat.

** And even then, you could often see that the stunt people looked significantly different from the characters. The worst example would probably be when Buffy fought the crazy, murderous lunchlady. Not only did the stunt double have a much thinner build than the overweight lunchlady, but the differences between actress and stunt double causes the audience to think one of them was a man.

* The old sitcom ''[[The Patty Duke Show]]'' had Patty Duke play a double role as "identical cousins". Whenever the two needed to interact, one was played by Ms. Duke, and the other by the back of a stand-in's head.

* ''[[The Drew Carey Show]]'' played with this for its contests where a winner wasn't chosen by the time of filming, even holding a baby in front of the cast's faces to name it. Once it was even parodied when Drew looked straight at the camera with a wide open mouth shot that was dubbed over.

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* A variation appears in ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'' 2. It's arguably present in the whole franchise, but the second was particularly bad. Long dialogue-based scenes have a tendency to take place on the "CODEC" screen, as talking heads. Justifiable in many cases; but when the characters are in the ''same room'' (apparently this method stops people from overhearing because it's all subvocal or some such), then you have a right to feel short-changed.

** The same series did this better and more artfully in ''[[Metal Gear Solid]] Portable Ops''. Thanks to the limitations of the PSP, the cutscenes were bare-bones semi-animated images. But the art was in the unorthodox scratchy rendering of the series comic book; the animation perfectly suited the bleak-but-exciting feel; and the [[Voice Actors]], liberated from having to [[Lip Lock]], gave an exceptionally good performance.

** Given that you ''can'' see his mouth in most shots (he's not wearing a mask, his collar is just turned up), it isn't as strongly abused as most people think.

 

** Subverted in the case of Homestar himself: you can see his oversized underbite moving even when he's facing away. So in the occasional scene where's ''he's'' typing at the computer, they have to animate two sets of mouths.

* While plenty of anime use this trick a lot, it's doubly noticeable in [[The Abridged Series]] versions, in which many editors will specifically choose to use shots with no mouth visible whenever possible to avoid having to re-sync lip flaps. [[Dragon Ball Abridged|Of course, there are exceptions.]]

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

* In the making-of documentary for ''[[Wallace and Gromit|The Wrong Trousers]]'', Nick Park mentions how handy it is to have shots where characters are speaking from offscreen or are holding up a newspaper in front of their face or something.

* An episode of ''[[The Simpsons]]'' about Superbowl XXXIII had everyone cover their mouths with beer mugs as obviously as possible when mentioning the Falcons or Broncos by name, a nod to the animation being done long before it was known what teams would be playing. The gag is then extended to Bill Clinton's status as President (theoretically in contest at the time) and Hillary Clinton's status as his wife (also theoretically in contest at the time).

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Camera Tricks]]