lip synching in movie musicals — Page 2

Sync is my business, and things can look quite off when there's only a one frame discrepancy. That's 1/24th of a second. What looks even worse is if the rhythm is slightly off - that is, if one syllable is a little long and the next is a little short. A song that's even-tempoed and without room for much variation would be much easier to lip sync than one with lots of rubato. Miming in close up, rather than really singing along, almost always looks bad because of the obvious lack of vibration in the neck and jaw. Even if you're not conscious of it, it will feel wrong. However, the difficulty with singing along is that the actor is going to somewhat drown out the track he's singing along with, making it harder to keep in sync.

It's not easy, though some people are exceptionally good at it. (Maybe you're one of those, Rath.) With the tools we have today, it's also possible to somewhat adjust the pre-recorded track to fit the picture better. I know that was done pretty extensively with Chicago. There are limits, of course, and you have to be a pretty good editor to do it successfully.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm 99% sure Garland did "The Man Who Got Away" live for A Star is Born. I recall watching a documentary on the "making of" where they talked about the boom mike being just inches above her head and how the camera operator had to really work hard to be precise and tight with the shot so that no boom and shadow appeared as she gave that extraordinary (and very animated) performance.

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That makes sense, Chloe. Luckily for me, the music was being played on the set, not in an earpiece.

And Margo, I do believe you're correct.

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Margo --- I'm confused about that one too. I know that in the three different visual versions of "The Man That Got Away," Judy is performing to the exact same pre-record. If you play them back to back, you can tell that this is true. (Aside from the fact that they TELL you she is.)

But I also vaguely remember hearing about a mic boom as well... so I'm confused. Perhaps that was for the dialogue? Perhaps they also tried it live, just in case? Who knows.

The three versions of this song that are on the DVD (two "alts" and the final) were all using the same exact pre-recorded playback, though.

EDIT: Rath --- as far as riffs in pre-records today... you raise an interesting point. Modern song styles with all their "vocal gymnastics" would be much more difficult to match, to be sure. One more reason to shout out, "Just sing the damn notes!" One of my favorite battle cries with excessive riffers.

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Updated On: 12/21/05 at 10:17 AM

re: Sound of Music --- It was all pre-records. Interesting that the playback had to be BLASTED when they were filming "Do Re Mi" due to traffic noises, street sounds, etc. It was the only way they could hear it. But everyone from shop owners to the actors themselves were complaining about it.

Also... the kids singing was "enhanced." They actually had 3 extra singers to sound more rich and full... including Charmian Carr's kid sister Darlene, who was a terrific "working singer." She dubs the high note for Kurt on "Goodbye!" during So Long, Farewell.

And Capt. Von Trapp's singing was dubbed entirely. So was the Mother Superior. Although both COULD sing, it was decided to replace their original voices with "better" ones.

Oh, and the legendary Marni Nixon was ON CAMERA this time as one of the nuns. "When I'm with her I'm confused..." etc. Glad to see her and hear her all at once.

(Okay, why do I know all this stuff?????? I don't have an answer for that one.)

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Updated On: 12/21/05 at 10:42 AM

Weren't they all lip-syncing to old recordings in PFH? It's been a long time since I've seen that.

Speaking of lip-syncing... I would look for a lot of the "improvisational" (aka riff-a-palooza) singing in the movie Dreamgirls to be done live. Way too difficult to match otherwise. And the emotionally draining "And I'm Telling You..." That would be almost IMPOSSIBLE to do (and also yield terrible results) if they pre-recorded it. I would look for a live performance of that, as well.

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Music Videos are a whole different deal. They are self-contained single songs... not a whole film where you have to match everything up cohesively.

There is a lot more "technically" that can undermine a lip-synced performance. Like a mismatched room ambiance. I always hate it when someone is talking in a small room with a bit of "white noise" and suddenly it sounds like they're singing in Carnegie Hall with tons of reverb or echo. Even if their sync is perfect... it's going to look and feel very wrong and phony.

But if everything can be matched perfectly (or at least enough so we all believe it)... there is nothing wrong with lip-syncing for film/videos.

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Updated On: 12/21/05 at 11:25 AM

This kind of matching is especially difficult, due to the differences in miking. The normal way to record singing nowadays is to mike it very close with a screen, using a studio type mike. Production sound is normally miked from two or three feet away (to avoid seeing the mike on screen), using a shotgun type mike to reduce ambient noise. Equalization during the mix can only do so much to reduce the difference in sound.

My ideal would be to record the singing more in the production mode. The soundtrack album would sound more "live" than we're used to, but it might be interesting.

The problem is it's mostly broadway singers who do bad lip synching...they're used to doing it live, so its akward for them