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Lip sync

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Lip sync (short for lip synchronization) is a technical term for matching lip movements with voice. The term refers both to a technique often used during musical performances and the production of film and TV programmes, and to the problem of maintaining video and audio signals synchronized during post-production and transmission. It is also used to match lip movements of animated characters (including computer facial animation). The British term for lip synching songs is miming.

Lip synching songs

Professional artists usually lip sync while recording music videos. The technique of recording video clips consists of recording a film to pre-recorded music, so artists have to lip-sync to their songs (and often imitate playing musical instruments as well). Regarding new techniques in recording music videos, artists sometimes move their lips to music playing at different speed, or even backwards, to make unusual effects in the final clip.

It is also common for singers to lip sync on live television, especially when making short guest appearances in chat shows, where neither the time available or the size of the studio makes it possible to rehearse or do a live performance with musicians. However, in some of these types of programmes the singer will actually sing "live", with only the music and backing vocals being pre-recorded.

Sometimes artists lip sync in public concerts as well, especially when doing physically straining dance numbers. The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York often features popular singers on floats who lip sync. This practice was strongly criticized, until it was understood that the floats are too small to accommodate a singer's back-up band and sound system. The technique can, however, also be used fraudulently, to hide the fact that the artists actually are very poor singers. The big 1990 Milli Vanilli scandal is probably the most famous case.

Lip synching songs is also used as a form of musical pantomime, in which a performer moves his/her lips to the words of a recording done by someone else, creating the illusion of the performer singing in the recorded singer's voice. For some this is a popular hobby, which in the United States reached its greatest popularity in the 1980s, hitting its peak with such television game shows as Puttin' On The Hits and Lip Service.

In Bollywood, often songs are mimed, when the actors cannot sing.

Lip synching films

In film production lip synching is often part of the post-production phase. Most film today contains scenes where the dialogue has been re-recorded afterwards, lip synching is the technique used when animated characters speak, and lip synching is essential when films are dubbed into other languages.

ADR

See ADR

Animation

The other is the art of making a character appear to speak in a pre-recorded track of dialogue. The lip sync technique to make an animated character appear to speak involves figuring out the timings of the speech (breakdown) as well as the actual animating of the lips/mouth to match the dialogue track. The earliest examples of lip-sync in animation were attempted by Max Fleischer in his 1926 short My Old Kentucky Home. The technique continues to this day, with animated films and television shows such as Shrek, Lilo & Stitch, and The Simpsons using lip-synching to make their artificial characters talk. Lip synching is also used in comedies such as This Hour Has 22 Minutes and political satire, changing totally or just partially the original wording. It has been used in conjunction with translation of films from one language to another, for example, Spirited Away. Lip synching can be a very difficult issue in translating foreign works to a domestic release, as a simple translation of the lines often leaves overrun or underrun of high dialog to mouth movements.

Language dubbing

Quality film dubbing requires that the dialogue is first translated is such a way that the words used can match the lip movements of the actor. However, this is often impossible to achieve if you want the translation to stay true to the original dialogue. Very good lip synch of dubbing is also a very lengthy and expensive process. Poor lip synching in dubbing is a very common theme in films spoofing other films.

As an unusually extreme reaction to poorly done dubbing, Saparmurat Niyazov, the president of Turkmenistan, issued a ban on lip synching in his country in August 2005.

Lip synching video games

Early video games did not feature prominent use of voice, mainly being text-based. At most, games featured some generic jaw or mouth movement to convey a communication process in addition to text. However, as games become more advanced, lip sync and voice acting has become a major focus of many games.

Role-playing games

Lip sync is a minor focus in role-playing games. Because of the sheer amount of information conveyed through the game, the majority of communication is done through the use of scrolling text. Most RPGs rely solely on text, while some games display inanimate portraits to provide a better sense of who is speaking. Some games make use of some voice acting, such as Grandia II, but due to simple character models, there is no mouth movement to simulate speech. RPGs are still largely based on text, with the rare use of lip sync and voice files being reserved for full motion video cutscenes.

Strategy games

Unlike RPGs, strategy games make extensive use of sound files to create an immersive battle environment. Most games simply played a recorded audio track on cue with some games providing inanimate portraits to accompany the respective voice. StarCraft used full motion video character portraits with several generic speaking animations that did not synchronise with the lines spoken in the game. The game did, however, make extensive use of recorded speech to convey the game's plot, with the speaking animations providing a good idea of the flow of the conversation. Warcraft III used fully rendered 3D models to animate speech with generic mouth movements, both as character portraits as well as the in-game units. Like the FMV portraits, the 3D models did not synchronise with actual spoken text, while in-game models tended to simulate speech by moving their heads and arms rather than using actual lip synchronisation. Similarly, the game Codename Panzers uses camera angles and hand movements to simulate speech, as the characters have no actual mouth movement.

First-person shooters

Out of all the gaming genres, first-person shooters have placed the most emphasis on lip sync. Due increasingly detailed character models requiring animation, game developers assign many resources to create realistic lip synchronisation with the many lines of speech used in most FPS games. Early 3D models used basic up-and-down jaw movements to simulate speech. As technology progressed, mouth movements began to closely resemble real human speech movements. Medal of Honor: Frontline dedicated a development team to lip sync alone, producing the most accurate lip synchronisation for games. Since then, games like Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault and Half-Life 2 have made use of coding that dynamically simulates mouth movements to produce sounds as if they were spoken by a live person, resulting in astoundingly life-like characters. Gamers who create their own videos using character models with no lip movements, such as the helmeted Master Chief in Halo, improvise lip movements by moving the characters' arms, bodies and making a bobbing movement with the head.

Transmission synchronization

An example of a lip synchronization problem is the case in which television video and audio signals are transported via different facilities (e.g., a geosynchronous satellite radio link and a landline) that have significantly different delay times, respectively. In such cases it is necessary to delay the audio electronically to allow for the difference in propagation times.

Lip synching in the headlines

  • In 2004, singer Ashlee Simpson appeared on Saturday Night Live in a promotional visit. She was scheduled to sing two songs from her album Autobiography. However, when beginning to sing the album's title track, another song began playing in the background, and it was revealed that she was either lip-synching or using a vocal backing track.

Singers that have been caught lip-synching

Although lip syncing is often considered wrong, it is generally accepted in high profile acts such as those of Jennifer Lopez, Britney Spears, Beyonce Knowles and others who have to keep up with huge dance numbers and live stage action. Generally, instances of this nature are more accepted than when artists are caught when performing with little stage action, as was the case with Ashlee Simpson.

See also

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