A Question

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cigar joe

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Hi I'm not deaf but I have an interesting question that I though some of you may know the answer to.

Thanks in advance for your time and effort.

This is a topic that seems to regularly be posted about on film boards about foreign films.

Most Italian films were shot MOS (without sound) all sound was added postproduction. All the cast of international actors spoke their lines in their own languages and later looped their voices for the language version release they were part of. So the English language actors looped their own voices to their characters while English voice actors looped their voices to the Italian, Spanish , and German actors.

When I was a kid watching Sergio Leone's "For A Few Dollars More" for the first time I never was bothered by the dubbing of the foreign actors (Clint Eastwood & Lee Van Cleef were the only two English speaking actors), I accepted easily the grunts the groans the crazed laughter the facial ticks that masked the foreign actors original language dialogs. It never bothered me, the only time I actually notice the dubbing in Italian Westerns is where when the voice doesn't seem to match the actor convincingly or when the dialog ends and the lips continue to move, or vise-versa.

The Italians perfected dubbing to a high art it is considered very very good.

On the other hand every once in a while someone posts on a film board that the dubbing is terrible and the lip movements don't match the words of spoken dialog.

It really bugs them to the point that they cannot enjoy the film at times at all.

I say to myself when I read their posts "what are these guys some kind of natural born lip readers?" I don't consciously pay attention to lip movements, if somebody asked me what are the specific lip movements to the word say "continental" I couldn't tell you unless I looked in a mirror while I said it.

So what is up with this? Are some people subconsciously natural born lip readers? Or is it "Something to do with Deafness" or the hearing impaired or the future potential of being hearing impaired in the future (family history), that causes some people to rely upon subconsciously visual clues in addition to the spoken word?

So the question is is this something some people are genticly disposed to?

And can it be an indicator of future hearing problems.

again thanks

cj
 
Mod Note: Since the thread is related to dubbed movies, I've moved it here.
 
I understand what you mean.

I don't think it's the lip-reading skills, but the fact that the actors keep moving their mouths when they hear the actual talking stop. That's something that's quite obvious, not just something that only a naturally skilled lip-reader can do.

Even I can see that obviously when I watched those old Godzilla movies as a kid.

In the old days where technology was not advanced enough, they couldn't dub the movies well enough to make it look like their mouths were moving at the same rate as the talking. Now, they do a better job (while some movies still come out of sync from time to time).

Even my hearing friends (who can't read lips at all) can notice these things in the old foreign films.
 
Thats the difference, with Japanese films the dubbing was very noticeable because the actors mouths would keep moving after the spoken word was done, or the spoken word would start before the the actors moved their mouths.

With Italian fims they shot even Italian films without sound, they even cast certain actors for their faces only and cast voice actors to provide a voice to the face. Example Claudia Cardinale was born in Tunisa so she had a different accent and they always cast a voice actor to provide her voice in Itlatian films.

What I'm getting at is the Italians were very good at dubbing films. They would even change dialog to match what the lip movements were. So its curious as to why some people really notice the dubbing enough to not be able to enjoy the film because of it.
 
cigar joe said:
Thats the difference, with Japanese films the dubbing was very noticeable because the actors mouths would keep moving after the spoken word was done, or the spoken word would start before the the actors moved their mouths.

With Italian fims they shot even Italian films without sound, they even cast certain actors for their faces only and cast voice actors to provide a voice to the face. Example Claudia Cardinale was born in Tunisa so she had a different accent and they always cast a voice actor to provide her voice in Itlatian films.

What I'm getting at is the Italians were very good at dubbing films. They would even change dialog to match what the lip movements were. So its curious as to why some people really notice the dubbing enough to not be able to enjoy the film because of it.
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Yeah, the spoken time between America and Japan are different. Sometimes, it takes less time for English to be spoken than for Japanese to be spoken... and vice versa.

That's why I don't like some dubbed Japanese movies because they will remove some words so that they can fit the English script to match the Japanese time. :(
 
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