1960 series lip sync

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

I've noticed something rather strange. The Japanese episodes have HORRIBLE lip sync! You don't have to understand the language to tell that the voice isn't in sync with the lips of the characters. OTHO, the English dubbed episodes generally have rather GOOD lip sync, even though they were in a different language with different phrase lengths! Did Ladd pay attention to this detail? OR was the transfer from film to DVD for the Japanese episodes done in a very slipshod manor? (Guess you'd have to view the original 16mm prints to know how good the studio did on lip sync).

[Little Brown Fox]

I'm absolutely certain that the sync was terrible; there are instances where a character is speaking, but there mouths don't move at all. It's possibly a byproduct of cheap animation. The English version was okay, as far as keeping everything in sync goes. This is probably because that is what they were going for; they made an effort to sync it properly. Although, IMO this makes the English dubs of this and a lot of other anime kind of sound bad. In this case, they talk way too fast in an effort to keep the syncing just right. Granted, it's far from perfect, but the animation itself doesn't really allow for much. Some dubs have the opposite problem of being kind of slow...

[jeffbert]

I believe the original audio was added to the existing films, as this is depicted in the 53rd episode. It may be that they might have altered the dialogue after the films were made. Thus, when adding the dialogue, they simply could not match all the mouth movements. Ladd & co. may have run the films to see how to best dub the dialogue to fit the mouth openings, then actually dub the films.

[ASTROBUDDY]

Since they know it is just an illusion, the Japanese don't really care about lip synching. It's only in the US that a big deal is made about lip synching. While lip synching or dubbing is done in almost every country in the world, it is done with varying results. For example only in the US was the lip synching on Chinese martial arts films of the seventies the target of ridicule. Where as every where else it is known that the film is made in another language and dubbed into the language of the particular country where it is being shown.
Of course in the US, dubbing was done by professional actors who took pains to make sure the lip synching was accurate. Take for example the Japanese Kaiju eiga of the sixties which have an amazing amount of "good dubbing" when released in the US because the dubbing was done by US based companies that hired professional voice actors; usually with some radio experience as opposed to Asian films of the seventies where the companies making the films in Asia hired anybody who could speak English and not necessarily experienced actors.

I

[AprilSeven]

I've noticed the dialogue and "mouth action" don't match - but the other sounds are completely in sync, so I determined that the dialogue was added afterwards, and, as Astrobuddy points out - apparently this mis-match is not considered a short coming by the Japanese (I don't particularly like it though).

I noticed as a kid that sometimes the dialogue on the original 60's anime (American dub) seemed a bit strained or stilted to fit the mouth movements (in the first episode Astro cries "Oh Faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaather!" and it struck me as very very odd. Now I understand what was going on: Billie Lou Watt was sustaining his line to make sense with the action of the cartoon).

[Earthshine]

If I remember correctly the way that the Japanese animate is a little different from our means. Over there they actually animate first and more or less slap audio over it because they dub at some vague time after it was animated. They don't traditionally try to match the flaps (the mouth movement) with the dub audio. In America usually they try to animate around their dub making it seamless, and when animation is imported they more or less write dialog to match the flaps that are already there in a cleaver haiku.

Interesting differences.

[Little Brown Fox]

Oh I remember that part; I hated that bit.

Now, as for the animation, I'm not sure how much has changed since then, but the synchronization usually tends to be a lot better in anime than in this early example. However, it's still animated before it is dubbed. It is animated per the script, I think, though, so the actors/actresses at least have a grounds to go on. It doesn't sound as bad in Japanese as it does in most English dubs, but that could be because I don't exactly hear a lot of Japanese in my day-to-day life...

[MrsEclipse]

I like how the US and Japan essentially do it backwards from each other.

I remember reading a book about Disney animation that was made around the time "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" was released (half the book was just talking about the animation techniques of that one movie.) One thing it had in the section about making Disney movies in general were examples of sketches that one of the lead animators (probably Mark Henn) made of the voice actor Barrie Ingham (who played Basil of Baker Street) while he was in the recording booth performing his lines for "The Great Mouse Detective." Those sketches were later used to animate the character Basil in the movie.

On the other hand, when Studio Ghibli was making "Grave of the Fireflies" around the same time, they ran into a unique problem with the character Setsuko, who was played by a little girl. They couldn't find a little girl who could dub lines in after the way professional adult actors could, so they recorded her lines first and animated around them. The animators had so much trouble with doing it that way that they showed her mouth as little as possible when she was talking.

[jeffbert]

I recall something about a Japanese giant creature movie being dubbed into English. There was a J word that had no English lip-sync equivalent, so, they made the guy say some nonsense gibberish like 'bananarama.' Too bad I cannot remember where I heard it.

[Little Brown Fox]

... "Bananarama", you say. That is an excellent word.