Lip Synching

Information about Lip Synching

Lip-sync or Lip-synch (short for lip synchronization) is a technical term for matching lip movements with voice. People often get this term mixed up with "lip singing." The term refers both to a technique often used during musical performances and the production of film and television programs, 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).

Lip-synching in music

Though lip-synching can be used to make it appear as though actors have musical ability (e.g., The Partridge Family) or to misattribute vocals (e.g. Milli Vanilli), it is more often used by recording artists to create a particular effect, to enable them to perform live dance numbers, or to cover for illness or other deficiencies during live performance. Sometimes lip-synched performances are forced by television for short guest appearances, as it requires less time for rehearsals and hugely simplifies the process of sound mixing.

Because the film track and music track are recorded separately during the creation of a music video, artists usually lip-synch to their songs and often imitate playing musical instruments as well. Artists also sometimes move their lips at a different speed from the track, or even backwards, to create an unusual effect in the final clip.

Artists often lip-synch during strenuous dance numbers in both live and recorded performances, due to lung capacity being needed for physical activity (both at once would require incredibly trained lungs). They may also lip-synch in situations in which their back-up bands and sound systems cannot be accommodated, such as the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade which features popular singers lip-synching while riding floats.

Some singers habitually lip-synch during live performance, both concert and televised. Others sing the lead part over a complete recording or over just pre-recorded music and backing vocals. Sometimes when this is done, the live vocals are less audible than the backing track. Some groups lip-synch supporting vocal parts or shared parts in order to maintain vocal harmony or to ensure balance of volume among several singers.

Some artists switch between live singing and lip-synching during performance, particularly during songs which require them to hit particularly high or low notes. Lip-synching these notes ensures that they will not be out of tune and that the artist will not strain his voice too much during an arduous concert. Once the difficult portion of the song has passed, the artist may continue to lip-synch or may resume singing live.

Some artists may choose to lip-synch during live performance because of stage fright or perceptions of inadequacy. Unlike studio recording, live performance provides only one chance to sing each song correctly. An artist may worry that his/her voice is not strong enough, that it will sound noticeably different from recorded versions, or that he will hit a wrong note.

Other artists have chosen to lip-synch quite obviously for comedic value. During a short, pre-recorded performance, such as a guest appearance on a TV show, some artists purposely include Easter eggs like swapping instruments between band members or playing their instruments in obviously erroneous ways.

The band Oasis has done this on several occasions. Often lead guitarist Noel Gallagher replaces his brother Liam at the microphone stand, impersonating him, emphasizing his mannerisms, and playing the tambourine, while Liam stands in the background pretending to play the guitar.

The New York-based improv group Improv Everywhere cooperated with Ben Folds in an elaborate prank to open Folds' show in November 2006. A member of the troupe walked in to the piano, introduced as Ben Folds, and lip-synched and pretend to play along with Folds' (actual) band to a prerecorded Ben Folds song (his cover of The Cure's "In Between Days"). Since the lighting intentionally obscured the stand-in's face, the audience naturally assumed Folds himself was playing live. About a minute or so into the performance, the backing track began to skip - as a damaged compact disc would - and the band halted the performance. The band pretended to start the same song again (miming to the same track), before the song cut out completely. At around this point, as the stand-in looks below the piano for any disconnected cables, the gag is revealed: the lighting comes up to reveal the stand-in is not Folds, "security guards" arrive to carry the man offstage, the actual Folds comes onstage to punch the man, and the actual live performance proceeds. Video of the incident on YouTube

During Polish group Kanał Audytywny’s performance on Kuba Wojewódzki's talk-show (video), the trumpeter held his trumpet backwards and band members wore helmets labeled PLAYBACK, the Polish name for lip-synched performance.

On at least one occasion, John Lennon of The Beatles intentionally revealed that the group was lip-synching; during the performance, he scratched his face, licked his lips, mimed incorrect words, and began dancing while playing his instrument. One such instance, as seen on Ready Steady Go in 1964, can be seen here.

A video recording of the band Iron Maiden exists, where the band members constantly switched instruments and goofied around the stage during a lip-synched performance on German TV.

The practice of synching also occurs in musical theater, for much the same purpose as for musicians. A production may include a mix of lip-synched and live musical numbers. In long-running shows, this may be done to help protect the performer's voice from strain and damage, as well as to maintain a high caliber of production. A notable example of using lip-synching as a special effect includes performances of The Phantom of the Opera, where swing actors in the same costume as the lead actors, to give the illusion of the characters moving around the stage with some mystery.

Non-professionals often use lip-synching as a form of musical pantomime in which the performer moves his lips to a musical recording done by someone else. This form of lip-synching is often performed by drag queens and, more recently, drag kings.

In the United States, this hobby reached its peak during the 1980s, when several game shows, such as Puttin' on the Hits and Lip Service, were created.

Saparmurat Niyazov, the former president of Turkmenistan, issued a ban on lip-synching in his country in August 2005.

Lip-synching in 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

Automated dialogue replacement (ADR) is a film sound technique involving the re-recording of dialogue after photography. It is called post-synchronisation (post-sync) in the UK.

Animation

The other is the art of making a character appear to speak in a prerecorded 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 in such a way that the words used can match the lip movements of the actor. This is often impossible to achieve if the translation is to stay true to the original dialogue. Elaborate lip-synch of dubbing is also a very lengthy and expensive process. Many Japanese anime are dubbed to be put on American television (Naruto, Bleach, Samurai Champloo, etc.).

Lip-synching in 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. Some newer RPGs, however, use full voice overs. These games are typically for computers or next gen systems - such as the Xbox 360 - and include such games as Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. In these full voice over games, lip sync is crucial.

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 synchronize 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 synchronize with actual spoken text, while in-game models tended to simulate speech by moving their heads and arms rather than using actual lip synchronization. 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

FPS is a genre that generally places much more emphasis on graphical display, mainly due to the camera almost always being very close to character models. Due to increasingly detailed character models requiring animation, FPS developers assign many resources to create realistic lip synchronization 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. dedicated a development team to lip sync alone, producing the most accurate lip synchronization for games at that time. Since then, games like 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. To date, the most accurate lip synching in any video game was displayed in a video featuring the new lip synching technology used in the future co-op FPS Team Fortress 2. Gamers who create their own videos using character models with no lip movements, such as the helmeted Master Chief from Halo, improvise lip movements by moving the characters' arms, bodies and making a bobbing movement with the head (see Red vs. Blue).

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 earlier of the two signals electronically to allow for the difference in propagation times. See also audio video sync and audio synchronizer.

Lip sync issues have become a serious problem for the television industry world wide. Lip sync problems are not only annoying, but can lead to subconscious viewer stress which in turn leads to viewer dislike of the television program they are watching. See the report "Effects of Audio-Video Asynchrony on Viewer's Memory, Evaluation of Content and Detection Ability" by Reeves and Voelker (a non-copyrighted PDF is available at [1] Television industry standards organizations have become involved in setting standards for lip sync errors. See for example ATSC Document IS-191 ([2]

Lip-synching in the headlines

In 1998 on Top of the Pops, the duo All About Eve were supposed to perform their single "Martha's Harbour." However due to a technical problem, the television audience could hear the song but the band couldn't. Lead singer Julianne Regan remained silent on a stool on stage while her backing guitarist did not play. An unseen stagehand apparently prompted them that something was wrong in time to mime along to the second verse.
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.
In 2007, the singer 50 Cent was busted lip synching at the BET Awards, while performing in front of a large audience according to the news.com.au website. News.com.au also reported witnesses saying, that when the record did eventually re-cue, 50 Cent did all that he could to salvage his performance, but it was far too late at that point.
In 2007, Britney Spears lip-synced through a performance of her recent single, Gimme More, in a performance that was supposed to be a come-back which resulted in a universally panned event.