Lip synching

This week I’ve been reworking Hello Tokyo for a presentation that I’m giving later this month at Tokyo Here and Now, the twice-a-year orientation program hosted by the Tokyo American Club. It was high time for a Hello Tokyo update as a few things have changed since the original version.
And now that I’ve got a few more years of Final Cut Pro experience under my belt (Hello Tokyo was my first project after I switched from Premiere to FCP) , I can fix some of the problems that thwarted me. But one thing I can’t do is reshoot the footage. So I decided to re-record sections of the audio in the studio and see if I can’t improve it that way.
Have you ever tried to lip synch to yourself? It’s harder than it looks. Not only it is a challenge to watch your lips move and say the same thing again, but after you’re recorded the dialogue in the studio, you lose all the background sounds. No more noisy traffic, wind, or restaurant plate-clattering. The result sounds a little thin.
So I have to do some foley work to put back the sounds I got rid of and to make the voice fit into its setting. At least this time, I can control the background noises and make them quieter than in the original shot.
So that you can see and hear what I mean about synching and foley, here is a short clip showing three uncompleted versions of the same segment of Hello Tokyo.
ADR & Foley Example 2.7 MB 25″ MP4