About how the meanings of these terms change in various areas of scoring. Their properties change, and we will prove it! Read on:
- Voiceover in video and voiceover in audiobooks;
- Synchronization in cinema and infographics;
- Lip-sync in animation and in Tik-Tok;
- Film dubbing and dubbing of a webinar or an interview.
Amplification. We use this ambiguous term as a description of how the meaning of some professional terms changes depending on their use in different areas. Thus, the same term acquires many meanings, increases its significance due to its application in many areas. Moreover, the «Amplification» of a professional term brings more clarity, because encourages you to look at the term through the prism of the sphere in which it is used.
We sublimate the theses, which we will further reveal in detail in the context of the amplification of the terms indicated in the title. We use the term «Amplification» itself in the context of distribution, movement, use in another area, in particular in the voicing of commercial, marketing content in the corporate sector and in others.
So here are the main points:
- The sequence “voiceover, sync, lip-sync, dubbing” in this order is given to understand that the amount of work is increasing.
- Voice-over, synchro, lip-sync and dubbing - voiceover methods. Applicable not only in video, as it seems out of habit.
- The scope of application determines the interpretation of the voicing method.
1. Scope of work in voiceover, synchronous dubbing, lip-sync, dubbing
Voiceover
- The voice sounds without a rigid binding to anything, against the background of something. A minimum amount of work is required in this method.
Synchronization
- The voice sounds synchronously with a slight delay. The editor may need to correct the text before voice acting to ensure synchronism. The announcer will need to control the pace of the reading and at the editing stage there will be more work for the editor while working to achieve good synchronization.
Lip-sync (by type of incomplete dubbing)
- The voice sounds stuck to the beginning and end of phrases. In lip-sync, there will be noticeable discrepancies between the voice and facial expressions. Moreover, the fewer discrepancies there are, the better the lip-sync will be and the closer the sound will be to the dubbed one. In voicing the facial expressions of a drawn face (cartoons, animation), lip-sync is putting the sound of the voice into the facial expressions of the character.
The specialist corrects the text to match the voice. The announcer controls every phrase. The sound engineer synchronizes all phrases, thereby ensuring that the beginning and end of phrases match. It is in this context that we use the term «Lip sinc», which is most commonly used in dubbing.
Dubbing
- The voice sounds synchronously in the maximum amount of spoken text, i.e. the maximum possible lip-sync is made, which synchronizes the voice with the facial expressions of the beginning and end of phrases, as well as with facial expressions within phrases. First, the specialist corrects the text. And then the announcer has the opportunity to pronounce phrases with duplication, and the sound engineer synchronizes all the remarks with maximum accuracy.
The scope of work varies depending on the area of use.
2. Applying voiceover, sync, lip-sync and dubbing techniques
Initially, off-screen, synchro, lip-sync and dubbing are used in cinema. However, the universality of terms allows them to be amplified into other areas. Along with this, the methods behind each of the terms can be transformed and acquire additional properties. For example:
Voice-over in cinema simply means the voice of the announcer as a layer of speech, sounding in the background of the action in the frame. And in the audiobook-performance, a narrative reading in a more relaxed style between dialogue lines will be indicated in a voice-over voice. In an audiobook with dialogue, the voice-over will mean both the narration from the author and the thoughts of the character.
Lest anyone doubt the importance of the voice-over (due to the use of the description that it is "just the voice of the announcer as a layer of speech"), let's take as an example the legendary film "Seventeen Moments of Spring" and the legendary "just the voice of the announcer as a layer of speech "- the voice of Yefim Kopelyan.
Voice-over that penetrates the very heart!
Sync in cinema means simultaneous voicing in Russian against the background of foreign phrases (and vice versa). And in an infographic presentation of a company, it would mean synchronization with graphics and animation. Moreover, video infographics use synchronous audio design.
Lip-sync in cinema synchronizes phrases in length with deletion or strong muting of the original speech. And in animation - synchronization with the drawn facial expressions of the character.
It is worth adding a little more information about lip-sync. «Lip-sync» is the creation of voice acting and its synchronization with the voice in an existing video. And if we say:
«- There is and is very widely used another option, such as creating a video with adjusting facial expressions to a recorded voice»
And you will immediately understand what we are talking about, you just have to give a couple of examples:
- Creation of a music video for a song, when the singer is filmed in the video and the video is edited so that the singer's facial expressions are synchronized with the words in the song.
And the same use, which migrated from the musical to the entertainment, humorous sphere, for example, clips in Tik-Tok, when the character in the frame moves his lips in sync to some famous song, a phrase. Also lip-sync, but here it is not the sound that is built into the facial expressions, but vice versa - the facial expressions are pulled onto the sound.
Dubbing in the cinema is the complete invisibility of dubbing. And in a webinar or interview, dubbing is sometimes necessary to correct poor-quality sound or to disguise incorrectly pronounced words, this is especially easy to do when the fragment with the wrong word did not get into the frame.
Dubbing is often done because of one or two corrected words, when you need to pronounce a different name of the product, the name of the company. And, if the facial expressions at the moment of pronouncing the phrase that needs to be changed is initially in the frame, in order to avoid the conflict of facial expressions with the new phrasing, it is possible to cover up the facial expressions for a moment by overlaying a graphic image of the company name.
One way or another, the use of the term «Dubbing» means the complete invisibility of the duplication carried out. Of course, there are always limits beyond which it is impossible to go in the implementation of ideal dubbing, but apart from perfectly prepared text and pronunciation by voice, the quality of dubbing (dubbing masking) is also determined by editing. Namely, the use of authentically sounding synchronous sounds and background noises («Foley») and the processing of the voice itself in order to fit it into the acoustic picture, giving it the same properties of the voice that are heard when listening to the original (mutedness, brightness, reverberation, position of the voice in space, etc.).
Depending on the scope of application, interpretations can also be transformed.
3. Interpretations of the terms voice-over, sync, lipsync, dubbing
In fact, the amplification of the mentioned methods of voice acting in various areas entails the inevitable variability of interpretations. And this often comes from the customers themselves. We will adapt to the customers by preliminary conceptual agreement through additional negotiations in order to synchronize in terminology.
For example, it is easy to meet a customer with a request for simultaneous voice-over based on the provided literal translation, made by a non-native speaker of the target language. If the translator did not take into account certain features, then the existing discrepancy between languages in duration leads to a dance of tempo in the dubbing, and even to a conflict of meaning: the voice-over speech will conflict with the action shown.
Or, what impression will be made by a video in which the character, who originally spoke a foreign speech, speaks in Russian, but the text is not only not adapted for dubbing, it was not even edited like a lip-sync with phrase synchronization! See this example:
But the customer said, and continues to say that this is dubbing. After all, the original voice is removed and a new text is pronounced.
Here it is still worth stopping in listing examples with a negative bias and saying the following:
There is nothing critical in the fact that the customer describes the order as he sees and understands it. By and large, an ideal understanding of the term is not particularly important, especially in the context of the fact that, depending on the scope, the interpretation is transformed. The main thing is that a potential misunderstanding, or even a complete misunderstanding, does not lead to the creation of low-quality, low-grade content.
We solve this problem in the following way:
- You need to understand exactly what is meant. You need to do this by discussing the problem in simple words in a reformulated form.
- It is necessary to pay attention to critical nuances and find solutions.
- The customer is free to either agree with the comments and make a compromise decision, or insist on strict adherence to the task, despite the likelihood of obtaining a different result, in contrast to what it could potentially be.