the same in poland ... not all- tv thatre was always live-sync but regular series or films were all dubbed /it's not about money cause it was time of 'socialist prosperity' and our tv was not that different than western/- it must be easier to edit i suppose

Just a guess from the little work I've done in audio for video, it may have been that the sets or locations were just too noisy to do live sync sound and so it was all added in a hurry in post production. I've got a friend who might know, I'll send him an email and check.

Yeah, I'm not convinced its 100% an issue of budgets.

location sound is a bitch.. specialy back in the day..

For a show like ultraman, the costumes and all that sort of perclude live sound, don't they?

Also, If you look at a lot of TV from before the nineties, almost no one has a shadow. I think the sound thing was a aesthetic choice to make things seem superclean. superfl--

Yeah, but when they started doing dramas with video in the 80s, everything's live sound. If it's an aesthetic choice - ie, we don't LIKE live sound - why bring it in later? They must have had some idea that it seemed "cheap."

my film-studies friend concurs on the "it's easier" line of thinking, and that in a certain era production values and budgets skyrocketed...

but I would suggest that people began to expect more reality, and wanted something more like the movies. Again, according to film friend, movies airing on television was not always the norm. When they started being broadcast, suddenly you could compare and contrast by flipping back and forth between channels and the flat-looking, flat-sounding production starts to feel confining and unpleasant.

As we talked about in an earlier post, McLuhan called TV a "cool" medium in the early 60s because it wasn't quite cinematic - B&W, grainy, small screen, bad reception.

I get the sense that the studio system in the US gave television producers huge places to film "outside" without having to deal with random noise. So it may look like "Dennis the Menace" is on location in a neighborhood, but it probably actually a soundset.

In Japan - where space is very limited and there are no huge stuiods - most recording was done "in the field," which could explain the gravitation towards dubbing. I pass by at least one film crew a week in my neighborhood or Shibuya.

Is sound easier to match with video than film? I'm assuming, yes.

One more idea is that the Japanese were used to watching dubbed American TV shows and never felt especially strange about dubbing to start with. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in Northern Europe, American TV shows have subtitles, and the daily exposure to English has helped those populations learn to speak the language.

in Scandinavia they have subtitles, but am not sure it was that easy, their languages must be somehow similar to English, maybe in structure? ... in Yugoslavia foreign stuff was also subtitled but i am not sure it increased their foreign languages knowledge ... and in Germany they dub everything, even Bjork giving an interview ;], still they seem to be good in English ...

in Germany they dub everything, even Bjork giving an interview ;], still they seem to be good in English ...

Good counterpoint. I think Scandanavian and Dutch English are the best though. Do the Dutch dub?

marxy: Toei, Toho and a few others had large backlots used for set building and outdoors shots. The film companies did/still do lots of the actual production work for the TV stations. If you have access to the DVD box set of the "Shogun" miniseries, there is a great making of feature which is very educational about the process of filming in Japan in the late 70s.

Actually, before digital editing, film was easier to sound match.

Nothing strange here. Location noises, the need for having consistent voices between actors and their stunt doubles, lack of voice training in "actors" selected for their martial arts backgrounds, movie production traditions and more all concur to separate visuals and sounds in the making of a movie.

both Dutch and Scandinavian televisions do subtitles ;]

Yeah, Chris B has the right drift.

In a nutshell it's because it's because there are far more advantages to do it that way over the disadvantage of the results looking dubbed.

I don't think many here realize just how much exterior work has been dubbed for decades and still is though it just happens to be a lot better than Ultraman

For the most part it's not because it's easy to edit to given the era that's right. Far more it's a case of getting an unmarred take while paying a whole crew

Not only is a location generally noisy with planes, trains, cars and strong bursts of wind but add kids and pretty inexperienced talent into the mix and you can see how efficient it is for the director to talk the actors through the scene while rolling

I understand feature films were frequentlywithout sync sound in Japan through the 60s even in the studio. You have to go back to the early? 1930s in the rest of the world when dubbing was impossible (coincidentally Japan was holding out against sound as late as the mid 30s when the rest of the world had transitioned, the US had transitioned by and large before 1930)

TV can be either a couple video cameras in a studio or shot pretty much like film. Video editing wasn't very practical until the early 70s or even possible in the early 60s unless you did something not very practical like transfered it to film and edited the film. Portable broadcast TV equipment wasn't widely available until the early 70s and the results then weren't up to much. With few exceptions of setting up a remote broadcast studio of a lengthy event TV News broadcast 16mm film shot and developed earlier that day with the hosts shot live on video introducing it even in the 70s.

>Actually, before digital editing, film was easier to sound match.

Not true, it only made realtime non-linear editing far more feasible (you know, take out that 3 seconds in the middle). The NASA moon landings made video remote production and editing immensely more viable and professional. The early 70s saw the trickle down of this technology. So much for Tang being the only thing of value from the space race.

But then again the heart of the matter was Ultraman was shot on film

>but I would suggest that people began to expect more reality, and wanted something more like the movies.

Yes, you have something though it doesn't apply so much to Ultraman. It does have to do with the acceptance to the technically compromised being more convincing because of decades of watching news & especially combat camerawork. The Nouvelle Vague and Cinema Verite reinforced these notions with a degree of acceptability (and frequently used rough handheld material being symbolic of a more immediate and unvarnished reality).

> location sound is a bitch.. specialy back in the day..

Yes and it still is - except for small radio mics.

> subtitles

for what it's worth some parts of the world have more acceptance than others. Another factor is the high or lowbrow aspect of the content

Have you considered that the ADR - Automat(ic)/(ed) Dialog Replacement - just happens to be better on expensive (and newer) productions

Some things to consider:

Usable location sound - you know filmed outside a specially built studio set - can be the most time and film consuming aspect of the shooting schedule - unless of course you don't really care about unprofessional results and viewers complaining they can't hear the dialog

Most professional films have all their exterior sound replaced. They record the actors voices on the location merely as a guide for ADR (dubbing in the original language)

Many "Golden" era Hollywood productions had their outdoor scenes shot on sound-stages especially when close-up dialog was needed... note the term sound-stage. Of course lighting was another factor to the decision

In Japan shooting without sound even on stages was apparently the norm.

Feature films have the budget to keep doing ADR until it works.

It's also stipulated in many international film distribution contracts that the producers must deliver finished M & E tracks for foreign sales. That means a track of music and a track of isolated dialog-less sound effects that can be delivered to a local dubbing house. The catch of course is what about scenes with both dialog and on-set sound effects at the same time. The answer is the producers have the editors and budget on hand to (re) create all the sound, have the actors in for ADR and have the foley department do all the footsteps and incidental sounds.

There are numerous anecdotes about the process. A fascinating though perhaps pathetic one I saw was on the "extras" section of the "Men in Black 2" DVD. Apparently they tested all the dialog jokes they shot with an audience. The ones that didn't get enough laughs were replaced with new jokes that fit the mouth movements of the actors. You could see several punch-lines where 4 or so different variations were tested by Will Smith who surely saw how the extra studio sessions would potentially make him more spot on. Conversely it also shows the lack of confidence in the writing and maybe fear of turning out an unlikable film like "Wild Wild West"

Fellini and Welles were both known to often dub original language performances with different actors voices. Welles also did his notorious late 1940s "Macbeth" where he recorded the dialog in radio drama style in an audio studio and then used playback on the set. Then the studio who specialized in B Westerns didn't like his theatrical Scotch accents and had him replace most of the dialog again after the shoot, though that wasn't very hard to do. Probably the first case of an entire film available with pre and post dubbing. P.S. You can obtain "Road Warrior" dubbed into American if you wish.

Another interesting factoid is that most anime is animated without a guide track of the voice actor. The voice actor comes in and matches the lip movements of the already animated sequences. I understand "Akira" was the first anime where the actors were pre-recorded and the animation was made to match the voice actors. Coincidence or tradition?

nick
who won awards for film sound in the 80s

Can anybody tell me where I can find listing of the Japanese TV dramas produced in the late 60s and 70s?