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Could Square Re-Dub the "Final Fantasy" Movie?
Vegan Pagan asks: "A big part of the FF movie's appeal is how seamless it is, particularly the lip-synching. However, this movie has been synched only to English, and a traditional, audio-only, dub into other languages would ruin it. It seems that to entertain and sell to all audiences equally, Square must re-animate all of the characters' faces, and perhaps the rest of their bodies as well. But since they have already spent so much on this movie, can they afford to?" More thoughts on the question below, but I have to say...while some of you may have Episode 2 on the brain, this movie is something that I've been waiting on for a long time. I hope it's as good as it looks from the trailers.
I imagine, if Square has the money, time and desire, that they could also render a version in Japanese. I would guess that the dubbing is done using some manner of capturing the mouth movements on the voice actors faces, and then appling that data to the movement of their models. However, the issues of how they dub I think are secondary to the cost necessary in re-rendering those areas of the film for the other version. Would Square do something like this? It would be really cool if they did.
Actually, if i recall, that Square press release stated that they would never independently finance another film. That is, if someone puts up the dough, they'll put their SGI's to work. In this case, Square paid all the expenses and Sony serves just as a distributor.
First off, they don't render the scenes and then make the audio fit the animation. Instead they record all the dialog and fit the animation to that. This is because it is immensely more difficult to get all the timing right on the dialog than it is to have hundreds of animators sync up to a track they already have. There have been efforts to make mouths move automatically to the sound, but these are imprecise, and you still need an animator to sync up all the other actions. (facial movement, hand, body language, etc). So basically you're looking at redoing a good chunk of the movie from scratch (at least 75%) if you try to sync it to a new soundtrack. I can see it as a posibility 5-10 years from now though, if animation tools get lots better and rendering times go up quite a bit, and there's a huge demand for non-dubbed movies (still have to have lots of voice talent).
ahem, I'm from the netherlands, 99% of english TV/Movies we get here is subtitled and we love it that way, if they redub something to dutch it is crap cause of the lousy translations and because the voices never seem done right. And I don't know a fellow countrymen who doesn't speak another language. mostly english but if thats not the case german or french.
Pretty much no one dubs movies in Japan -- if you go there, at the theaters, every imported Hollywood movie is SUBTITLED. Why break the trend here?
I mean, it's not a blatant plug if you asked me, right?
I live in Hong Kong. I've seen the dub and the subtitles. The dub version is actually not bad. It's fine to watch. I actually enjoyed watching the English dub+English subtitles. You could tell that the first was done by an American who spoke Mandarin but the second by a Chinese person who spoke English. I guess my point is that *normally* I prefer subtitles, but there are some dubs out there that are worth watching. Also, it seems clear that the interpreter will be influence by his/her culture and that the person selected to do the translation will be picked based upon what the translation is for. In other words, if you want the dub to sound reasonable to an American you'll pick an American who speaks that language to do the interpretation. It will sound more grammatically correct, but will be missing some of the cultural nuances that the American did not understand. On the other hand, if you do the dub and have a native speaker of that language do it it may sound much less grammatically correct, but have enough information to understand (or guess at) some of those cultural nuances. In summary: One method has more information. The other method has less information, but more "order."
Dyslexic.
This comment is brought to you by the drug caffiene, and the number 5.
Are you sure that page isn't referring to the OVAs? (Armitage III was originally created as four episodes. Those are available in Japanese and English. Later they were edited into a single movie. The movie is only available in English.)
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100% pure freak
The worldwide film industry (and consumers) are already used to having English/American movies subtitled or dubbed and then released in foreign markets.
I doubt the movie would do as well if Square did the opposite: make a Japanese movie and then release it in the US.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
I believe this is the technology used on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien's" President Bush/Clinton bits.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
at issue;
the actual original actors are usually FAR more talented at vocal performance, than cheezy cheap ass foreign language actors used to "satisfy the euro and asian markets" - or vice versa; to break into the US market.
It's a bullet point on a brochure. The foreign language implementations are often just not as well-funded as the originals.
This is why the American Translation of Akira sucked eggs. The voice actors made me feel like I was watching a bad Scooby Doo or Flinstones episode.
When I watch the Japanese version with subtitles, I can read the script to get the meaning, but the japanese voices, which I do not understand, contain the original directed emotional content. The movie had MUCH more impact that way.
I believe that this problem could potentially be solved by better investment in the dubbing process, casting. Or, possibly, getting the ORIGINAL actors to say their lines in the foreign speech. (because maybe there's an American John Lithgow, but maybe a Japanese voice actor cannot be found that can match the way John Lithgow portrayed a given character) - in any case, even if you do it that way, it won't be the same, because no two performances from a given actor are going to be identical, especially when you throw a foreign language into the deal, because some phrases and jokes don't translate well, or the actor may not understand what's being said as well as a native speaker, so inflection and intonation won't be the same. But even that should be worked around as well.
My point is, just doing a cheapo dub just to get the asian or euro dollars is dishonest. It asks the foreign audience to pay the same 8 bucks for a product that simply doesn't work the way it would for an English-speaking audience, it's not of the same quality, and therefore, is NOT WORTH THE SAME TICKET PRICE.
If the studios want to charge the same amount of $ for tickets, they should put much more effort into the translation - and it cuts both ways, for foreign films going to the US.
Another example; Run Lola Run, (Lola Rennt), I rented the DVD, and I watched the first few minutes in English. Holy shit what a peice of crap! I then watched it in German with English Subtitles (luckily, I DO understand a little Deutsch) and the experience was MUCH better.
My message to foreign studios: If you want a better piece of the American film market, do a better job in the dubbing, and you'll totally kick Hollywood's ass.
Here's an exammple of how it was done right: Princess Mononoke. While it didn't to all that fabulous in the US market, it wasn't marketed as mainstream, it was an "art-film". And while the translation wasn't perfect, it was very well done. Let's have more of that, 'k?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
But rendering is the cost of re-doing it.
If my boss told me we were re-rendering a video instead of dubing it, I would tell him not on my render farm.
A lot of production time and money goes into the rendering side of the production.
The amount of extra money a specific version for a language would produce would not be why anyone would do it.
If somebody was crazy enough to do this, it would be for arts sake.
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
There was a programme on BBC2 the other day about Japanese culture, and they covered this. It said there was a certain "cool" factor about the Final Fantasy films being in English and subtitled.
Does Bumblebee Man speak English?
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Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
What about changing the dialog to fit the animation? It might not make as much sense, but with a little creativity and effort some humorous alternate versions could be made and it would still look cool...
Localization in CG movies. Just like when I choose a different language/locale on my X login screen and everything comes up in a different language, it would be great if they could program the movies to do it all fairly automatically.
Of course I understand that that would be horribly, horribly difficult. But it is a fun idea at least...
Posted from the wireless couch.
agreed, sub-titles in the theatre or on a wide-screen seem to be less of a problem that on my hmoe tube. I guess I need to splurge for a larger wide screen TV :)
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
may Ted Turner ROT in hell.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I'd like a new 50" HDTV but can't swing the cost, so I'll jst deal with blurry Crap. I agree with your estimation of TV resolution but it is amazing how I never noticed it until I saw an HDTV :)
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
may be the exception there :) It WAS a good movie, Star Wars was a movie 1st I think, Indiana
:)
Jones was the same way and I'll not EVEN touch MichaelAngelo and company
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
...that did NOT SUCK ???? I hope this one doesn't but I'll catch it on DVD.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Can you point to any trends, or figures, other then your own personal preferences to indicate why what you are saying might be true?
Given that
- Computing power doubles every 18 years
- Clips of movies like Shrek and Final Fantasy: The Spirit Within could be passed off as real to all but the most careful and scrutinizing observer
- You don't have to get the animation perfect, merely 'damned good'
- Every CG movie released tops the previous release by leaps and bounds
It is logical to assume that in five or ten years' timeI hope they never do get rid of live-acted movies, and I hope speech synthesis never evolves to the point where it too can replace the real thing. At the same time, however, Final Fantasy: Spirits Within would likely have been cost-prohibitive, or at least looked crappier, if they had used live-action instead of CG rendering.
Just my two bits
--DanMe. Most other Australian foriegn-film buffs. Overdubs are generally regarded as something that gets done for illiterate Americans . . . :)
Overdubs can interrupt the sound effects, get in the road of anyone who *can* understand the original dialogue, tend to paraphrase far more than subtitles (check the difference between the overdub and the "literal translation" of Pricess Mononoke), and the lack of lip-synching is incredibly annoying.
Go you big red fire engine!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
While it's essential if you want the audience to have some understanding of what's going on, it can be a bit of a PITA occasionally because you spend too much time concentrating on the titles rather than the action (such as action is in most operas).
Strangely enough, they also use the surtitle machine when operas are sung in English. I suppose it's because some people with partial hearing loss have trouble catching the diction of the singers sometimes.
Go you big red fire engine!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Whilst the trailer for FF had some truly fantastic animation, I thought the voice acting and script was a tad on the dodgy side (although the whole `fire in the hole' thing was nicely reminicent of CS).
:)
So I'd rather watch a Japanese dub with subtitles, lipsync or no-lipsync: I can justify any script weaknesses as too-literal translation and I'll have no clue as to the quality of the voice acting so I'll just assume it's good
The clients reiterated that it should be sync-ed to English. When we pointed out that this wouldn't the Japanese dialogue, they said "Of course, all high-quality animation has lip-sync that doesn't match the audio". At least in the mind of these clients, high-quality animation meant Disney animation, and they specifically wanted the lip-sync not to work 'correctly'.
There are many other instances of this; for instance doing animation at 24 fps instead of 60 fps and adding film grain to pristine animation.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
The movie could have been done in both languages at the same time. Actors for both language parts could have done their voices long ago - and the animation to match their voices could have been done twofold. I assume this was not done because reall this is making nearly a movie and a half at once. I dont know if I would put it past square to go to those lengths to make it successful however. I assume they have developed decent technologies to make mouth animations easier (maya has so many cool controls that could make it simple) that maybe it was done at the same time - and when they are rendered - differing frames are simply rendered twice. So synched voices in both languages are a definate possibility.
BTW I prefer subtitles, as do, I'm guessing, most of the rest of the population. Theres so much missing many times when it is dubbed.
--onyx--
The dialog will be munged and the closest sounding words will be used to synch with the lip movement but that doesn't matter anyway.
If "Jesus of Montreal" taught you anything (they were dubbing porno movies from English to French,) as long as the word sound believable, the lip synch doesn't matter that much.
The actors being digital doesn't make any difference. It might as well be Marylin Monroe (or Marylin Chambers) on the screen. You don't get a re-shoot. Just say the words in te right voice and it'll do.
Just don't get Hoss Cartwright's part spoken by a fouteen year old girl and you'll be okay.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
You know, I'm into retrocomputing as much as the next guy. I like to play the odd game of Chessmaster 2000 on my old 8086, but really, do you think that CGA's the best specification to use? It wasn't all that sharp.
It is true that CGI is less good and more expensive than most human actors - today. The first steam locomotives weren't as fast, pretty, or graceful as horses, either. That's the nature of emerging technologies. Even today, locomotives cost more than horses to the degree that any one individual uses them. With automation comes leverage. When you mechanize, making 10 of something does not cost 10 times as much as making the first one, and more people have access to the resource.
The time will come (in 2 years? five? ten?) when photorealistic CGI animation will look just as good as actors. Not that the public's apetite for actors will ever go away - just as movies and television didn't kill off the stage, CGI won't kill off acting. The superstars will still make $6 million per film. However, CGI will inevitably both take a chunk out of the middle of the market, and grow the market by making it possible (or just cheaper) to show things that live actors can't (ordinarily) do.
Whether an individual CGI costs more or less create than an actor (I'd guess it'll stabilize in the middle) is irrelevant, because the CGI will be able to go places the actor can't. Even to the point of something trivially simple like appearing in many feature films in one year. Even before taking into account the new things it makes possible, even for traditional roles the investment will be amortized over many more uses.
You won't have to imagine when the DVD comes out. I've heard they're doing an English dub for the rental market and inclusion on the disc. There was another computer-animated show with lipsynch that was redubbed for Japan, by the way. Mainframe's Transformers: Beast Wars had excellent lipsynch, but they didn't bother rerendering or anything when they redubbed for Japan. They just dubbed. (And for that matter, they even changed the gender of one of the characters, because female toys don't sell well in Japan!)
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Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Western-produced animated movies usually have the voices recorded first, long before any of the animation is ever done. (Disney's Atlantis, for instance, features a character voiced by the late Jim Varney, who died a whole year before the film's release date.) This gives the animators a baseline to work from, and also lets them sync lip movements in the animation precisely to the pre-recorded voices. How much trouble they take to get it exact depends on the budget of the animation; Disney movies obviously feature much better lipsync than Saturday morning cartoons.
(However, in most anime, the animation is done first, with a few mouth openings and closings done when a character would be talking, and they don't worry as much about lipsync. So most anime is "dubbed" into its original language.)
Unlike anime or regular animated films, lipsync in computer-animated films can be exact and precise enough that you could literally read the characters' lips, just as you might a live actor. Mainframe's Beast Wars and Reboot and others featured this sort of lipsync, done by feeding the pre-recorded audio tracks through a phonic recognition program that provides the mapping for the lip movements, if I recall correctly. (You might call it lipreading in reverse--"reading voice"--since it is getting the lip movements from the words, instead of the other way around.) One of the Mainframe folks once posted in the Transformers newsgroups that they were looking into ways to use that technology to aid the deaf, in fact.
If a TV series could afford to do that, do you really think that Square's 9-digit-budget blockbuster movie, touted as being the most hyperrealistic computer animation ever won't bother?
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Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
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Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Examples of the Japanese infatuation with English can be found at engrish.com. Be certain you're not drinking anything that could go down the wrong pipe, and that those within earshot are not bothered by hysterical laughter, before reading.
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Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Hate to burst your bubble, but it's not likely Jar-Jar is going to die. He exemplifies the same Campbellian archetype as Luke Skywalker from the first movie--the fool on a journey. When you think about that, it becomes likely that he will survive and mature through all three movies, and might even help facilitate delivering the young Luke Skywalker to his aunt and uncle on Tatooine.
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Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Oddly enough, the folks at Tritin Films--makers of some of the best-known Quake machinima on 'net--are going to fully-rendered animation for their new Quake: The Movie title--importing the models from the game into 3D Studio Max, "biping" them to add skeletons for more articulated movement, and creating a whole movie with them. And the trailer looks awesome.
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Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
The obvious solution is to render the whole movie in real-time, right in the projector! "Just-In-Time Rendering". JITR. Hey, that's catchy, maybe I should patent it...
Chelloveck
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Yeah, but look, an animated movie is always dubbed--that's just how animation is. It'll be dubbed in English and probably in Japanese too. It's just a question of whether the Japanese dubbing will be worse.
The idea of re-rendering for both languages is akin to having the actors deliver their performances twice, once for each language. But you don't have to hunt around for bilingual actors, because you don't lose any authenticity in using different actors for the two languages.
Exactly! The dubbing is what made all the Godzilla movies the comic successes that they were.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
3d facial animations, specifically voice animation, is basically controlled with morph targets that morph between the phenomes that make up the language (in our case, english). Synch the proper phenome morphs to the audio, and you've got a properly talking cg actor.
Recreate the mouth positions for phenomes for the new language, resynch the morphs to the new audio, and voila (after much rendering), you've got the newly synched movie. It's not as time consuming as one might think; it's very definitely doable.
see the topic
Not for a heck of a long time. The movie studios would have to send their own projectors out for every movie they make. It would be too costly to send out a little computer. Don't kid yourself, the majority of movies will always feature real people. We identify with movie stars, that's why there's shows like Entertainment Tonight on. Your housewives aren't going to get all excited about the new animated guy in the movie.
I guess what I mean is that in order for theaters to make the jump from today's projectors to a big, expensive computer system, is a reason. Maybe something like what Lucasfilm did to get people to go with DTS, where only theaters that conformed to the set standard could show the movie. This would be even more expensive of a switch, so I have my doubts that many theaters would switch equipment. I figure most theaters would just not show the CG movie.
I heard they spun off their effects department. They will be available for independent hire. Or, at least, that's what the article said
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InstantCool
I read an article awhile back that said Square apologized to it's investors more than doubling their $70million dollar budget. Square also went on to say that they would never make another film.
Although I haven't seen the movie yet, I really hate to have them say they'll never make another film before seeing the fruits of their labor. Hopefully legions of fans will show them the light.
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InstantCool
One of Square's new favorite tricks w/ the PS2 is to utilize a bit of the overkill proccessing power of the PS/2 and change the facial system depending on the vocals. Hence Bouncer and FF10 both have this feature. As to the re-rendering, nope. It is not unusual for these types of movies to get released in English and only in english. AIC, most recently, only release Armitage III movie in English.
yeah, it costs millions now... but not in a couple of years when it would be tremendously easier to create a CG actor. You also have to keep in mind that while todays skin, cloth, and hair shaders may look a bit rubbery and realistic, this is only the beginning. Final Fantasy the movie is the FIRST movie to even attempt to create a fully photorealistic CG movie. The attempts will only get better and better after that. But CG actors will never replace real actors because there is an actors voice behind the CG actor and real actors often add alot to the movies themselves. People go to see Austin Powers because Mike Myers is in it and it has his style of humor. People go to see Jim Carrey because they like Jim Carrey. CG actors can't add personal touches to the movie itself so CG actors wouldn't bring people into the theatres.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
yeah, it would be a very costly way for Square to proceed... had square rendered the movie in realtime on a GeForce2 card... but nope, it took them over 30 hours to render each frame. Hardly realtime and hardly cost effective to re-render since they've been rendering since the start of production 2 years ago.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
Of course they wouldn't re render the damn movie in other languages. Do you people have any idea what goes into an animation? It's not just a matter of re lip synching the movie, it's re-animating the whole thing! When you talk, you create gestures that go along with those words. Animators have to create those gestures based on every word said. During the production of Shrek, Mike Myers first started doing the voice-over with his regular voice. In the middle of production he decided to change to the scottish accent and the whole thing had to be re-animated costing Dreamworks millions of dollars. I doubt they would reanimate Final Fantasy considering they've already doubled their budget on the current American version.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
i'd rather see a dubbed film than subtitles - if the dubbing is well done.
as for the "original intent of the fimmaker", the wonderful art, the will of god, and so on... well, looking at the bottom of the screen for the entire movie will not make it all that much better, believe me.
dubbing looks strange when you are not used to it - hey, the lips are out if sync!. but after about 2 films, you won't notice anymore.
or "flying car teams" instead of motorcycle gang...
I understand the reasons that most people love the subtitled movies, but as a dyslexic I can tell you I don't really like watching a movie four or five times until I can remember the subtitles at a glance so I cna then watch the movie and follow along with what is going on. So for me give me dub any day of the week, just make sub an option so if I want to I can see just what they were saying in a particular scene. As to the lip-sync issue, I could really canre less after watching Jackie Chan movies and other poorly dubed movies for years I don't really notice it.
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thank you I will now return to my regularly scheduled lurking
__ Fast - Cheap - Good Pick any two
Several hundred words per minute, more likely... I read quicker than most, yet it still takes me more than a couple seconds for a page of a Michner novel...
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"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
...since the answer to this Ask Slashdot is a simple "They'll dub/sub, because they're not going to re-render the whole thing"...
As a fan of the Final Fantasy games, I'm extremely unimpressed with the bits I've seen and heard of the movie (rumors, finalfantasy.com trailers, etc.).
Final Fantasy is a franchise that has an almost unmatched recognition among console RPGamers. In a nutshell: color-coded mages, ninjas that can throw almost anything (9999 knife/spoon any one?), bare-handed martial artists that do more damage than the best-armed swordsmen, chocobos, moogles, Cid and his airship, espers, the concept of "pure/holy" spells (e.g. FFIV Pearl) and the "holy, yet evil" enemies that can't be damaged by them, etc. None of the games has ever taken place on Earth. These are what separate the FF series from every other Japanese console RPG. Which of these criteria does the movie match? Even the anime OAV series was in the true FF spirit, and that wasn't even produced by Sakaguchi Hironobu, while this movie is!
It looks to me like the movie is being treated as a showcase for what's possible in video-realistic CG with current technology, rather than an opportunity to expand the Final Fantasy mythos, or even just expose it to more people through the theater. It's as if it's being made by FF8 fans -- it's realistic and serious, but not fun. This is a shame, as the FF series has always (excepting FF8) featured great character design and in-game/cover art, not the photorealistically mundane designs in the movie trailers.
Bottom line, this movie is not traditional Final Fantasy. If it were released under a different name, die-hard FF fans would probably enjoy it more.
BTW, does it strike any one as odd that this page, linked from index.html (when viewed frameless), exists on the official site? Read that page with a frameless browser like Lynx...there's a link to some odd hentai FF site -- talk about fan service.
< tofuhead >
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It is still the dark of night.
Really? I thought "this chapter's finished" sounded kind of cool. And the Colonel's dialogue was pretty damned good.
Of course, the translation in the currently-being-released collected manga version actually does justice to Otomo.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Really? Based on my experience in the public school system, the average eighteen year old reads between a half and two words per second.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Not story-based:
Super Mario Brothers
Double Dragon
Story-based:
Final Fantasy
I rest my case.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Exactly! That's why Studio Ghibli consented to the redubbing of Mononoke Hime (Princess Mononoke), even though their distribution contract with Disney prohibits the omission or editing of a single cel of the film. The quote was something like "... all animation is dubbed, even into its source language."
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I don't know if a significant percentage of /.'ers have gone, but the New York City Opera has 'supertitles'. While the action is going on in badass, oldschool Italian or German, *BAM*! High above the stage (eye level for the cheap seats), Star Wars-blue titles translate the story. It was surprisingly not-distracting.
And besides, Final Fantasy will always remind me of opera houses. They'd better have opera... and chocobos... and Bahamut... and elemental crystals... and summoning sequences... and a mechanic named Cid... yeah.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Pre-rendered movies are on their way out...
Machinima, projected real-time via a backroom server (using datafiles d/l'd or streamed from the net) onto the screen by an HDTV projection system, will take their place - it is even possible that such movies might take over the roles conventional movies fill.
Square has shown the level of realism a computer generated movie can take on - but what happens when you can generate it real-time, rather than pre-rendered?
Sure, you still need the voice actors - but with speech synthesis rapidly becoming very realistic - I can imagine a time when voice acting will go away for these type movies, and that dubbing will be a thing of the past - voice synthesis would just use another data file, after all.
Would voice acting transition to "phoeneme" (sp?) acting?
It isn't here now (outside of amateur efforts), but when it hits - it will be like the transition from silent films to talkies...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Think about it - what would the movie studios like more than anything?
Um - how about talent they control - and that they don't have to pay?
Certainly, the tech isn't there today - I don't have any trends (actually, even Machinima hasn't caught on greatly) - I am envisioning something happening many years into the future - I am thinking around 25-50 years away, not next year, or five years from now.
The whole thing about it being real time is that it could be manipulated in real time for the market - instead of sending out a ton of reels, you send out data files, and the data would say how to move the mouth and such, voices, sound, etc - for whatever language you need for the market - no dubbing, reprinting, anything needed - just select the language and go.
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Although watching films in their original language is much more fun and convincing, I have to say that the dubbers for German do a pretty good job. To be honest, I don't really look at the movement of the lips and they have scriptwriters and professional actors to snyc with the body movement anyway. I don't know how crappy US dubbing is but in German it's not really disturbing.
Much worse for quality, though, are subtitles. Not only because they overlap some parts of the screen but also because they convey only a small percentage of the meaning. Think of IRCing with somebody. Why do you need all those emoticons? Right, because he/she can't hear the subtle differences in your voice that you use to express feelings and put some meaning into the sentence.
So while dubbbing is not perfect, it's definitely the most advanced technique, also because the dubbers nowadays work together with the film producers. Although it might be cool and technically possible to sync the lip movement with the characters in FF, I think it's hardly worth the trouble. If they developed a device so that it could be done easily in the future, I'd be absolutely for it but they are already late and I want to see that film soon.
from the to-stupid-for-words dept.
You Have Been Trolled, people, the real CommanderTaco, the owner of slashdot, has user ID #1. An imposter account is inherantly mistrustworthy, and should certainly not be moderated up as informative when a known imposter claims to have information from an unnamed, unsubstantiated source
Heh, Put the japanese text at the bottom and let them call it Amerimation!
Pretty much all of the film is rendered using the output straight from MTOR, not in layers. PRMan is really good with memory, so the gigabytes of gzipped geometry per frame don't cause a problem. The problem is the shaders, which form the inner loop of the REYES rendering architecture, which are written in an interpreted language. Rendering in layers would mean that you couldn't exploit occlusion culling and thus would have to do too much shading, which would blow your render time.
Having said that, it is possible that some shots were done in layers for compositing of 2D special effects. Shots without 2D special effects, however, were almost certainly done in one go.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
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I don't see the how this film really relates to the FF series, except in name of course. Where are the spikey haired guys with swords?
In any case, it looks good and I'll go see it.
well if they used enhanced CGA (aka tandy graphics) it could get a little sharper? :)
Need a Catering Connection
Another factor to prevent re-dubbing in Japanese is the "coolness factor" of English in Japan. Japanese people bend over backwards to use English, often with hilarious results. For example the Playstation game Parrappa the Rapper, though mostly aimed at the Japanese market, in the Japanese version features English songs with Japanese subtitles. Japanese pop songs are often peppered with English phrases, sometimes with wildly different pronunciations and meanings than we are used to, so a Japanese movie in English isn't much of a stretch. Think about the recent Disney decision to put Japanese into the US Princess Mononoke release, but the other direction, ten times stronger.
Two words: Clutch Cargo
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Did they re-render Toy Story or Shrek? If the seamless animation is a major part of the appeal, then I'll probably wait for it to come out in cable.
Go ahead and jump! Ten thousand lemmings can't all be wrong.
You are SO right! I was in poland for a few weeks once and ohmygoddes that "dubbing" (it's not even that...) is awful! And to think that most TV is stupid and low-quality in the first place....
You are the same decaying organic matter as the rest of us.
The reason they can't use something like that for Final Fantasy is the level of realism involved. There's a lot more to it than just a re-render with different motion paths. If you wanted, you could probably do motion capture on the face for a japanese and english speaker, but that's like filming the same film twice in two languages. Dubbing or subtitling is a heck of a lot easier, and much cheaper.
actually, I don't know what's wrong with me, but I MUCH prefer dubbing to subtitles... unless the dubbing is just tragically bad. I don't want to have to read dialogue during a movie. Unfortunately, I seem to be in the minority, as all my friends always look for the subtitled version of a movie when we rent a foreign flick.
asked a friend who works at square about this once... they're not going to rerender all the speech scenes, too cost prohibitive.
Almost every foreign movie released in Japan is subtitled. Terminator 2, Titanic, etc. This will almost certainly be the same.
-- Your IP is showing
What kind of a geek are you? You should be working harder at your editing job. Oh, wait, you have a geek friend who works at square. It's ok then.
Mmmm.. Donuts
They will get a crappy dubbed version of FF to counter all the crappy dubbed versions of Jackie Chan movies that we get.
A rabbit in the hand is worth 4 in the cage
First time I watched Face/Off it was in danish, no subtitles. You could still understand everything that was going on...Hmm, they're shooting at each other...explosion...oooh, doves!...speedboat...more shooting...
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
Version I heard was "Yippe Ki-Ay, Kimo-Sabe"...:-)
The conclusion of your syllogism, I said lightly, is fallacious, being based on licensed premises
They may end up doing something with the Final Fantasy movie like was done with the new Vampire Hunter D movie out in Japan. That anime was actually dubbed first in English in the studio, and is playing that way in theaters in Japan, subtitled in Japanese. They are making a Japanese version, which they will be releasing on video there.
In this case, as the characters are tailored to the voice actors, I can see the same things happening. I would imagine the Japanese would have the same feeling we have here about dubbing over foreign language movies.
[insert witty quote here]
I don't know about other countries, but every movie I saw in Japan was not dubbed, but subtitled (well, except for movies made in Japan. It would have been dumb to subtitle those. They were dubbed).
Even if they re-rendered everything for each language, there are cultural themes and humor in movies that just don't translate very well, so whole scenes would have to be re-worked I think.
In my opinion it is much better to simply add subtitles.
According to Entertainment Weekly, Mike Myers was having a hard time determining the vocal characterizations for Shrek. He changed his mind about how he was going to play Shrek, and as a result the facial renderings had to be changed. It was supposedly a big challenge with Dreamworks because of the cost involved.
I would provide a link, but the EW site is a slow moving piece of crap. I read it in the real world, on paper.
bun-fhuinneog agam!
Maybe i'm wrong on this one, but when i first heard this movie was being put into production that they were dubbing it during production in both Japanese and English.. apparently i was mistaken.
Art is not a mirror, art is a hammer.
How it works? I remember that one of the techniques, they were using was to insert or remove some frames from the movie so the picture actually fits the voice better. Also, we have the luck of having one of the most bendable languages out there with zillions of synonyms, I am not sure how easy it would be for Japanese or other languages.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
While they're at it, can we get Jar-Jar altered so he's not the most annoying thing ever (even worse than Jake Lloyd)? Or better yet, DELETED!
In Germany every movie is dubbed and the Germans are quite used to it so why would this be any different. Many actors go to dubbing school and for the big screen movies they do a really great job. So in my opion it will not ruin the movie.
from a marketing perspective; when you buy the DVD, wouldn't you want everything? ...if they rerender the mouths for each dubbed language, that would take too much space on the DVD. Only the zoned Japanese version would have the Japanese lip-synch. that doesn't seem to make sense from a marketing point of view, since they'd have to spend gobs of $$ in order to do that and most customers wouldn't even see it.
Think of what the Barney-generation will be like! Blame parental over-protection.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
I think there are a lot of misconceptions about what would be entailed. It's not just a matter or re-rendereing but on redoing the facial animation. And that is done by hand, no mocap, no magical software, nada. It's just a bunch of very talented character animators doing all the facial and scondary animation and lip synching. It would be akin to say, redubbing Mulan to chinese, in essence you would need to redraw all the film again. The same with CG, even with all sorts of blenshapes, morph targets, and animation controls, in the end it's up to the animator to use these controls to move and make every tiny facial pose. They might even have to pull vertices by hand. No matter how sophiticated software is now or in the near future, it will be still an automated process that will probably make characters appear stiff. That's why you need the animators, to bring the models to life. There is stuff like the tradionat animation principles, like squash and stretch, slow in and out, etc. (look for the documents of the old wise men of Disney or the animation notes from John Lasseter) that only animators would be able to impart. That's why you need animation supervisors, dailies, etc. Make sure the film has a consistent vision and animation style. They would have to redo most of the film, at least all face closeups. It simply is not feasable.
Anyone interested in checking out the the principles of animation, here are some links:
12 Principles of Animation
Couldn't find Lasster's paper but here is the reference:
Principles of Traditional Animation Applied to 3D Computer AnimationLasseter, John, "Principles of Traditional Animation Applied to 3D Computer Animation," SIGGRAPH '87, Computer Graphics, Vol. 21, No. 4, pp. 35-44, July, 1987.
Tricks to Animating Characters with a Computer
Animation Notes from Ollie Johnston
This looks really cool.
Beats Episode 2 or FF.
The studios who are releasing anime in the US on DVD are starting to get smart and include the Japanese-language soundtrack with them, so that people can choose whether they want the dubbed (English soundtrack) or subtitled version.
Hi, I'm living in overdub hell right now. I can watch all the latest Hollywood movies and US tv shows here in Germany, but none of them in English. You should hear the German interpretation of Seinfeld's Kramer.
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Why speculate on how FF will be dubbed? No other computer-animated movies so far have gotten this treatment. I doubt it's even a remote possibility.
This was intended to be funny rather than a flame, but I see a certain moderator takes criticism of video-game based movies personally.
Aah. But just because you disagree doesn't mean I was flaming... And if you've ever played the text-heavy first Final Fantasy or even the ebonics-laden FF7, you'll know that storylines are not necessarily Square's strong point.
Anybody who cared would watch it subtitled anyway. Dubbing is an atrocity, a crime against nature, not to mention filmmaker's intent.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
I never insulted the intellegence of another person for not knowing the language of a secific region. I do know what languages are spoken there, but knowledge does not equal arrogance. Spelling does not equal ignorance. Neighther do typing errors.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
Anyway, here is something she Emailed me about our discussion, which /.-ers may find interesting:
In Germany they dub every single movie. Alf screams "komm mal, kittie kittie kittie"[1] and Fred Flintstone screams "Vylma!". Or Bugs Bunny: "wass ist los, Doc?"
;-)
In Holland we only dub children's cartoons, because these children can't read undertitles. But even Cartoon Network is mostly English here. Some of the Dexter, Powerpuff girls etc. cartoons have been dubbed, but these versions are only displayed early in the morning when children watch.
The network operators are very hesitant when it comes to dubbing these cartoons, and for a good reason. It just ain't popular here.
I recently tried to view "Back to the Future" on a German channel. "Sie mussen Zurueck nach dem Zukunft!". Yeah, right! I turned it off immediately.
As the FF movie will not be for children, I hope they do not plan to dub it here. Otherwise I'll take the English version anyway, and I guess a lot of folks will do the same.
[1] I am not even trying to spell my German correct. Apologies for that
It's... It's...
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
Really? Usually when I'm watching a film with subtitles they tend to disappear after a while. I forget they're there, and read them subconsciously. You've gotta make sure that you've got a good view of the screen for this to work, though.
- Target audience is (mostly) kids, who might
not be comfortable reading, and/or
- That's the way it has already been done
There are countries (in scandinavia for example) where only Disney movies are dubbed (for first reason), and then there are other countries (central europe, USA) where usually everything is dubbed by default. This probably has to do with population (ie. customer base) of a country; bigger countries 'can afford' to dub stuff, smaller prefer not to. Which is just fine for me, since I much prefer subtitling, and see no good reason for dubbing (except for people who for some reason can't read), but to each his own.I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
There is no need to qualify that CTHD statement; I have the original Region 3 DVD, with both English and Mandarin 5.1 mixes, along with a Cantonese 2.0 mix, and other than a quick test to compare, I use the subtitles. The Region 1 disc is already with some reviewers as well, and they have confirmed to me that this also has both subtitle and dub options.
Although I prefer subtitles, I have to say that the dubbing is among the best I've heard, so if you are averse to subs then you can do just fine with that mix.
Oh, and the picture transfer is up to the usual high Sony mastering standard as well, apart from a few flecks on the print. Overall, a really recommended disc.
p.s. It was announced, although I never actually saw the discs, that after the first run of R3 CTHD discs made their way west in huge numbers they dropped all English options, both sub and dub from the Hong Kong disc, so I'd grab the R1 now.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
It's more than just the size of the TV -- the problem is that your TV is painfully low resolution, the color bleeds all over the place, the damned thing flickers noticably 30 times a second, and in general everything on television looks like shit.
Reading subtitles on current televisions sucks. With most movies, it's fairly tolerable, and it's usually preferrable to a dub, but it still sucks.
On the other hand, I don't even notice subtitles in the theatre -- when people ask me after "were there subtitles?", I usually can't remember.
Hopefully, improvements in television resolution will significantly improve subtitles in movies.
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
Imagine how stupid Crouching Tiger would have been had it been dubbed
it was dubbed, and it sucked! i saw the dubbed version on a friend's computer after i had seen the subtitled version on the big screen. subtitles are so much better-- gomers who complain about having to read instead of watch need to learn how to read faster, that's all. dubbed translations always try to fit the words to the character's mouths, which is pointless anyway but leads to some really bad translations.
i don't know if any of you remember the old dubbed version of akira, where masaru (the little blue kid in a bubble) says "this chapter's finished" instead of "to the east of here". what the hell? what, i say, what the hell?
to try to get back on topic, i think the japanese people deserve a true japanese language version, but if that can't happen, don't bother dubbing it...
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it's 100% grizzo
grizzo: totally insecure, but very convenient.
Rerendering alone would make it too expensive to dub it into other languages. its not as easy as converting the lip-syncing movements to another language. Body movements would have to be re-animated since they would have to sync with the speech. Remember that in translating to some languages, a short english sentence could take seconds to speak out.
Do you know what language they speak in Quebec? What about Mexico? You do? Well, then you must be an arrogant little punk who thinks he's cultured because he know what language they speak in those places.
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I'd never heard of this Sung-hi chick untill somone pointed here said I looked like her. Anyway, chad just asked me for a pic and I sent him one. I'm assuming he just grouped it with the other's he'd gotten.
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How much we talking here?
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People in japan do not speak Cantonese. They already have to deal with crapply dubbed Jackie Chan movies.
Honestly, the idiocy of some people never ceases to amaze me.
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"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
Real time rendered video is never going to be as detailed as pre-rendered (not physically possible). And, lets be honest, most Machinima looks like ass. I don't really see any point in having a movie real-time rendered at all. I mean, a movie by definition non-interactive. How does being real time improve that?
Can you point to any trends, or figures, other then your own personal preferences to indicate why what you are saying might be true?
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real time localization with voice synth... I don't know a lot of acting is in expressions of human emotion. Something I don't think a computer could do (in real time) vey well at all.
So while autolocalization might be nice, It's probably something better done by hiring local actors, and re-rendering the mouths and faces.
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Here's a question....Why isn't it in Japanese also? You'd think it would go over great in a technology-driven society, even ignoring the fact that Square is Japanese. Did they make a conscious decision not to do it in Japanese. It seems like English & Japanese would appeal to the largest amount of people who would be likely to want to see it.
I'm from Montreal, we see a lot of voice dubs for american movies in french. I really hate watching dubbed movies. Thank god, I'm billingual.
Subtitled movies are not that much of a problem. Everytime I watch a movie with subtitles after 10 minutes I forget the subtitles are there, it feels like I know the language after a while. Don't forget that when you're reading the subtitles you are still seeing the movie screen. Our field of view is bigger than you think.
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
I second the motion for dubbing.
I don't watch subtitled movies at all - I just turn the TV off on the spot.
I'm somehow perplexed by the article. Why should the mouths/faces be reanimated? I make my living translating movies from English for Czech release for almost 10 years now (I saw Episode 1 several months before the U.S. release, worship me!), for both dubbing and subtitling, and the "art of dubbing" always was about coming up with the translation that captures the essence of the original dialogue AND matches the original character's lip movements IF the lips are distinguishable in the current shot. You'd be surprised by percentage of average movie in which this is non-issue because the actor's mouth is not visible or is not prominently displayed. Movies are being dubbed for several decades and no one ever thought about re-animating the actors' lips. If, for you, "typical example of dubbing" equals "Kung Fu movies", that's your problem.
--- Frantisek Fuka (Yes, that's my real name and you have no idea how it's pronounced)
By the way, I saw about 15 minutes of FINISHED Final Fantasy footage and the voice synchronization was not perfect. Certainly better than with Kung Fu movies but not an example of "Great dubbing job". Whis is shame, because AFAIK the mouths were animated after the dialogue was recorded.
--- Frantisek Fuka (Yes, that's my real name and you have no idea how it's pronounced)
Also, nothing like the "technique" you are describing was never used. It's the other way around. After the Czech dialogue is recorded, you can then slightly manipulate (stretch/compress) this dialogue digitally to better fit the original mouth movement. But you definitely cannot insert/remove frames from the movie!
P.S: I finished the Czech subtitles for Pearl Harbor today and my head hurts.....
--- Frantisek Fuka (Yes, that's my real name and you have no idea how it's pronounced)
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
They're not gonna re-model and re-render the entire movie over a whole new other-language soundtrack. That's ridiculous. Get a job.
"It was not until their numbers had dwindled to nine that the other dwarves began to suspect Hungry."
Deus Ex used a technology that maps voice patterns to lip movement. Sure it isn't perfect, but its closer than lip syncing. This may be a most cost effective way for square to proceed...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
This may sound ignorant, but can't they code a plugin for their modler to take plain-text dialog and animate the mouth? Then they could just re-type the scenes and re-render. Even with 3DS max, a broadcast and game quality plugin JeteReyes let's you accomplish this task to a reasonable degree of realism (while being free as in beer for R3). Any thoughts?
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
...But since they have already spent so much on this movie, can they afford to?
Sure they could! But they would have to spend alot of time at the Chocobo Casino to raise the money...
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"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad." - Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
Most screenings of non-Japanese films in Japan are subtitled with the exceptions of children films which may be dubbed. Most video tapes and DVD in Japan are also sub-titled.
Could Bill Gates be hit by a bus next year?
Could the Red Sox finally win the World Series?
sulli
RTFJ.
There's software out there (some of it was invented at my alma mater, N.C. State) which can generate CGI-lip movements from recorded speech.
Converting the stock image to fit the appropriate face ought to be a relatively easy task up front, then the engine does the work from there.
I can't recall the name of NCSU's particular software off-hand, but someone else on here might know...
You shouldn't verb words.
Yes, but since the average human mind can read at several hundred words/s, whats a few subtitles? I have to say though that subtitles rather than redubbing is the way to go. Dubbing almost always ruins the film. My $0.02
If those who say that this will not or did not happen (re-rendering) are correct then...
;)
I'm pretty surprised that they didn't render it both ways (I'm choosing English and Japanese as the two primary languages for this movie) from the beginning for releases both in Japan and the United States. This seems like it would have been the simplest solution. Then they simply hire voice actors/actresses in their native languages for the respective releases.
I think Megumi Hayashibara could do an excellent voice for the main female character.
Imagine it...then when the DVD comes out, perhaps you could choose a combination of English or Japanese audio and English or Japanese subtitles or no subtitles at all. That would be pretty cool, especially if no matter which audio you watched, the voices would be synchronised with the mouth movements. Very cool indeed...
cheers!
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
...you think they'd want to just wipe that away for International releases? Subtitles sound appropriate...
Of course, the only exception to this might be Japan, where they have full-blown, celebrity voice actors and actresses.
Lastly... all this talk about re-rendering... Er... sounds like a lot of render time...
Yes, I can't wait for Final Fantasy the movie. It can join all the amazing other movies that are based on a video game like:
Wing Commander
Super Mario Bros.
Street Fighter
Double Dragon
Mortal Combat
Mortal Combat II
What do these movies have in common? THEY ALL SUCKED! The golden rule is: if the movie is based off of a video game, it will suck. I am going to go out on a limb here and say that both Tomb Raider and Final Fantasy movies will also suck.
-Matt
So if the point of watching the movie is to see how seamlessly the computer animation syncs up with the English in the first place, then doesn't that mean that the English is an integral part of the film?
Looks like a place for subtitles.
While I'm sure the FF movie will be spectacular, I would have much preferred it if they had ported FF9 to the PC instead.
I love the FF series and find it highly annoying that in order to continue playing them I will have to buy a PS2 (which I normally would feel no need to do).
When all other methods of communication fail, try words.
And if you look at how dubbing was done, for example, in Russia - in most cases it was almost flawless. The text is edited so to match lip movement as close as possible (which doesn't matter in high action scenes as a few people would pay attention if character said "ouch" or "eww" :) )
In fact there is an archive fotage showing some movies dubbed with 3 or more different texts (that matched) because of the censure :)
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Hyperom.com
Just as it takes a long time for them to have the actors and actresses dub their voices to do it in English, there would also be a large amount of time needed for different actresses and actors to do it in Japanese or *insert desired languange*.
Not only that, but we are looking at probably several hours or maybe even days to do the final renders to make these films whole. So the amount of time to get the rendering done while accounting for the voices would end up being a nightmare.
I prefer subtitles. I'd rather lose a little in attention span than ruin a movie with poor dubbing.
Actually, I like subtitles. I like reading though.
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I suppose Square could spend a lot of time creating a good system, but that would be a substantial investment of time and money. Probably more effort than lip-syncing. And a lot more effort than dubbing or subtitles.
(mouth moves wrong way) Ha ha ha! I have you now! etc.
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
If they do decide to redo the voice overs, it'll be an interesting test of the advantages of CGA.
Now if they only had things setup so that the mouth patters of the charectures matched the dialog automagically.
Guttermouth is a really good band.
This isn't real life, where the expensive parts are the special effects. The technology needed to implement realistic facial expressions is surely one of the most impressive (and expensive) parts.
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
If I gotta watch Bruce Lee and hear some dork's voice, then the rest of the world has to watch FF and hear somebody elses voice. So NAH!
...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
It's called Final Fantasy 7
Here in germany almost every foreign movie gets dubbed, because dubbed movie do simply have much more success here at the boxoffice than subtitled versions. Because of this the film distributors spend much money on the dub. The dialog is translated in a way that it gets a good lipsync. If a language is a bit similar in the structur it is possible to do a dub that feels almost as lipsync as the orginal.
Maybe the german dub is even better than the orginal english dub, because the english dub is very likely done by big hollywood actors that haven't much experience with dubbing. German dubbing is very likely done by some specialized actors that do almost only dubbing.
And even if the dubbed version is bad, you have always the choice to simply go into the orginal english version. I think that a dub will be a problem in Japan because japanese has an very different structure than english, it should be a big problem to get this nearly lipsynced without completly changing the meaning of what they say.
Jan
It wasn't as off as hearing him say "Yippie Kiyaaa Melon-Farmer!" In the network (no naughty words) version.
There's really only one segment of the market that's dubbed, and that's children's material, aka Disney flicks. However, even though we have the best actors available and occasionally manage to surpass the original (even Disney themselves admit to the characters Timon and Pumba in ''The lion king'' being better i.e. funnier in Swedish) you'll see those in their original english with subtitles later in the evening at theatres in the major cities.
The benefits are several of course, it really motivates the children to start reading, if the want to understand what's on after the small childrens segment on TV they'd better be able to read. It's not the only reason our litteracy rates are among the highest in the world, but it is IMHO an important one.
It also teaches english (the American variant unfortunately, but it's better than nothing). Which plays no small part in putting our proficiency in the english language on par with the dutch. And an added benefit is that you can watch TV in bed w/o disturbing your (sleepy) spouse, just turn the sound real low, or off altogether.
The reason it's done is of course one of economy, it's a tenth of the cost compared with dubbing. But belive me, if you had had any exposure to it, you wouldn't know it was there. I don't anymore, I've been surprised more than once when a show was cut off after a few minutes with the announcement that they were working on getting the subtitling machine working again.
P.S. I'm of course discussing real subtitles here, not the awful closed captioning you have in the states, that really is distracting, and I'm not sure anyone could ever truly get used to it. Not that it doesn't help the hearing impared, it's a tremendous aid I would imagine, but it's not for general use in it's current form, I'd say.
Stefan Axelsson
Also, a dub changes the voices of all the actors. Often the dubbing voice sounds nothing like the origional... and it looks very strange when a 20 yr old has a 40 yr old voice. Plus you loose the characters origional personality when you do a new voice.
Honestly, the answer is simple economics:
If you invest ~$70 million (or whatever they invested) in this kind of technology, you want to recouperate your investment, or, even better make money.
In order to accomplish this in the movie industry, you have to maximize the number of butts you put in seats.
Since English is the most common language (known by many people in North America, South America, Australia, Europe, Antarctica and Asia), it is only logical to follow that making the movie in that language would lend itself to the greatest potential audience.
-D
hey, i'm from europe myself and i can assure you, i'd rather have a subtitled movie than one in which the character's mouths are still moving while they've already stopped speaking... and it seems to me that anyone who is over seven years old should be able to read subtitles, and still enjoy all of the movie.
:) understand English, i guess most of the people who are interested in this flick wouldn't need subtitles or dubbing at all
even more so, since most people in foreign countries (except for France and the Netherlands of course
Buffer overflow
WB definitely could have replaced him with CG and no one would have noticed. The money they would've saved by ditching him could have gone to better writers or actors.
Here is how I believe CG movie production should be done: 1: Someone will write the scrip and draw the storyboard. They may write it in any language they choose. 2: The studio will determine the countries, and thus the languages, into which they will sell the movie. They will then hand the script to native speakers of each of those languages to translate the script, giving them flexibility to allow the translated script to sound natural in the native language. 3: The studio will then create all parts of the movie common to all versions, including acting. 4: The studio will then create all parts of the movie unique to each version, including acting. 5: Release.
I think perhaps they would only need to re-animate 1/4 of the scene, but I think they should definitely re-render the entire scene. Re-rendering would deal with all of the reflections, shadows etc. and only cost electrisity and time, not man-hours.
That said there are a fair amount of word fitting systems available.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
Even better, the film is probably rendered in layers, so that each character is isolated and then recombined in a 2d composite. Still, changing the film would be very difficult, and the cost of doing this prohibitive.
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"Against stupidity the very god themselves contend in vain" -Johann Schiller
But, we'll be looking down at the bottom of the screen, we'll be missing seconds, which might be crucial to the film, like a small detail which will be important, IE: MI.
Slashdot Hypocrisy at work?
Are you serious???! haven't you ever watched a subitled movie?? you can very well read the subtitles while paying perfect attention to the images... unless your really slow or stupid.
Yes, I've watched them, and it depends on who subtitles them, they can be very fast, or very slow. I've watched Love Hina episodes subtitled where I was trying to catch up with the show while reading the titles, or as to just wait minutes for the next line to come along. Also, as I said, subtitling takes away from the film and adds less entertainment value to it.
As for the rest of your comments, I suggest you read the article first before you make anymore assumptions, beause you look like the troll not I.
Square is considering what to do about it, and it was an Ask Slashdot article, so I posted my opinion.
If you had read it btw, it said that the movie stands an equal chance of making it big in all countries among its intended market, and not just the US.
And no, I'm not a troll, I'm Polish
Slashdot Hypocrisy at work?
I've gone to Europe a couple of times and noticed that instead of voice dubs they do this:subtilting the movie, but who would want to look at the bottom of a screen the whole movie? You could have voice translators, but then, that'd ruin the movie's sound and make the experience less entertaining.
Square might have made the best looking amination ever, but, apparently, they also made the least unwatchable but non-English speaking peoples of the world.
Voice dubs might have to be forced, because redoing the movie will be much too expensive to do and is not worth it. Redoing the movie in Urkanian for a profit of 12 thousand bucks is not worth a multi-million dollar project, Square will have to bite the bullet and do voice dubs.
Slashdot Hypocrisy at work?
I remember reading an article on voice acting in Japan that said the faces and mouth movements are almost never "planned out" with regards to the voice acting... the Voice actor/actress has to time their lines to match the mouth, not vice versa...
So I am sure this will work the same way...
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Noc
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Speaking of the Simpsons, I just had to toss this one out there...
Homer: "Is this cartoon going on the air live?"
June: "No Homer, very few cartoons are broadcast live. It's a terrible strain on the animators' wrists."
After suffering through many (not always) bad dubbing jobs while watching anime, I think it's about time the bad-dubb bug went the other way around.
Of course I say all this without thinking about the time I watched Home Alone in my French class, dubbed in French.
Okay, so poorly dubbed films have been around for quite some time, so what popular English movie do you think would be the worst for export overseas?
Me?:
Crocodile Dundee
It can't be effective without the Austrailian accent.
Too busy staying alive... ~ R.A.
That's an excellent point, one I certainly didn't consider.
Now that you mention animation, I'm thinking back to my last trip to Mexico and watching "Los Simpsons" in Spanish for the first time. They dub over the animations and guess what... it does work (mostly). (And yes, I do speak Spanish).
Now, the lip synch in FF is probably just a *little* better than the Simpsons, so as the lip synch in the original language gets better and better, dubs in other languages are going to be more and more off. Judging by the trailers, the lip synch in FF is pretty damn close to perfect, so the dubbing is really going to suffer.
As for re-rendering, it probably isn't feasible. There's a little more to lip synching than just re-rendering, methinks.
Ryan T. Sammartino
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
Imagine how stupid Crouching Tiger would have been had it been dubbed. This is a two way street: watching English movies on the French channel (here in Canada) that have been dubbed is just silly. Something about Bruce Willis saying "merde" that's just a bit off...
Ryan T. Sammartino
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
I guess it all depends on whether or not the translation and dubbing are as good as that of IRON CHEF
Well, if there are finite financial resources and a limited amount of time to make the movie, my guess would be that Square would render the movie and dub it in a languate so as to appeal to the largest possible movie-going audience.
Apparently that audience is English speaking...
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
J00 S4CK.
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
And have little speech bubbles pop up. It'd be great. You can take your time, and the film would wait until everyone had pressed 'X'. How's about that for interactive movies?
"Don't get mad, get a monkey!"
"We are monkeys from the Red Lotus temple"!!!
Haha, oh man.
This same thought had occured to me a while back, I just assumed Square would do a special Japanese dub if only out of pride. Granted that the Japanese market is half the size of the US, and most people who are interested will probably see it regardless of which language it's in, but it just seems a slap in the face to the Japanese consumers to only do it in English. There is just as much brand loyalty in Japan as there is in the US and Square's fan base would have kept them afloat even if they never exported a game.
Of course, they would've done it by now if it was easy to do. The movie is modeled on the real actors, so the visuals and the voices aren't completely seperated. But still, it seems like there are enough tricks one could do with a little facial morphing and creative dubbing. And from the looks of the previews, the most expensive scenes to render don't seem to have a lot of focus on mouth movements.
Square continues to impress me with the exceptional quality of their games, but there is more they could do. While releasing Final Fantasy's in the states 6 months after their release in Japan is impressive, I still don't see why they can't do both versions simultaneously. In this modern world we live in, any company that can develop for multiple languages at the same time will certainly be several steps beyond their competitors.
As one poster commented Shrek did this, But he just said 'millions'.. To give a finer idea.. $4 million just for one character in a 98 minute movie. "After Mike Myers completed his dialogue and Shrek's animation was being completed, Myers decided he wanted to give Shrek a Scottish accent. After hearing a demo, the studio obliged, and an extra four million dollars was spent to reanimate Shrek with the new dialogue." Now imagine if they had to reanimate all the cast of Final Fantasy, aparently there are like 8 main actors, who knows how many secondary actors, plus if it has english writing or displays they would have to be redone. if each main character cost only 4 million to reanimate, thats still 32 million extra, I think i'd be a lot more. I think this is gonna sell big in japan, dubbed, subtitled, or not, I think they'll get more money in the long run by not reanimating because the costs would prolly outweigh the gains of a 'japanese' version. And it comes down to money in the end unfortunatly.
With all the 'all your base' hiatus, this is just what the Japanese need! Now they'll be able to understand what we went so crazy over! Imagine a whole movie with poor translation!
I think the Japanese are more open to the idea of watching subtitled films with foriegn spoken language than we are. I believed that the English version of Princess Mononoke was actually re-released in Japan with Japanese subtitles... Apparently more than a few people were interested to see how it translated or something like that... Either way, with the abudance of English words they use in their everyday language, I think it's safe to say that an Engilsh version of the movie with Japanese subtitles would be well received...
This is a moot discussion for the following reason: square animated before it did the voice acting! So it doesn't look so hot anyhow, though in most scenes it's not important. I just think it's funny that there's a discussion about re-syncing when it was never really synced at all.
If you've ever seen Macross II, you'll know what I mean. There are scenes where the mouths keep moving and the English voices have long since finished their lines. And to try and teach a director how to re-edit their work dependent on a language they don't understand is a real challenge.
It seems kind of silly, but the artistic vision is the element most hurt by that kind of thing.
Not to say that we're not trying to get around it...
The world's only surviving livewriter.