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.

Comments

Crouching Tiger dub/subtitles.

[Anonymous Coward]

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."

Square will never make another movie!?

[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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Square + On The Fly Rendering

[tenchiken]

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.

Re:Square + On The Fly Rendering

[Microlith]

That's because the Armitage III movie only exists in english (released by Pioneer, btw). It was given to Pioneer, edited into a compilation movie, and was reimported and shown in theaters in Japan (with Japanese subtitles!)

The 4 OAVs that originally comprised Armitage exist in both sub/dub format, and are going to be released later as an Armitage "Perfect Collection" by Pioneer (most likely).

YHBT, People

[MustardMan]

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

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

nope

[CommanderTaco]

asked a friend who works at square about this once... they're not going to rerender all the speech scenes, too cost prohibitive.

Its an equal trade off

[hooded1]

They will get a crappy dubbed version of FF to counter all the crappy dubbed versions of Jackie Chan movies that we get.

Tell George Lucas

[Dr_Cheeks]

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!

Thoughts On Cyberthespians

[CleverNickName]

My friend works for a large film company that has made many Toy and Bug oriented CG films. Since we are both actors, films like FF could really hurt our potential careers. We were talking about "Cyberthespians" backstage a couple of weeks ago, because we'd seen the trailer, and I was very impressed with it. I thought that it was the first step towards phasing out flesh and bone actors. I mean, Jar Jar was straight out of hell, but, if you take away the character, and just focus on the animation, it was prety impressive.

Anyway, here is something she Emailed me about our discussion, which /.-ers may find interesting:

Although this may be a leap forward in CG humans, it still has far, far to go. Textures, of skin, of cloth are still not quite right. Skin shaders are also evasive. Even the newest, most cutting edge CG skin still has a rubbery look. I've heard the next step is to create "oil maps" of skin to map out parts of a texture map that will have much higher specularity - that shiny look.

Then there's the movement. I've heard FF's characters look really stilted and jerky. Although they used motion capture for body motion, it still is not fluid. Facial expressions were animated by hand.

I talked to a guy yesterday who is working on CG hair for a CG head for a real body. I asked him why not just put a wig on the actor and CG the face? A lot cheaper than creating a hair map and rendering out thousands of CG hairs (that look rubbery.) His answer is what I call "the boys with the toys." There's a few men in the world who have the money to RnD computerized anything to no PARTICULAR end, just because they can. Of course, if you can apply it to a multi-million dollar movie and get a return on your investment, that's OK too.

I often hear CG artists joke that a CG actor will never strike. But they all know that one CG actor takes YEARS and millions of dollars to create. It's neither cheaper nor better. It's just another way to play a video game.

Subtitles preferred

[ryants]

I don't know about non-English speaking people, but when I watch a foreign movie (ie. not in English), I so much prefer subtitles over dubbing.

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