Thoroughly enjoyed Spirited Away on DVD and have a question. This was obviously made in an English as well as a Japanese version. Did they do a separate animation so that the English voices were sync’d with the mouths, or did it just appear that way?
It certainly seemed to me to be perfectly sync’d.
Animated dubs are scripted and directed so that the English dialogue is lip synced as much as possible.
This has been known to result in some odd dialogue (see the Speed Racer effect), but they’ve gotten better at it.
One of the special features detailed how they did this. It was a lot of work.
One of the most interesting features on the DVD for Pokemon: The First Movie (I was a big Pokefreak at the time) was listening to the commentary by the directors of the English dub commenting on what they called “lip flap.” They had to write the dialog so that the lip movements from the original animation would match the new dialog. (They also joked that they wished that more characters were psychic Pokemon, since they communicate through thoughts that can be heard, and thus don’t move their lips.) The same thing was done with the English dub of Spirited Away (which was produced by Disney and supervised by John Lasster of Toy Story fame).
As I recall reading in an old issue of Animerica, the Canadians dubbing Ranma 1/2 (I can get Word to spit out ⅓, but not 1/2. What’s up with that?) had an Amiga program allowing them to sinc the animated lip movements with those of the actors. I guess either it was had lots of holes in it, as a tool, or I am misremembering things.
Interestingly, the Japanese animation companies don’t care as much about “lip flap” as the American companies do. They even do their primary voice recording after the animation is finished (or close to finished), as opposed to the American practice of recording the voices first, and often separately.
Scott, you’re probably thinking of WordFit.