Poll: Scene Changes, lipsyncing, & story

bubblehead · Post by **bubblehead** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 11:14 pm

I'm working on a video which involves lipsynching. A fairly long section is just the character talking (as far as audio goes). I've gotten feedback that it's odd how I'm changing the scene whenever the character has, essentially, a new line. However, I'm doing this to suit the character's changes in mood. Also, I think it makes it a bit more interesting, though it screws up the continuity. Do you think I should keep it, generally, to scenes in the same location, where the character is wearing the same clothing? I mean, it's not a song or anything.

When continuity to some extent might get in the way of the story, which is more important, I guess is what I'm trying to ask.

Bakadeshi [AuN Studios] · Post by **Bakadeshi [AuN Studios]** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 11:28 pm

i'm not an expert on lipsynching, but judging on the videos i;ve seen with good lipsynching in it, it seems to be a general rule of thumb not to keep the same scene for much longer than a few seconds, or like you said change it for each line that is said. The scenery in my opinion should be alike, same clothing, same surounding, if possible, for each "section" of text. (to get a particular thought acrooss so to speak, or in a song, for the stanza of the song) then change the scene afterwards for the next section. It all depends on the footage your working with.

this is just based on my observations.

You also have to be carefull to select scenery changes that don;t apear jarring, and that will smooth naturally from one scene to the next. Its hard to explain it, but i've seen some where the position of the person made it look bad when it changed. like the video skipped. avoid these.

thats about all I can think of.

godix · Post by **godix** » Wed Jun 16, 2004 2:48 am

From what I can tell it looks bestif it you keep changing camera angles but keep the same background/clothes/etc. If you're lucky you can find a scene that has constantly changing camera angles in the same conversation. If not, do your best to match the background.

Alternatively, very occasionally I see someone cut out the characters and paste them onto a scene that they blatently weren't in before (IE when the characters pop up in front of the clip). If you did that then you wouldn't have to worry about background and would just have to match clothes. Of course, cutting and pasting characters like this is even more time consuming that lipsyncing is so you may not want to bother.

AbsoluteDestiny · Post by **AbsoluteDestiny** » Wed Jun 16, 2004 3:55 am

I reused the same section quite a lot in the lipsync opening of I Wish I Was a Lesbian but as it was interpsersed with other shots it came out ok.

Noone seemed to mind too much that he changed the colour of his shirt at one point.

AquaSky · Post by **AquaSky** » Wed Jun 16, 2004 9:23 am

Movement in general is important; sometimes you'll get lucky and find a scene that uses different shots while talking, and sometimes not. It's really a balancing act; you don't want to linger on the same image for too long, and you also don't want to be jumping scenes so often that it's distracting. You'll get a feel for it as you go.

inthesto · Post by **inthesto** » Wed Jun 16, 2004 11:36 am

Really looks like everyone else covered what I was going to say.

Basically, as long as the scene change isn't drastic (I mean, if the character is standing and talking in one scene, he shouldn't be on the ground and bleeding in the next), I don't think it poses too much of a problem.

Akai Rurouni · Post by **Akai Rurouni** » Wed Jun 16, 2004 4:02 pm

AbsoluteDestiny wrote:I reused the same section quite a lot in the lipsync opening of I Wish I Was a Lesbian but as it was interpsersed with other shots it came out ok.

Noone seemed to mind too much that he changed the colour of his shirt at one point.

He changed the color of his shirt?

In any case, the beginning of IWIWAL is an excellent example of an extended lip synch. The shots show the speaking character in different positions, but all in the same room. This made a continuity of background, even though some shots show the background from different camera angles. Although the character "jumps" around from shot to shot, it's not jarring because the background is consistent, his clothing is consistent (except that shirt thing, which apparently I didn't even notice), and his 'jumps' were progressive and not back-and-forth. In other words, it appeared he moved around the room in a fairly logical manner, rather than jumping back and forth rapidly between two locations (which a real person would rarely do without a good reason).

You can always work on it some, and then watch and see if it looks 'odd' to you. Then get a few second opinions from peopel who haven't been working on it (or leave it sit a while and come back to it yourself), just to get some perspective that hasn't been marred by working on the project. If you decided it does look 'odd' then compare it to other good lip synch scenes, especial long ones like in IWIWAL, and see if you can tell what's different between them and yours.

It's not an exact science, but the fact that you're thinking about it enough to post here makes me think you have enough attention to detail to make it look really good. =)

Good luck!