History Main / Redubbing

There's a lot more that goes into the sound design of live-action films than sounds that are obviously added in, such as punching noises, gunfire and swords slashing. Pretty much all sound in a movie is highly engineered. For example, the audio that was was recorded during filming is called the production track. It is used for the dialogue, and takes up one layer. The sound of the actors' footsteps will be on a separate track, and will have been rerecorded in the sound studio by the Foley artists, as the actual sound of footsteps will have been much less audible on-set. Likewise other sounds of movement and clothing are all added in afterwards. Of course, the music is seperate too, but it's pretty obvious that there's not an orchestra sitting just off-camera, blaring away as the actors are filming a death scene.

With all of this in place, it's easy to comb through the production track and mute any instances of the actors talking, while retaining other sounds. This is known as the Music & Effects track, and it's what foreign studios use to dub the media.

You'd think the ability to strip people's voices from other sounds such as their footsteps, passing vehicles, doors opening, ruffling clothing, etc. can only be done with animated works, since every single sound in those, including dialogue, is added in post. After all, it's not like you can just animate a character talking, play it back and then words will come out of their mouth. However, live-action media is dubbed just as often (though not into as many languages as animated works, due to some countries only dubbing media that is either made for kids or is likely to be seen by kids).

You'd think the ability to strip character's voices from other sounds such as footsteps, passing vehicles, doors opening, etc. can only be done with animated works. However, live-action media is dubbed just as often (though not into as many languages as animated works, due to some countries only dubbing media for kids, while also believing that [[AnimationAgeGhetto animation is only for children]]). There's a lot more that goes into the sound design of live-action films than sounds that are obviously added in, such as punching noises. Pretty much every sound the actors make on set is painstakingly recreated in a foley studio and then added in post. From then on, a sound mixer combs through the audio track for what was recorded on set and deletes any voices from the audio, crossfading and mixing in mic static where the voices were originally were, producing a clean dubbing track.

As for casting, getting voice actors for animation is pretty much the same as the original. They'll either just look for a voice that could plausibly come out of the character, or they'll try and emulate their original voice if it's distinct enough. However, for live-action, prominent actors will each have a singular voice actor per region assigned to their roles in order to keep their voice consistent throughout their career. After all, imagine if Creator/SamuelLJackson had a different voice in every single movie he was in. Should an actor make a cameo in an animated film, chances are their dubbing actors will voice them in the other languages as well (for example, Creator/MasashiEbara, who is the Japanese dubbing voice of Creator/TomHanks, voices Hanks in the Japanese dub of WesternAnimation/TheSimpsonsMovie).

* The initial American release of ''Film/MadMax1'' had all the dialog redubbed by American actors, without the Australian accents.

* Two versions of the Fruity Pebbles Christmas commercial from 1986 exist, in the original Creator/MelBlanc voiced Barney and Hal Smith voiced Santa Claus, at one point it was redubbed in the early 90’s with Creator/FrankWelker voicing Barney and Creator/JimCummings voicing Santa.

The practice of removing all the dialogue from an existing piece of voiced media, such as a movie or television show, and replacing it with an entirely new recording. Most common, of course, when translating a show for audiences which don't speak the original language.

This poses few problems when dubbing an animated feature, such as an anime or Disney film. Unfortunately, live action stuff sometimes results in dialogue which [[LipLock fails to flow naturally]] or is subtly out of sync with the character's lip movements, causing many fans of imported films to [[SubbingVersusDubbing (violently) prefer the original language version]], relying instead on subtitles to understand what's going on. At worst, [[HongKongDub it can be hilarious]] -- take, for the perfect example, the ''Franchise/{{Godzilla}}'' films.

You'd think the ability to strip character's voices from other sounds such as footsteps, passing vehicles, doors opening, etc. can only be done with animated works. However, there's a lot more that goes into the sound design of live-action films than sounds that are obviously added in, such as punching noises. Pretty much every sound the actors make on set are painstakingly recreated in a foley studio and then added in post. From then on, a sound mixer combs through the audio track for what was recorded on set and deletes any voices from the audio, crossfading and mixing in mic static where the voices were originally were, producing a clean dubbing track.

As for casting, getting voice actors for animation is pretty much the same as the original. They'll just look for a voice that matches the look of the character or they'll try and emulate their original voice. However, for live-action, prominent actors will each have a singular voice actor per region assigned to their roles in order to keep their voice consistent throughout their career. After all, imagine if Creator/SamuelLJackson had a different voice in every single movie he was in. Should an actor make a cameo in an animated film, chances are their dubbing actors will voice them in other languages as well.

A common question about how live action media gets dubbed is how sounds like footsteps, doors opening and the like are separated from the voices so that the latter can be removed, giving the voice actors a clean slate to dub over. The answer to that is that there's a lot more that goes into the sound design of films than sounds that are obviously added in, such as punching noises. Pretty much every sound the actors make on set are painstakingly recreated in a foley studio and then added in post. From then on, a sound mixer combs through the audio track for what was recorded on set and deletes any voices from the audio, crossfading and mixing in mic static where the voices were originally were, producing a clean dubbing track.

The practice of removing all the dialogue from an existing movie or television show, and replacing it with an entirely new recording. Most common, of course, when translating a show for audiences which don't speak the original language.

* One of the most famous examples in Britain is ''WesternAnimation/TheMagicRoundabout'', which took the French show ''Le Manège enchanté'' and redubbed it with a completely new script by Eric Thompson. The 2005 CGI feature film adaptation was then redubbed in the US as ''Doogal''; the dub replaced all but two of the British celebrities who provided voices for the characters with American ones.

* The ''WesternAnimation/ThomasTheTankEngine'' fan community is notorious for doing this, but occasionally end up doing an (arguably) better job than the original narrator, mostly due to the fact that many of these fan redubs have ''very'' large casts.