Lip sync

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Lip synchronization is the synchronization of audio signals (sometimes with corresponding video signals) so that there is no noticeable lack of simultaneity between them. The term lip sync is an abbreviation of lip synchronization, and describes two similar forms of vocal pantomime.

One is a form of musical pantomime in which a performer moves his/her lips to the words of a played musical recording, creating the illusion of the performer singing in the recorded singer's voice. The hobby reached its greatest popularity in the 1980s, hitting its peak with the syndicated television game show, Puttin' On The Hits. Professional performers sometimes use this method in live performances, especially in dance numbers that require too much exertion to perform as well as sing. It was once common in the Hong Kong music scene. It can also be used fraudulently to misrepresent a musical act with the group, with Milli Vanilli being the most notorious.

The other is the art of making a character appear to speak in a pre-recorded track of dialogue. The lip sync technique to make an animated character appear to speak involves figuring out the timings of the speech (breakdown) as well as the actual animating of the lips/mouth to match the dialogue track. The earliest examples of lip-sync in animation were attempted by Max Fleischer in his 1926 short My Old Kentucky Home. The technique continues to this day, with animated films and television shows such as Shrek, Lilo & Stitch, and The Simpsons using lip-synching to make their artificial characters talk. Lip synching is also used in comedies such as This Hour Has 22 Minutes and political satire, changing totally or just partially the original wording. It has been used in conjunction with translation of films from one language to another, for example, Spirited Away. Lip synching can be a very difficult issue in translating foreign works to a domestic release, as a simple translation of the lines often leaves overrun or underrun of dialog to mouth movements.

An example of a lip synchronization problem is the case in which television video and audio signals are transported via different facilities (e.g., a geosynchronous satellite radio link and a landline) that have significantly different delay times, respectively. In such cases it is necessary to delay the audio electronically to allow for the difference in propagation times.

Quality film dubbing requires translating the speech so that the number of syllables in characters' remarks is the same in both languages so that lip synching is possible (if the character's face is visible on screen).

1 Examples
2 Singers that have been caught lip-synching
3 See also
4 External links

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Examples

Professional artists also usually lip-sync while recording music videos. The technique of recording video clips consists of recording a film to pre-recorded music, so artists have to lip-sync to their songs (and often imitate playing musical instruments as well). Regarding new techniques in recording music videos, artists sometimes move their lips to music playing at different speed, or even backwards, to make unusual effects in the final clip.

It is also a 'common' occurrence for singers to lip sync on live television. Though there is no official rule on it, it seems that lip synching on television (especially on television in the UK, where it is known as miming) is considered quite normal.

As character models in computer games became more detailed, it became more important to animate their mouths when they speak. In the early 2000s it was usually done manually. Half-Life 2 was one of the first games to use technology to generate correct lip movements automatically, using the audio file with the speech and the script.

In 2004, singer Ashlee Simpson appeared on Saturday Night Live in a promotional visit. She was scheduled to sing two songs from her album Autobiography. However, when beginning to sing the album's title track, another song began playing in the background, and it was revealed that she was either lip-synching or using a vocal backing track.

The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade often features popular singers on floats... who lip-sync. This has arguably been debated for years, until it was found out that a singer's back-up band and sound system cannot fit on one float. In the 2004 parade, Gavin DeGraw, Raven-Symone, and Fantasia Barrino were seen lip-synching to their hit songs.

19-year-old American Gary Brolsma became an internet phenomenon when he lip-synched the song "Dragostea Din Tei" almost perfectly and did the "Numa Numa" dance while sitting in his chair. He did it in front of a webcam and put it on the Internet. It has been seen by millions of people and featured in Newspapers and TV shows.

In an unusually extreme response to this arguably irritating phenomenon, in August 2005, Saparmurat Niyazov, the president of Turkmenistan banned lip synching in the country.

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Singers that have been caught lip-synching

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