SIBLINGS: LIP-SYNCH AUDIO TECHNICAL ISSUES

Working on the first practice run of the project one of the key areas that was tricky to get right was the lip synch audio. It was a process of trial and error to get it to work correctly and I have outlined the stages of development it went through to try and get it to work. The boys audio of them saying things was not an issue as it was recorded live but some of the other elements and the lip synch were trickier to get right..


The evolution of process for recording the audio for the contributors voices who were also commenting on the boys psychologists, parents etc is outlined below.


Attempt 1:
The aim of this was to use the boys voices but to simply put an effect on them. This would make the workflow easy as simply exporting the boys voices sound files then dropping and effect on their voices them would change them and the timings and everything else would be the same so they could be dropped straight back into Premiere Pro. As a test I used the psychologists statement and wanted to get the boys audio to sound more overbearing, official and statement like to create a representation of them. In this first instance I tried out a lot of effects to deepen the boys voices and ended up putting a computer sounding effect on it in the final trial version. This worked as it still lip synched with the boys but was too heavy handed. the effects distorted the boys voices too much and sounded far too unnatural. I really wanted to use real voices of those involved or others to voice their words to make it feel more real.


Attempt 2:
I got down the words of the parents about what they wanted to say about the boys and recorded it. Then I tried to get the boys to lip synch to it whilst the audio was being played back to them. This was a bit of a disaster and far too difficult for the boys. Timing, inclination, phrasing and tempo as well as cueing them in bang on was far too tricky and simply did not work.


Attempt 3:
This time I used the words of the parents about what they wanted to say about the boys and recorded the boys saying it. The process that worked was this.

• Recorded the boys in-vision doing saying the parents lines
• Take the clips and put them in a timeline on Adobe Premiere Pro.
• Cueing them up to exact points on the timeline. So the boys audio to start on 1:00 minute.
• Using the play-head in Adobe Premiere Pro and also the waveform as a guide to the start.
• Also the picture of the boys on display and their version of the statement.
• The above: timing, play-head, boys in vision and waveform it all act as a guide for parents.
• Play the clip through so the parents can get the boys timing, inclination, phrasing and tempo.
• Then keep recording on a TASCAM digital recorder the audio until they got it bang on.
• Then the audio files of the parents audio that were recorded are imported into Premiere Pro.
• The audio files are then synched up to replace the boys saying the lines.
• Minor alterations in timing, starting and spacing are added to get the lip-synch to look right.
• The boys are in the clip with their lips moving and the sound from the parents coming out.

This is a complicated and time consuming process BUT it does work and it was the easiest way to do it