Fritzcaraldo dubbed audio not sync

[Mitchel Wagner]

Hello,

We are going to show the 1982 feature Fritzcaraldo from Werner Herzog. Today I tested the movie, and I noticed that it's very obvious that the movie was dubbed after shooting, or atleast that's my assumption. You can see very clearly that the audio from the voices and the moving of the lips on the video are not in sync at all.

The feature was delivered to us in DCP format via Gofilex, and I'm just wondering ; Is there anything at all I can do about this ?

[Marcel Birgelen]

First, is your impression that the async is constant through the feature? If so, you can fix it by adjusting delays on your server or audio processor. Keep in mind that adjusting delay may be a finnicky thing to get right. Try to match some visual cueues with clear audio cueues. Trying to match lipsync purely by looking at the mouth movements can be quite frustrating.

You're using a Doremi DCP-2000 aren't you? There unfortunately isn't a value to change this on a playlist item level, so it will affect playback of all other content on that machine. You could change the audio delay manually by editing /doremi/etc/0/audio_delay via the terminal. The value in there is by frame and you do need to reboot the server after the change. It also applies to ALL content. The delay can both be positive and negative.

Another option, and this would be my preferred option, is to change the delay on your audio processor, how that's done, depends on the make of your processor. On an AP20 I remember you're using, you can configure both global delay and per-input channel delay. Keep in mind that this delay also affects anything you're going to play via the processor c.q. the affected input.

[Mark Ogden]

The sync issues with this film have been an issue since it was first released. The same issue was heard on Aguirre, The Wrath of God. I understand your frustration, but to attempt to change them on your own would be to compromise the way the picture has always been seen. Also, if you try to shift the dialog sync, I imagine that would throw off the music and sound effects as well.

[Marcel Birgelen]

So the experience has been faithfully reproduced for your own and your audience's enjoyment.
If your customers complain, you just say: The Director intended it to sound that way. :P

[Randy Stankey]

I just looked up this movie at IMDB. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083946/

It says that the film originated in Germany and German is the first of five languages on the list. Spanish, English, Italian and Shuar are the others. I’m guessing that German is the original language and the others were dubbed, either through the whole movie or interspersed throughout.

With all that translation and dubbing going on, I can’t imagine that lip sync would be consistent through the whole movie. How can an actor say, “Good day,” “Buenos Dias,” “Buon girono” or “Guten tag” and always have the dubbed in dialogue sync up? That’s just over the short term. How can they do this over an entire movie and keep dialogue perfectly in sync? Not doable IMO.

If I was showing this movie I’d check to be sure that sound effects and music are in sync and call it good. Check to see whether gunshots, door slams and footsteps, etc. match up. If they do and they stay consistent, throughout, just let the rest flap in the breeze, so to speak.

If anybody asks, tell them it’s a foreign movie with dubbed-in dialogue.

It might not be perfect but, in a case like this, it’s all you’ve got to go on.

[Carsten Kurz]

Today I tested the movie, and I noticed that it's very obvious that the movie was dubbed after shooting, or atleast that's my assumption.

Are you referring to an englisch, or the german language version? Fitzcarraldo was shot in english language, as the cast was international. The german actors dubbed themselves for the german synchronisation.

[Mark Ogden]

So the experience has been faithfully reproduced for your own and your audience's enjoyment.
If your customers complain, you just say: The Director intended it to sound that way. :P

It happens. Fellini Satyricon is an example. The film was shot MOS, with all the dialog recorded later, and Fellini deliberately offset the sync by a couple of frames just to unnerve the audience. If you try and do as the original poster wants to do, then you are making an arbitrary and uncalled for change in the film that is contrary to what the director intended.

People want things to conform to how they think they should be, whether they are meant to be that way or not. It's like the person who grabs your photos off Facebook or other social media sites and then tries to clean-up the color in Photoshop, like they are doing you a big favor. A few weeks ago in a Facebook group I posted a still from the film Astroid City, which is now in theaters. If you haven't seen any images from it yet, the picture has a very sallow, kind of washed-out look to it, like a film print that was missing the blue. So right away, some knob grabs the shot and Photoshops it back to "normal", and then posts it back with a note saying "Fixed it for you!" like he was expecting thanks. The presumption of it all makes me crazy. If it's not your own content, leave it alone.

[Leo Enticknap]

...like a film print that was missing the blue....

So Anderson was trying to ape two-strip Technicolor? Haven't gotten around to seeing Asteroid City yet, but am hoping to before its theatrical run ends.

[Dave Macaulay]

DCP2000/ShowVault - sync adjust slider is in control panel/audio/advanced. You have to eject what's playing in cinelister then restart it to check your change, no reboot needed.

[Marcel Birgelen]

It happens. Fellini Satyricon is an example. The film was shot MOS, with all the dialog recorded later, and Fellini deliberately offset the sync by a couple of frames just to unnerve the audience. If you try and do as the original poster wants to do, then you are making an arbitrary and uncalled for change in the film that is contrary to what the director intended.

It would be interesting to know if the director intended this to happen and if so, why? I have the feeling, this was just a very sloppy dubbing job.

So Anderson was trying to ape two-strip Technicolor? Haven't gotten around to seeing Asteroid City yet, but am hoping to before its theatrical run ends.

Wouldn't be the first Anderson movie to use atristic trickery to achieve a certain look. Moonrise Kingdom was filmed on Super16 and The Grand Budapest Hotel had this aspect-ratio-switcheroo going on to indicate different eras.

Obviously not an Anderson movie, so he certainly wasn't the first to do so: The Aviator (2004) also contained scenes that mimicked 2-strip Technicolor.

[Mitchel Wagner]

Are you referring to an englisch, or the german language version? Fitzcarraldo was shot in english language, as the cast was international. The german actors dubbed themselves for the german synchronisation.

I am referring to the english version. But with the info I have recieved from here I am not going to waste my already limited amount of hours in the week in order to fix this issue. So taking in mind what somebody else already said ; "So the experience has been faithfully reproduced for your own and your audience's enjoyment.
If your customers complain, you just say: The Director intended it to sound that way. :P"

[Mark Ogden]

Good for you!

Allow me to bore you with a classic story about what can go wrong when people try to "fix" movies that don't need fixing. In the late 60s there was a British science fiction movie called Doppelganger, which is better known today by its US title Journey to the Far Side of the Sun. The premise of the movie is that two astronauts are sent from Earth to investigate a recently discovered planet that is in the same orbit as ours, but 180 degrees opposite. When they get there, they find that the planet is exactly the same as ours, but reversed, sort of a mirror image of Earth. Everybody and everything is the same but on opposite sides, including writing, which appears reversed as well.

As the story goes, Britain's ITV network licensed the film to air, and Rank sent over a print to scan to videotape. So the telecine guy in the lab coat sees the scenes with the reversed writing, and without considering the plot of the film decides that it is wrong, and needs to be fixed. So he flops the film over and retransfers the "mirror-Earth" scenes, and edits them back onto the playback tape. As a result he essentially changed the entire plot of the film, viewers were left with the idea that the astronaut was either back on real Earth or that people on the other earth were trying to screw with his mind, which was neither the story or the intention of the filmmakers. Apparently it took years to fix this.

The moral: don't fix things without being sure they are wrong.