My girlfriend says most movies are fully dubbed and the voices are not the actors.Is this true?

Question

She says Nicole Kidman doesn't use her voice because of her accent and most tv shows are fully dubbed. I've never heard this.

Answer 1

Virtually all movies, and at least portions of most scripted TV shows, use ADR, or Automated Dialog Replacement, known in the biz as "looping." Because there is often a lot of noise on the set of a movie (camera noise, cranes moving, directors giving direction, airplanes flying overhead, etc.), the audio that is recorded along with the action is usually not usable.

During the editing stage, actors will be brought into a sound studio, and segments of the film, along with the live-recorded audio, will be played over and over in a loop (hense the term "looping"). The actor, listening to the original recording on headphones, will repeat the dialog into a high-end studio mic. Typically the actor will do this many times, with slightly different styles/emotions, so that the director or editor can select from several takes. In situations with foul language, a "clean" version might also be recorded, to be edited in to a TV broadcast-friendly edit. Other times, words may be purposefully changed due to related scenes being cut or re-writes to the script.

This dialog must then be mixed in with sound effects (usually re-created in the studio, called "foley", but sometimes just taken from stock FX tapes, like most 60s and 70s TV shows) as well as the music soundtrack.

It is fairly unusual for an actor's voice to be replaced with another actor, assuming the work isn't being dubbed in another language, but it does happen. David Prowse is the actor who portrays Darth Vader, and he speaks all of Vader's dialog during filming, but of course, Vader's voice is replaced by James Earl Jones during ADR. Andie McDowell's voice was famously replaced by an English actress in The Legend Of Graywolf. These are exceptions; 99% of the time, the original actor does the ADR work.

Nicole's voice has never been replaced by another (English-language) actor to my knowledge; she simply does her best to use an American accent when playing American roles. Aussies often find it easiest to mimic a Southern accent.

If you've seen LA Confidential, both Russell Crowe (Bud White) and Guy Pierce (Ed Exley) use American accents, despite both actors having heavy Aussie accents normally.

Answer 2

I'm assuming you mean dubbed into the native language of whatever country they are playing in. In this case, I think the original actors are rarely used simply because they don't speak the languages.

Personally, I would never watch a dubbed movie/TV show. I would much rather read subtitles than watch a movie where the dialogue doesn't match the actor's mouths.

Answer 3

Hee hee. That's funny.

It depends on what country you live in. If you live in a non-English speaking country that plays Hollywood movies or movies with another dialect, they may be dubbed (though most Hollywood movies are subtitled in other countries).

But if you live in the US, no, most films are NOT dubbed. I actually have no idea why your girlfriend would even think that; you should ask her.

And if she wants to know why Nicole Kidman doesn't have an accent when she acts in US movies, tell her that's because it's called "acting".

Answer 4

I doubt it. Virtually all actors & actresses have voice coaches who can teach them ANY accent they need to- they're not going to be making multi-millions of dollars on a Movie JUST to be showing their faces! I suppose some foreign language films are dubbed...-but "most movies..."? - No way!

Answer 5

unless they're foreign movies, no that is not true.
american movies are done like that in other countries.
a lot of movies are looped...which means some of the lines are done in studio--but it's the actual actors doing them. there have been instances in which actor's voices weren't great so they used someone else's but it's not the norm. (they did it with arnold when he first got into the business)
however--most of the ambient sound is done after the fact. crowd scenes, etc....are added later

Answer 6

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