Friday, January 30, 2009

Loopy

Here's a fun game to play next time you watch your favorite TV show: I call it "Spot the ADR." Lately I've been noticing more and more in movies and tv shows when dialoge has been dubbed in. Once you know what to look for, it's pretty easy to spot. 

An easy thing to notice is if an actor says a complete line of dialog while the camera is on someone else. Usually this will happen at the very begining or end of a scene. Sometimes it's exposition, like if a scene was cut and they need to explain how the characters got from point A to point B. This is just a hunch, but in a recent episode of Bones Booth and Brennan have an indepth conversation while riding a motorcycle. I think some if not all of that dialog was looped in because a scene was cut. I can't remember exactly what was said, but I remember thinking "I wonder if they cut a scene" while watching it. The camera was too far away to really be able to see their mouths. 

In shows like Bones or House, when there is a lot of technical information being thrown around, a line is sometimes looped in to simplify what's going on. Tonight I was watching an old episode of House and I noticed an ADR. Foreman comes up to house to tell him a blood sample from a 6 year old contained endomitrial cells. Anyone with an understanding of a woman's body would obviously know what that means, and it's made perfectly clear in the very next scene. I guess they really wanted to keep the audience up to speed, because they cut to a shot of House while the line "It's menstrual blood" is looped very well by Foreman. Er, I mean Omar Epps. I've seen that episode tons of times and this was the first time I noticed the looped line. One excellent example that I may never have realized was a looping (I learned it was from the commentary) is in the Firefly episode Out of Gas. In this episode the ship has broken down and the crew is running out of oxygen. Mal asks Kaylee how long they have. "A couple hours, maybe." The camera cuts to Mal for the ADRed line: "We'll start to feel it... and then we won't feel nothin at all." The look on Mal's face fits perfectly with the line, and I would never have realized that the line was added in after the fact.

It's a fun game, but let me warn you: If you're the type of person who doesn't like to think of the process of making a TV show, don't play this game. I'm the type of person who finds things more impressive once I know how it was done. It's why magicians piss me off. Knowing how a trick is done actually makes it more interesting to me, and if I can't figure it out I find it frustrating. So, for me, little glimpses into the making of the show and trying to guess why the director or producers felt the lines needed to be added is super interesting and makes the show better. If you're the type of person that just wants to watch, and not know the magician's secrets, don't try to spot the ADR.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Superb Hand Eye Coordination

I love on Bones when Dr. Brennan gets to pretend to be someone else, she gets so into it. In the first or second season Booth and Brennan go undercover as a boxer and his girlfriend, and it's a great episode. Even better is this recent episode where Booth and Brennan have to go undercover as circus performers. She has so much fun, it's great.



Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Seriously.

I didn't catch all of the inaugural shindig on TV, I chose to sleep in instead, so I didn't actually watch the guest speakers. But when I saw that Kal Penn had given a speech, my first thought was "Kumar? Seriously?" and then "I want his agent." BWE had similar thoughts. 

Happy Inauguration Day, y'all!!

Monday, January 19, 2009

Chewie's there, he's like a deformed Ewok

Star Wars, as told by someone who as never seen the whole original trilogy.


Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn't seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.

I like the part where Han and Luke make out.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Addendum

A couple days ago, I posted a list of ways I made myself feel like an ass at my cousin's house. Okay, I must admit that I was intentionally misleading in step #4. My cousin's wife is a twin, and I had no reason to believe the person answering the door was not actually a member of the household, and it was pretty dark, so it's understandable that I would mistake one twin for the other. However, I've known them for most of my life, and if I can imediately identify Tegan and Sara, you think I'd be able to tell apart twins I've actually met and have in fact known for about 15 years. Maybe my cousin-in-law should invest in some tattoos or a labret piercing.

PS Do you know how hard it is to find good pictures of Tegan and Sara by themselves? I had to go past page one of my Google Image results, which, if you know me, is a lot more effort than I normally put into posting here. There are some on their myspace, but again, most are of the twins together.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

How to make an ass out of yourself in under 3 minutes

1. Go to your cousin's house.

2. Ring the doorbell. Hear nothing. Think "Hmm... maybe the bell's broken." Ring the doorbell again. Knock. Try the door. Knock. 

3. After the door is opened, realise that it actually wasn't locked and the bell was working and in fact you just rang the doorbell multiple times for no reason. 

4. For good measure, while standing in a dim entryway talk to the woman who answered the door as if it's your cousin's wife. Actually, it's her sister.

Congratulations! You've just followed my patented method of being an ass.