Perceptive and acoustic analysis of dubbing of diferent characteres and actors: a case study

Abstract

Introduction: Dubbing a movie is to use synchronized movements of lips to substitute the speech from actors in a different language. This process is very common in movies and animations. Objective: Analyze, using perceptual and acoustic analysis, the natural voice and dubbing voice that a Brazilian actor uses to compose some characters. Methodologies: One dubbing actor working with dubbing for 33 years was involved in the research. In the fi rst step a questionnaire was applied to fi nd specifi c information about the dubbing actor and about the characters that he dubbed. During the second step samples of natural speech from the subject and samples of the character´s speech were recorded. Two speech therapists with vast experience analyzed the samples and did the perceptual analysis considering the following parameters: laryngeal settings, breathing pauses, speech rate, pitch, emphasis (pitch range, increase in loudness and syllable stretching), vocal quality and articulatory settings; for acoustic analysis were analyzed elocution rate, fundamental frequency (mean, minimum and maximum). Results: At natural voice, appropriate variation of frequency and speech rate were observed. At human character´s voice samples few pauses were observed. Variation of fundamental frequency and speech rate were almost the same as natural voice. The animations character´s voice samples showed differences between speech rate and fundamental frequency. Conclusion: Different vocal settings were found in both perceptual analysis and acoustic analysis and these vocal settings were observed in human characters and animation characters.