Real people don’t have scripts to read from.
But seriously, listen to the way people talk. It’s chaotic, messy, often unclear and very inefficient. Conversations meander wildly, with dangling threads that are never concluded and often times with people talking past each other as much as to each other. If you wrote dialogue that way it would just be harder for audiences to follow and waste precious screentime.
Realistic sounding dialogue is about writing what a real person would say if they stopped to think for a minute between each statement.
I’ve seen films where they’ve left in takes where people stumbled over their words, and the overall effect was positive, I thought.
As soon as you notice this, it becomes painful every time someone delivers a long monologue without going “um” once.
My colleagues try their best but I have gained a new found hatred of the word “basically”.
Ross from Friends stutters a lot. I’ve often wondered if the stuttering is scripted, an intentional quirk the writers chose for Ross, or if the actor naturally talks that way
It’s a common technique that some actors use, I don’t know what they call it, but I call it the “dub dub dub” because sometimes they say something similar to that when they’re struggling for a word or pretending to struggle for a word.
Fun fact the friends show was written specifically for David Schwimmer and he was the only character who didn’t have to audition because the show was written for him. He’s got some serious entertainment industry connections apparently. And in the state of California for jobs that require sexual harassment prevention training every two years, Schwimmer plays a role as the manager of a company who sexually harasses a new employee. It’s super cringe. And we have to watch it & pass a quiz on it every 2 years 🙄
Well, he didn’t stumble over words but instead over a broken toe, but they still left it in.
Which is why Steven Spielberg’s early movies were so refreshing. The overlapping dialogue of his various breakfast/dinner table scenes were a standout of his style.
If you wrote dialogue that way it would just be harder for audiences to follow and waste precious screentime.
Unless you happen to be Robert Altman, je suppose.
That’s why the cutscenes in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 are so great. People interrupt each other, talk over each other, are unsure in what they’re saying. And we got that from a frickin’ video game where the action was recorded before the words with the voice actors never being in the same room together.
Simply amazing. I hope they can keep that level up for the movie.
I haven’t played it, but that sounds great honestly! :)
One of the things that absolutely winds me up in game cutscenes is where it becomes super obvious it’s just actors in a room. This is especially apparent when there is ellipsis, such as when a character is interrupted by a surprise event:
Char A: “We should head back before the…”
Char B: “Hey, look out!”
In writing, this is fine, but in the recording booth it almost always ends up with A’s voice actor stopping in the middle of their sentence for seemingly no reason (because they have literally no more script to read) and then B ‘interrupting’ them after a weird pause of dead air, with absolutely no overlap or cross-talk. It’s utterly unrealistic and completely destroys any illusion we were experiencing a genuine interaction.
I’m honestly shocked at how many big-budget games that clearly have a focus on narrative and story put out immersion-breaking rubbish like that and think it’s good enough.
On a somewhat related note, if you enjoy anime and good voice acting then check out “MILKY☆SUBWAY the Galactic Limited Express”
It’s super-short at 3 minutes per episode, and has fantastic VA work that sounds like real people having organic conversations, rather than reading a script. You can watch the whole thing on youtube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2erzV0ZmZKca9UHllZ2DObnwC56ffwqH
Honestly the best anime I’ve seen in ages.
Honestly bjoern’s comment confuses me a bit because the pauses in the dialogue in Clair Obscur are one of the VERY few negatives I’m noticing about the game. They’re clearly pauses between different takes of different actors so it’s not like I’d call the actors bad at their job or the game unplayable because of the pauses or anything. I recognise that it’s a limitation of resources and I can very much live with it in an otherwise very good game. But the pauses are noticeable. Maybe it’s different on different systems…? I play on PS5.
They usually edit it out.
Perfect reaction!
Scripted dialog is usually idealized, not realistic. Whenever a script includes someone getting tongue tied, it’s always to say something about them. There are characters that do often mess up words in a script, like the nervous young person with a massive crush or the constantly distracted old genius
ha, both excellent Futurama references
I rarely hear it IRL, either. 🤷♂️
I like a lot of stuff Aaron Sorkin does (The West Wing, for example, but also The Newsroom) but damn, his dialogue is too perfect. Nobody talks that way IRL.
That’s why one take Jake gets paid the big bucks.
