Lip Synching- What is it? Why is it important?

Lip syncing is a technical term for matching lip movements with music. The idea is that it looks as though you are singing the lyrics in a song. It is otherwise known as miming.

Lip synching first came around during the 1980's, when MTV first started playing music videos. The idea is that then artists could just use a pre-recorded version of the song and then just edit the music video to fit in time with the accompanying images and with the lip synching.

Also it is sometimes used when artists have live performances that are based around heavy dance routines. This allows for the artist to be able to focus on the dancing. Other than this, sometimes a pre-recorded version of the song will be in the background at live shows, and then they will sing certain parts of the song over the top, whilst some may still be mimed.

This has both positives and negatives:

Positives:

- It means the artists can concentrate solely on the music video rather than having to sing at the same time.

- It can allow the artist to have full on, extreme dance routines in music videos.

- It allows for the song to always sound how it should- regardless of whether its a live performance or music video.

Negatives:

- If editing is poor quality, it can stand out and look very obvious to the audience that they are pretending and in fact have lip synched.

- At live shows, it means audiences may not get a live performance.

This is an example of where lip synching has gone wrong, it was in 2009 during Britney Spears live show. Fans were walking out on the performance before the end of the concert and therefore meant that she has left fans unsatisfied.



This is another example, this time using a previous students media work. They tried to reproduce a One Direction song and attempted to lip synch over it. However, due to poor editing it is very obvious and meant the end result was it looking poor quality and not very professional.



Therefore it is important, if lip synching that it is done with great care and ensure that it actually looks realistic. Otherwise, it can make a music video look very poor quality and lose the validity and verisimilitude of a piece.