Interesting, but it seems like he's lip synching, and it's not clear that he sang it.

I'm not sure why these are always so surprising. It's like whistling a tune during a hurricane, or the reason why the deaf often speak the way they do. Part of adjusting vocal pitch is hearing yourself and tuning on the fly. When lip synching (or otherwise not broadcasting vocals like this), you can't hear yourself at all, so you lose the ability to self-tune. Ever see a singer practicing with their finger in their ear? Same thing. I wouldn't be surprised if the same happened to Pavarotti.

That said, it is a bit comical.

Funny, lip synching seems to be accepted practice now. If it happened today, no-one would be surprised.

can it stop being 2005? can the lame lip-synch videos stop?

Seems like lip-synching to me...

>but hey, that's art.

And I say, "murderous totalitarian regime".

Yeah, same thing.



Oh, and I lost all respect for Pavarotti much earlier than when he even started lip-synching. Not much of a role model there.

As a sweeping generalization coming from my own upbringing and experiences, I think Chinese people (and their government) tend to value aesthetics greatly, and thus a decision like this is upsetting but not very surprising. At the same time, though, this sort of mindset isn't at all an Evil China exclusive; look at magazine photos (where in some magazines, they're more painting than photo now anyway), musician/performer successes, diet trends, fashion trends, the meat of the advertising world ("You're not good enough. Buy this and maybe you'll be less horrible.") etc. And I definitely can't endorse high-and-mighty comments about how evil China is; they're just as evil as everywhere else, but they're not as good at covering it up. You say the Chinese media is state-run like that's uncommon. Did CNN lose its "Joke" status? China's just more transparent about it.

Returning to the topic, I read an article on this earlier in the week (which carried a little more substance to it) and apparently the story is that the girl you SAW was selected early to perform (she IS a singer, and a nice one), but during the last rehearsal a powerful politician decided her voice had to go. Thus the music director scrambled to find another good voice, which he did, but then the owner of that lovely voice was deemed not cute enough to represent China. Both kids and their families say they are okay with it (of course, they might have been instructed to say that), the singer that she's just happy her voice was used to represent China. I think that's a classy way to come off it, and whoever's handling PR for China seems to have done the best they could after the fact (ie not denial). I still don't agree with the decision, as I think both kids were adorable, and I feel confident that if the visible girl made it through auditioning and rehearsals, she was indeed a great singer anyway. It's unfortunate that this one dude with all the power decided otherwise, but hey, that's art.

And finally, to whoever posted that quip about slave labour being related, that's gotta top my personal list of dumbest correlations ever. And further, a country that is known to use slave labour might be a sad thing, but is it much better to be in one of the many countries that quietly but enthusiastically continue to fund said labour?

My overall point is this isn't a good deed by any means, but I suspect that the world is chomping at the bit to cry foul at China, given the one-sided press it gets. And as another poster commented, on the grand scale, who really cares about lip-synching? (Pavarotti lip-synched in the 07 Winters, I think... due to age and cold air?)

PS: Milli Vanilli was AWESOME. Blame it on the Rain was such an awesome song I'm not even upset about the whole lip-synching faking debacle.

"American pop stars record their albums with producers and software that augment their voice to sound better then it actually is. Then lip synch performances. This just goes to show you what Americans values are."

You love to contradict me, don't you Farhad. Forgive me for feeling sorry for the girl who was told she was too ugly to be seen in public. Pop stars using vocoders is an entirely different topic.

>> ^Doc_M:
This particular instance just gives a glimpse into what China values and how concerned they are about the appearance of their event.


American pop stars record their albums with producers and software that augment their voice to sound better then it actually is. Then lip synch performances. This just goes to show you what Americans values are.

The performances were the biggest, the most coordinated, artistically produced ever, involving tens of thousands of people performing. When I watched I expected they prerecorded alot of the performances before hand, its just too big to do live, I mean they had practiced it for 2 years they were not going to give chance any give in.

I think the most ironic thing was the whole theme of Harmony in the ceremony actually, I thought it was funny.

Chinese Harmony = Prosperity and economic growth... but only on the Communist Parties terms...

The lip synching was done with Valve's editing tools, like this video

http://www.videosift.com/video/Im-Still-Seeing-Breen

>> ^shuac:
Any game made after Half Life 2 should have facial animations/lip synching at least as good. This game? Not so much. Otherwise, it looks great.
But to MG's point: developers often cite piracy as the reason for PC's exclusion. Piracy is not much of a concern for consoles and the gulf between what a PC and console can each do is getting smaller. We are witness to the beginnings of PC gaming's death rattle.

There will never be a death of PC gaming. And even if pirating is an issue, they would still be opening themselves up to more money than they would get without selling to PC.

I think that we'll just have to wait a few months before we get a port for the PC.

Any game made after Half Life 2 should have facial animations/lip synching at least as good. This game? Not so much. Otherwise, it looks great.

But to MG's point: developers often cite piracy as the reason for PC's exclusion. Piracy is not much of a concern for consoles and the gulf between what a PC and console can each do is getting smaller. We are witness to the beginnings of PC gaming's death rattle.

Ashlee Simpson breathes a sigh of relief, as one of the world's biggest acts is found to be lip-synching.

Then she realizes they were mocking it, and she takes her talentless body back to the US to be impregnated by a Fall Out Boy.

Well acted, excellent lip-synching. Actually makes the call funnier.

Is the second call available? Must search...

Tags for this video have been changed from 'group lip synch, really good fun' to 'group lip synch, lip sync, really good fun' - edited by calvados