Digital Ventriloquism

Great Essays
With the expand popularization of the computer and laptop as well as the growth of the digital technologies, there are much more innovation about/on the sound and image editing which provide people with grand possibilities and easier approaches on manipulating other people’s voices and images. One of the approaches is called “digital ventriloquism”. However, as most of the technological approaches, “digital ventriloquism” contains various branches due to the different degrees of the replacing or editing on the people’s visualization and acoustics. In this paper, I will use two video clips from the YouTube “Brian Williams Raps ‘Rapper's Delight’” and “Hitler Sings the Jeffersons Theme” to identify the subcategories of the “digital ventriloquism”: …show more content…
For instance, in the video “Brian Williams Raps ‘Rapper's Delight’”, the editor cuts individual words or phrases that Brian Williams speaks during different episodes of the NBC Nightly News and recombines them in the order of the lyric of The Sugar Hill Gang's classic "Rapper's Delight". The video also uses the original image of Brian Williams to create the consistency of the “puppet’s” identity. Nonetheless, there is a clear sense of editing in this video because the frequent change of the studio’s background, the news clip on the window as well as the different combination of the anchor’s suit and ties. Although the editor adds the accompaniment of the song to the video can make Williams’ voice matches to the rapping rhythm more smoothly and reduce the choppiness, the breaks between the shots and the unnatural tone of the combined voice rebels the intention of authenticity. When the first time to watch the video, the audience might feel impressed by the technological effect and concentrates more on the video’s fitness of the beats. Whereas, after they comparing the original version of the song to the Williams’ version, they can better understand the breaks between words and phrases destroy …show more content…
Additionally, in order to increase the level of convincingness, the editor also edits the image and tries to make some sorts of emotional or behavioral attachment between the subject and his audience within the video. Unlike the utility of the original voice of the subject in the Rapper’s Delight video, the editor mutes the voice of Hitler’s speech and imposes Jefferson’s singing of the song Movin’ On Up. Due to the fact that all the sound in the video is a united continuous singing piece, there is less sign of editing on the continuity of the sound. However, the apparent gender conflict between the narrators in image and the sound then gives away the illusion of authenticity. On the other hand, the video presents more efforts on creating the consistent emotions between the sound and the image through matching Hitler’s body movements to the pace of the music. For example, when Hitler leans forwards to the audience and speaks passionately, the song also goes to the climax. Therefore, the video presents a kind of emotional cooperation through the match of image and sound. Furthermore, there are several shot reverse shot in the video which present the interaction between Hitler and his audience. When these shots appear on the image, the

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