I’ve been playing quite a bit lately with lip syncing software, comparing the various versions available to me and each time I set out to make a video with a lip sync character I don’t know what to get it to say. I go looking through my old blogs to find one that seems like it might be appropriate as a speech that I could use on TikTok or Facebook and it’s always a bit of a task to find the right one.
The irony is that I write my blog for the most part by talking and having Google translate my voice into words that get typed to the blog. This is ironic on several levels because the world really doesn’t read blogs and for some reason the way my brain works I don’t like just talking to the camera as much anymore if I know that it’s going to be used and seen. And then I turn around and take those text messages and translate them to words. Weird.
So today this blog, the third one I’ve written in this morning before even leaving my bed, I recorded my voice and the text simultaneously. I can then go into a program and lip sync this in my own voice with my own inflections and my own pauses and my own style. However since I’m not actually talking to the camera and thinking while I quote type quote It will seem weird when the talking head says it. Or at least I assume it will hunt I can pictured in my head.
It’s an absurd concept how the world has changed from not phoning anyone in the early days when landlines were costly to speaking to people all the time on the phone and loving the phone and it was your main form of communication especially when the cell phone came out and you could talk for hours with your friends and not take up the house line or talk to people from where you were. I remember the greatest advantage of being able to find friends at events because everyone had a phone. Text messaging wasn’t quick to catch on in North America. The Europeans started using it very quickly and the carriers kept saying it’ll it’ll happen. Eventually text messaging did happen and became extremely popular and then it evolved into the strange hybrid where people like me would talk to their phone, in order to send a text message, and then occasionally translate that reply back into words. All of this instead of calling someone and talking to them. It has fundamentally changed the way we communicate and it’s truly both fascinating and hilarious to me.
The world has developed an anxiety of talking to people because the technology allowed us to. Actually phoning someone is now considered rude. I find that funny and yet I am comforted by the fact that I don’t have to actually phone people. I run a service business where voice communication is such a superior form of problem solving and yet my customers prefer the time-consuming method of texting instead of calling, perhaps partially because of the perception that they’ll get a busy signal or they’ll have to leave a message and it won’t be satisfying, especially when the problem may be time sensitive such as their email not working.
So many of the tech support problems that I deal with on a day-to-day basis would be resolved with a voice call and yet both parties seem happier exchanging text messages back and forth over a longer period of time.
Oh well. 7:00 a.m. . Next up on my morning routine, email and Facebook.
