Auto Tune

The new Beauty and the Beast looks to be very popular. I saw it on opening night with my wife and three teenage girls for my daughter’s birthday. While the visual effects were amazing and reminded me of the big deal that was the computer generated chandelier from the animated version and how far computer effects have come since then, juxtaposed with another bit of modern technology, namely auto tune, I wonder where we should draw the line in using technology to augment art.

With visual effects, it seems we make constant progress: the 1933 King Kong looked like the Claymation that it was and thank George Lucas we’ve come so far. Through horrible blending of models and computer in (so horrible you are hopefully unfamiliar with it) Anaconda to a fully generated motion capture character like Golem in Lord of the Rings. Technology has not always been kind to us in visual effects, but they continue to progress, sometimes. For sure animatronic puppet Jabba the Hutt from Return of the Jedi was much more believable than the computer animated version from Episode I, but we keep moving forward. The question is should we?

This question becomes (to me at least) more pronounced when we look at sound engineering and specifically auto tune. When Audrey Hepburn played Eliza Doolittle, she didn’t sing, she lip synched. Did it hurt My Fair Lady that she was “faking it?” Some purists may say it did; some may say that Julie Andrews should have played the part she starred in on Broadway. Maybe, but did it really hurt the movie? I think not. More recently a actors live sang their way through the movie musical Les Miserables. Was it perfect? No, but with the exception of Russel Crowe’s inability to drive the necessary passion through his performance to make his Javert the right counterbalance to Hugh Jackman’s Valjean, it was good. There was no distraction from the performance, dramatic or musical, for a missed note. I use these examples to give viable alternatives to auto tuning a performance.

On the contrary, auto tuning is distracting. From the first song when Emma Watson starts lamenting her “provincial life” it was distracting. The weird wobble of a note pulls away the emotion and distracts from the overall. I’m sure the producers had a very good reason for auto tuning her singing instead of having her lip sync, I just can’t figure out what it was. I know why they couldn’t live sing it like Les Mis, it’s Disney: imperfection is unacceptable. But I would suggest that the distraction of auto tune is a far greater imperfection than a missed note or lip syncing.

Disney has a history of not using the acting voice as the singing voice. Matthew Broderick, who has done well singing on Broadway, didn’t sing for Lion King. Danny Elfman sang for Jack Skellington while Chris Sarandon did the speaking. These instances were animated characters, but, again, Eliza Doolittle. In the fifty-three years since My Fair Lady I don’t think Hollywood has improved on the lip sync mode of having an actor who cannot sing, (at least to the producer’s standards) sing.

So where does this leave us with the use of technology in film? I think we need to remember that filmmaking is an art, but it is also a conglomeration of multiple arts. There is an art to making the sets and backgrounds, to framing the shot, to sound and visual effects. Acting is an art as is musical performance. All of these go together into the art of film and some of these are greatly aided by modern technology. However where technology can make a dancing candlestick somewhat believable, it cannot make a bad singer good without making itself obvious and when it does, the actor looks bad, as does the director and the producers. I like Emma Watson. The fact that she hasn’t become a mess after achieving fame so young is admirable. I think she’s a talented woman. I would have liked her performance as Belle a lot more if she had just lip synced.

I know there is an argument to be made that technology is a progression; that if we didn't have the horrible effects of Anaconda there wouldn't be the budget for the much better CGI we enjoy now. I get that, but, like the superior puppet Jabba, old tricks still work and sometimes better than the new ones. I am all for the progression of technology in filmmaking and in art in general, but the stepping stone to greater things can't be a step backward without damaging the product. we need to remember that art is a human thing, that it is meant to produce emotion in the audience. To that end, perfect notes and CGI are not always the answer.