For me personally, it did make everything feel more awkward, but that also felt intentional. It's a show told through the lens of a goofy, awkward, and cringe main character, so the awkward pauses served to make every human interaction just a little uncomfortable which helps you resonate with Scott imo.
I'm hesitant to accept it as a mistake when it happens all over. In a lesser show I'd call it an editing mistake but considering that the rest of the anime is evidence that the creators care, I think these pauses are intentional. Yes they make the flow worse, but the pauses give SP:TO a feeling of being a teenager without everything figured out; unlike most other shows out there. Like how rough/raw punk music says pop feels too smooth
I really like the spaces between the lines, because it's like the series lets you think that the character that is performing this space without dialoge is thinking something and you usually gess it by the expresions, for example, the clip you eddited the first time that I watched it it felt like the girl didn't wanted to talk to scott, or thought why is he asking me that? Thats the way that I interpreted it and it really gave a plus to me. Also sorry if I made gramatical errors, English isn't my main languaje
Interesting video, I must say I was in the group of the ones you who didn't seem bothered. 3:17 I actually preferred this pacing over the edited one, I felt there was more breathing room for watching the details shown on screen while they were pausing, and not only that, sometimes it felt as if pausing was something intentional from the characters in universe to express weight in their conversations, like thinking what they are gonna say next.
Same, I actually had to stop watching at that point because it kind of felt like his whole point failed right there. The pacing on the edited clip was way too fast, while the unedited was the one that felt normal
The pacing seems fine to me with the pauses. Part of what helped my suspension of disbelief is the performances themselves. As the voice actors intentionally have scott sounding nervous and awkward. Plus from what you shown, the pauses only seem to be 1 second long. I was expecting it to be like 4 seconds or something of silence.
3:04 you basically removed the cunty pause that she makes because the character is like that. She did pretty much the same in the movie where some lines where delayed just as a characyerazation.
Key note: haven't watched it yet, im just going off of what's in the video. Is it possible that the reason those pauses seem weird or out of place is because the VAs aren't implementing any discourse particles ("well", "y'know", etc., stuff you say before a sentence) or pause fillers ("uhm"s and "er"s)? Edit: I did notice one discourse particle ("so") at 3:29, and that did seem like the short pause before it less unnatural, or maybe it's just me. Thoughts? The dialogue clips you included with those pauses seem like they're lines being read instead of sentences someone is actually saying in a conversation. It could be a case of the director for the voice actors not being well versed in producing for an animated series. Anyways, great video! Subscribing was worth it, your videos are so relaxing.
I think the difference in pacing is something I've come to call coffee pacing. You know how when you drink coffee, you're a bit accelerated and can't handle stay put for a second (or at least, that's what the stereotype is, I don't drink coffee and I know some people react differently, specially people with ADHD)? Well, something my teachers told me was that, when you're high on caffeine during production, you tend to pace things faster than you would otherwise. The pacing of the show didn't bugged me and neither did your edit, but looking at it in contrast, it felt like coffee pacing. I don't know if I'm making any sense, but one thing is to watch an edited scene and another would be to watch a hole episode edited that way. Maybe some parts would do better being paced faster and others won't. In either case, I'm glad this experiment helped you get pass that uncanny feeling. There's nothing more annoying, to me at least, than to watch something, think it's great, but it has this ONE thing that bugs me and I cannot ignore.
This is a fascinating detail to examine I think the pauses are definitely intentional however, and not a mistake "Pinter Pauses", popularized by the playwright Harold Pinter, are pauses that are left for ~5 sec, and are meant to tell story through the silence. In the original scene the pauses give some time for the characters to think and digest The first is an awkward silence that scott breaks with "sooo", and the second has julie conveying how dumb she thinks scott is by not knowing ramona Its not entirely one to one, being animation vs theatre, but i do think the notion is there
I’m so gald I’m not the only one who noticed this, the first few episodes felt so empty and I couldn’t figure out if it was because of voice acting or pacing
I studied film for two years specialized in sound. I noticed this too and it's a big reason I'm not interested in finishing the season. I think a huge part of it has to do with the room tone, or specifically the lack thereof. Since all the voice actors are the same as the live action actors, hearing their voice with a silent room tone that doesn't match the probably very reverberating rooms the story is taking place in creates a very eerie undertone. It also doesn't help that in a lot of scenes the dialogue is mixed WAY louder than everything else in the scene.
I think it was a noticable feeling, but it wasnt something that took me out of it or made it worse. It was awkward sure, but in a way that seemed appealing or interesting for me
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I had noticed, but personally, I appreciate the unique pacing. I believe it adds a comic book-style to the animation, and it aligns well with the overall theme of the series, which frequently explores the pacing of relationships.
I think you're missing the point. The pauses are intentional to more accurately mimic how real people speak, it's an artistic choice to make the characters more real and more relatable.
I thought the amount of blank space they put in conversations helped give it a different feel. Idk how to describe it, but it felt sortof like the difference between watching an American and British TV show
I agree with you - for the English voiceover. Actually I watched the anime first in Japanese (I really like Fairouz Ai who plays Ramona) and didn't have a single issue with the dialogue. But when I watched the first few episodes in English, the pauses were so jarring. If I had to guess, the voiceover style for Japanese anime and American animation is the main culprit.
This would only be valid if the original work was in Japanese, but it wasn't. The English is the original and therefore the creators' intention, meaning that the Japanese version must have failed to convey the same awkwardness that the original was going for in these scenes.
@@Argidisparken Right?? I mean, come on! It's Scott Pilgrim! One of the few IPs created by and for awkward people. The whole vibe is supposed to give "young adult who is NOT comfortable in their skin".
i'll echo other voices in here and say that i did pick up on the awkward pacing, but i very much took (and welcomed) it as part of the overall vibe of the show rather than minding it. it felt like part of a larger aesthetic coupled with the: *a)* similarly strange delivery of dialogue (intonation, etc.) (anyone else with me here? like this wasn't by any means always the case, but lots of line reads were very much _not_ the way someone would naturally say the sentence in question, nor even the way someone would conventionally act it out in a animated show... not sure how to describe it exactly) *b)* absurdist story (where lots of weird and/or supernatural world elements are introduced to the audience [and even to the characters themselves, who go on to just casually accept them, lol] very nonchalantly without any real explanation in any way, shape, or form), and *c)* bizarre flow of events (like to me the way we moved from beat to beat felt very "oh, okay, i guess _this_ is happening now") ever seen bee and puppycat? reminds a lot of that show. and i love it, haha. cool note at the end there, by the way, about how repeated exposure messes with your judgement/perception of naturalness. i like to think about this sort of stuff, both from a media-related "how does preceding context affect our experience of it" perspective, and also from a bit of a linguistic one.
Idk, man. I disagree with you that it was immersion breaking. I think the long pauses are indicative of a sort of social awkwardness inherent to the heart of the story itself.
Hmm... this is basically an anime. It's mainly a Japanese production and NORMALLY anime is done animation first, voice acting after everything's already animated. Also, they usually do not use single person booths but have number of mics and all actors act together in coordinated dance like fashion: th-cam.com/video/VMt2io3NPrk/w-d-xo.html Since actors were in the booth, alone, this means multiple things were different than in ordinary Japanese animation production and this might cause some issues with pacing if production doesn't take this into account with extra editing steps allotted to the production. Also, it might be that this is cultural issue where you animate to a foreign language -> you do not have idea about the pacing so it needs additional editing after the fact -> can cause issues in pacing. Just a bunch of thoughts :)
Your example of edited versus unedited wasn't particularly good, and was fine in the original version. But I do see what you mean in the earlier clips. I think there's two things going on here with the style choice. And it's not the actors in the booth. They could edit that down just the same way you can. It's not the actors' choices. 1) They're pausing to give time to convey the characters are thinking. Characters are weighing up their options and deciding if they want to say anything else at all. Ramona has never been the most talkative character, for example. She says something, then thinks about if she wants to add any more or if it would be a waste of breath. 2) They're pausing to convey emotion, but unlike real actors who do things with their eyes and fact in these reactions pauses, the animators didn't pick an expressive style, and so there's just dead silence when a bunch of micro-expressions would be taking place on a human actor. To use your edited example, the biggest pause is when Scott shows the hair picture and the girl, who is already pissed off at him, looks at it and him. The pause is meant to convey her disgust/disdain (which the animator adds a blink to help get that across). But the other instances, there's not animation to back up the words and silence. I'm curious if you've ever seen Mad Men or The Crown. Both of those shows also rely on silence and physical acting to convey emotion at times, and are generally slower paced to let things sink in. They're both very good shows, but I know people who just can't get into them because of the pacing.
For me personally, it did make everything feel more awkward, but that also felt intentional. It's a show told through the lens of a goofy, awkward, and cringe main character, so the awkward pauses served to make every human interaction just a little uncomfortable which helps you resonate with Scott imo.
I think the pauses are important to make the dialogue feel real
it adds more awkwardness, which is the pointof the show. the characters are meant to be 3d, and relatable.
I'm hesitant to accept it as a mistake when it happens all over. In a lesser show I'd call it an editing mistake but considering that the rest of the anime is evidence that the creators care, I think these pauses are intentional. Yes they make the flow worse, but the pauses give SP:TO a feeling of being a teenager without everything figured out; unlike most other shows out there. Like how rough/raw punk music says pop feels too smooth
Yeah I really think it was an intentional choice which enhances its realism and awkwardness to me
I really like the spaces between the lines, because it's like the series lets you think that the character that is performing this space without dialoge is thinking something and you usually gess it by the expresions, for example, the clip you eddited the first time that I watched it it felt like the girl didn't wanted to talk to scott, or thought why is he asking me that? Thats the way that I interpreted it and it really gave a plus to me.
Also sorry if I made gramatical errors, English isn't my main languaje
Interesting video, I must say I was in the group of the ones you who didn't seem bothered. 3:17 I actually preferred this pacing over the edited one, I felt there was more breathing room for watching the details shown on screen while they were pausing, and not only that, sometimes it felt as if pausing was something intentional from the characters in universe to express weight in their conversations, like thinking what they are gonna say next.
Same, I actually had to stop watching at that point because it kind of felt like his whole point failed right there. The pacing on the edited clip was way too fast, while the unedited was the one that felt normal
did not expect this video to be as good as it is when i clicked on it, love your commentary and how cozy this editing feels
Yes
The pacing seems fine to me with the pauses. Part of what helped my suspension of disbelief is the performances themselves. As the voice actors intentionally have scott sounding nervous and awkward. Plus from what you shown, the pauses only seem to be 1 second long. I was expecting it to be like 4 seconds or something of silence.
3:04 you basically removed the cunty pause that she makes because the character is like that. She did pretty much the same in the movie where some lines where delayed just as a characyerazation.
Key note: haven't watched it yet, im just going off of what's in the video.
Is it possible that the reason those pauses seem weird or out of place is because the VAs aren't implementing any discourse particles ("well", "y'know", etc., stuff you say before a sentence) or pause fillers ("uhm"s and "er"s)?
Edit: I did notice one discourse particle ("so") at 3:29, and that did seem like the short pause before it less unnatural, or maybe it's just me. Thoughts?
The dialogue clips you included with those pauses seem like they're lines being read instead of sentences someone is actually saying in a conversation. It could be a case of the director for the voice actors not being well versed in producing for an animated series.
Anyways, great video! Subscribing was worth it, your videos are so relaxing.
I think the difference in pacing is something I've come to call coffee pacing. You know how when you drink coffee, you're a bit accelerated and can't handle stay put for a second (or at least, that's what the stereotype is, I don't drink coffee and I know some people react differently, specially people with ADHD)? Well, something my teachers told me was that, when you're high on caffeine during production, you tend to pace things faster than you would otherwise.
The pacing of the show didn't bugged me and neither did your edit, but looking at it in contrast, it felt like coffee pacing. I don't know if I'm making any sense, but one thing is to watch an edited scene and another would be to watch a hole episode edited that way. Maybe some parts would do better being paced faster and others won't. In either case, I'm glad this experiment helped you get pass that uncanny feeling.
There's nothing more annoying, to me at least, than to watch something, think it's great, but it has this ONE thing that bugs me and I cannot ignore.
This is a fascinating detail to examine
I think the pauses are definitely intentional however, and not a mistake
"Pinter Pauses", popularized by the playwright Harold Pinter, are pauses that are left for ~5 sec, and are meant to tell story through the silence.
In the original scene the pauses give some time for the characters to think and digest
The first is an awkward silence that scott breaks with "sooo", and the second has julie conveying how dumb she thinks scott is by not knowing ramona
Its not entirely one to one, being animation vs theatre, but i do think the notion is there
Great video btw!
I’m so gald I’m not the only one who noticed this, the first few episodes felt so empty and I couldn’t figure out if it was because of voice acting or pacing
I studied film for two years specialized in sound. I noticed this too and it's a big reason I'm not interested in finishing the season. I think a huge part of it has to do with the room tone, or specifically the lack thereof. Since all the voice actors are the same as the live action actors, hearing their voice with a silent room tone that doesn't match the probably very reverberating rooms the story is taking place in creates a very eerie undertone. It also doesn't help that in a lot of scenes the dialogue is mixed WAY louder than everything else in the scene.
I like your narration and also DaVinci Resolve supremacy
I didn't even notice when i watched. It still doesn't really bother me, but it's important to point it out. Good video!
I think it was a noticable feeling, but it wasnt something that took me out of it or made it worse. It was awkward sure, but in a way that seemed appealing or interesting for me
I had noticed, but personally, I appreciate the unique pacing. I believe it adds a comic book-style to the animation, and it aligns well with the overall theme of the series, which frequently explores the pacing of relationships.
I think you're missing the point. The pauses are intentional to more accurately mimic how real people speak, it's an artistic choice to make the characters more real and more relatable.
This didnt bother me, but Ive also played kingdom Hearts which does this exact same thing but bumped up by 5
I thought the amount of blank space they put in conversations helped give it a different feel. Idk how to describe it, but it felt sortof like the difference between watching an American and British TV show
I think the pacing of the dialogue is trying to imitate real life, in real life nothing is perfect so thats why it is like that
I definitely am in the group, it was so hard for me to get through the first three episodes bc of this
I agree with you - for the English voiceover. Actually I watched the anime first in Japanese (I really like Fairouz Ai who plays Ramona) and didn't have a single issue with the dialogue. But when I watched the first few episodes in English, the pauses were so jarring. If I had to guess, the voiceover style for Japanese anime and American animation is the main culprit.
This would only be valid if the original work was in Japanese, but it wasn't. The English is the original and therefore the creators' intention, meaning that the Japanese version must have failed to convey the same awkwardness that the original was going for in these scenes.
@@thefalselemon579 This ^
@@Argidisparken Right?? I mean, come on! It's Scott Pilgrim! One of the few IPs created by and for awkward people. The whole vibe is supposed to give "young adult who is NOT comfortable in their skin".
The pauses give it an awkward vibe, because Scott is awkward.
i'll echo other voices in here and say that i did pick up on the awkward pacing, but i very much took (and welcomed) it as part of the overall vibe of the show rather than minding it. it felt like part of a larger aesthetic coupled with the:
*a)* similarly strange delivery of dialogue (intonation, etc.) (anyone else with me here? like this wasn't by any means always the case, but lots of line reads were very much _not_ the way someone would naturally say the sentence in question, nor even the way someone would conventionally act it out in a animated show... not sure how to describe it exactly)
*b)* absurdist story (where lots of weird and/or supernatural world elements are introduced to the audience [and even to the characters themselves, who go on to just casually accept them, lol] very nonchalantly without any real explanation in any way, shape, or form), and
*c)* bizarre flow of events (like to me the way we moved from beat to beat felt very "oh, okay, i guess _this_ is happening now")
ever seen bee and puppycat? reminds a lot of that show. and i love it, haha.
cool note at the end there, by the way, about how repeated exposure messes with your judgement/perception of naturalness. i like to think about this sort of stuff, both from a media-related "how does preceding context affect our experience of it" perspective, and also from a bit of a linguistic one.
Idk, man. I disagree with you that it was immersion breaking. I think the long pauses are indicative of a sort of social awkwardness inherent to the heart of the story itself.
very fair, I also think a lot of other people have shared this sentiment
Hmm... this is basically an anime. It's mainly a Japanese production and NORMALLY anime is done animation first, voice acting after everything's already animated.
Also, they usually do not use single person booths but have number of mics and all actors act together in coordinated dance like fashion:
th-cam.com/video/VMt2io3NPrk/w-d-xo.html
Since actors were in the booth, alone, this means multiple things were different than in ordinary Japanese animation production and this might cause some issues with pacing if production doesn't take this into account with extra editing steps allotted to the production.
Also, it might be that this is cultural issue where you animate to a foreign language -> you do not have idea about the pacing so it needs additional editing after the fact -> can cause issues in pacing.
Just a bunch of thoughts :)
Your example of edited versus unedited wasn't particularly good, and was fine in the original version. But I do see what you mean in the earlier clips.
I think there's two things going on here with the style choice. And it's not the actors in the booth. They could edit that down just the same way you can. It's not the actors' choices.
1) They're pausing to give time to convey the characters are thinking. Characters are weighing up their options and deciding if they want to say anything else at all. Ramona has never been the most talkative character, for example. She says something, then thinks about if she wants to add any more or if it would be a waste of breath.
2) They're pausing to convey emotion, but unlike real actors who do things with their eyes and fact in these reactions pauses, the animators didn't pick an expressive style, and so there's just dead silence when a bunch of micro-expressions would be taking place on a human actor. To use your edited example, the biggest pause is when Scott shows the hair picture and the girl, who is already pissed off at him, looks at it and him. The pause is meant to convey her disgust/disdain (which the animator adds a blink to help get that across). But the other instances, there's not animation to back up the words and silence.
I'm curious if you've ever seen Mad Men or The Crown. Both of those shows also rely on silence and physical acting to convey emotion at times, and are generally slower paced to let things sink in. They're both very good shows, but I know people who just can't get into them because of the pacing.
That sounds like a you problem
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