Dubbing - DeafCat Studios

The First Video Game Dubbed in the Lebanese Dialect!

Deafcat Studios — Sun, 10 Jan 2016 18:33:40 +0000

Keywords Studios mandated us recently to work on a new video game dubbing project for Just Cause 3 developed by Avalanche Studios and published by Square Enix. It has been absolutely a blast localizing this game into the Lebanese dialect and we hope to see more games being published in Arabic. To our knowledge, this is the first global video game that has been dubbed into the Lebanese dialect and we are really excited about the feedback. The game is impressive, the graphics are fantastic, and the plot is really cool.

Localizing this game wasn’t a simple job especially that we had a very short time frame to submit the final work. However, our talented and committed team worked long hours and over time to submit a great sounding product. We also were very blessed working with highly talented actors that are considered to be some of the top talents in the industry today. Furthermore, we owe the success of this project largely to our art director who was key in casting the right talents for the game without loosing its original appeal.

The post The First Video Game Dubbed in the Lebanese Dialect! first appeared on DeafCat Studios.

5.1 Mix for Arabic Dubbing Movies

Deafcat Studios — Sun, 03 May 2015 09:55:39 +0000

It’s always exciting to work on cool Arabic dubbing projects. That’s exactly what we have been doing recently at the studio and it’s just great!
The whole team is buzzing with energy, putting long hour and having a blast especially with a couple of 5.1 projects that we’ve been working on. Mixing a 5.1 movie is very different than mixing a 2.0 movie there’s no doubt about that. It gets even more complicated when you add to the equation Arabic dubbing.

First of all, our casting director needs to find the perfect Arab voice over talents that can match the original English cast. This is an art form by itself and we are very lucky to have a superb director with more than 20 years of experience that does that for us.

When the cast is done, and the Arabic scripts are ready, we start with the recording sessions. Now this is where the magic happens! We are so lucky to work with extremely talented and experienced Arab actors that can easily dub any class. An international supper star! That’s really comforting to know. When the recording sessions are done, our editing team make sure to clean up all the recordings and make the session file ready for our mix engineer. Our mix engineer is by far the superstar of the studio!

It is hard enough mixing all the Arabic dubbed tracks in 2.0, but doing it in 5.1 is a different ball game all together. Our mix engineer needs to make sure that all the Arabic tracks are mixed in to match the same quality of the original movie which is usually a multi-million dollars Hollywood production. How do we do it? Well it is simply talent and dedication! It all starts with a proper analysis or the original movie audio tracks. Sound discrimination, spectrum analysis, timber of sound identification, spatial analysis, volume mix, re-verbs etc. This thorough analysis allows our mix engineer to plan the 5.1 mix properly and to better understand the scope of work.
From that point over, it is basically talent and experience that gets the job done. We are very lucky to have a great team working in synergy together, for that the performance of one team member affects the overall quality of the project.

For more information about 5.1 mixes for Arabic dubbing movies, feel free to drop us a line and get in touch!

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Arabic dubbing, Quality vs. Price!

Deafcat Studios — Mon, 19 Jan 2015 20:22:00 +0000

For the past couple of weeks, my team an I have been negotiating an Arabic dubbing project with an Indian film TV station based in Dubai, which got us to do a calculation exercise that I thought I’d share with you.
It all started when we got approached by an Indian TV station who was looking to partner up with different recording studios in Lebanon and hence get the best out of their investment. They were looking for studios that can provide them with recording services in Arabic, and more specifically Syrian dubbing for their Indian movies at the lowest cost possible and they sent us a request to quote them accordingly.

A few things we learned from this exercise:

1- Syrian talent prefer to get paid per scene instead of hours.

2- On average, there are 200 scenes in a 100 min Indian movie and an average of 15 main actors in each movie.

3- Client likes to go with a fixed price per movie when it comes to dubbing into Arabic.

4- The cost breakdown for an Arabic dubbing project are as per the below:

Cost of actors.
Dubbing director.
Music and effects track creation (M&E).
Mixing and mastering.
Script translation into Arabic and adaptation into the Syrian dialect.
Studio time.

When we came back to the client with our quotation, we were surprised to find out that our cost was 20% higher than the other studios. 20% was our profit margin, and hence we did not understand how the other studios could afford to take on the project and still make profit. So we had to re-assess the project scope and re-do the calculation a couple of times and every time, we realized that if we charged 20% less we wouldn’t be making any profit and since it was a fixed cost, we would actually loose money if the Indian movie had more scenes than the expected average.

After doing a couple of tests, we figured out that the only way to cut the cost is by reducing the price of all the recording services and especially the costs of the dubbing director and the M&E track creation. Consequently, less time would be spent on dubbing direction and the M&E track creation which would reflect directly on the quality of the final product.

In fact, in order to make sure that we were right, I asked the client to send me a demo of an Indian movie dubbed into Arabic that has been produced by another studio that charged 20% less than us. I looked at the video and indeed, there was a major difference in quality. Basically, the lip-sync was way off and the M&E track was all over the place and that made perfect sense since in order to get a proper lip-sync and M&E track both the dubbing director and the mixing engineer need to spend a substantial amount of time on the job which was out of the question, since more time means more money and a higher cost.

Bottom line, I believe that quality should never be compromised for price because when you have a high quality product, your audience will be more engaged with your movies and hence would come back for more.

DeafCat Studios will provide you with the highest quality Arabic dubbing services at the lowest rates possible.

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Syrian dubbing projects, Pros and Cons

Deafcat Studios — Sun, 28 Dec 2014 19:31:29 +0000

Like everything else in the entertainment industry, there are hypes that come and go and it is the same for dubbing projects. Syrian dubbing projects have been increasing very quickly for the past couple of years, especially that MBC (which is the biggest TV network in the Middle East, gulf and the Arab region) decided to adopt Syrian as the official dubbing dialect for most of their soap operas and foreign TV shows. All of that started with the success of the massive Turkish TV series “Hareem al Sultan” who took the region by storm and it was dubbed in the Syrian dialect. Consequently, all the other TV networks wanted to ride the wave to acquire or retain viewership by dubbing their own Turkish soaps in the Syrian dialect.
Moreover, TV stations have also started to dub foreign movies into Syrian. We’ve been receiving multiple requests to dub Indian movies into Syrian as well Iranian and Korean and we at the studio had to adapt to cater to our clients’ needs.

What are the pros of dubbing into the Syrian dialect?

What are the cons of dubbing into the Syrian dialect?

Although we are getting a lot of business dubbing into the Syrian dialect, yet we have a feeling that this is only a passing wave and we believe that classical Arabic will pick up again. Meanwhile, we are open for business and we are casting Syrian talents to cater to a growing demand.

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Recording studio for Arabic projects

Deafcat Studios — Sun, 28 Dec 2014 18:55:36 +0000

For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been receiving quite a few emails from foreign clients asking us about how to choose which dialect they need to adopt for the dubbing projects in Arabic. It also seems that all the soaps that are being dubbed into Arabic c are being done in the Syrian dialect. Well, ten years ago, the most popular soaps were dubbed in classical Arabic and they had as much impact if not more than the Syrian ones. In my opinion, Syrian dialect has picked up in the dubbing of soaps in Arabic, just because the production houses found it very cost effective to go to a Syrian company with highly competitive cost.

At DeafCat Studios, we believe that in order to reach the highest number of Arabic speaking people in the region, it is better if a soap is dubbed in a classical Arabic and not the Syrian or any other dialect. Classical Arabic is a beautiful and very rich language and it brings a lot of value and class to any project.

Imagine if all those Turkish soaps were dubbed in classical Arabic, wouldn’t have they sounded better?

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