How are Western stars in Godzilla movies filmed ?

[Mikey]

Not counting Raymond Burr's (through editing) appearances.

I noticed when I watch US people in Godzilla movies they appeared to speak English (their lips) but they look like they have been redubbed by themselves.

In the same scenes the Japanese actors are overdubbed in English but their mouths are clearly speaking Japanese.

This leads to wonder how confusing the actual movie sets were.

Actors speaking to each other in different languages but acting as if everyone is speaking the same ?

[TrekStar]

Kind of like Nick Adams starring in Monster Zero or the Japanese version Invasion of Astro Monster,
I have both and in the Japanese version he's simingly speaking Japanese with English subtitles, it's confusing.

[knight errant00]

I think it depends on the movie and the producers and the star. I've seen behind-the-scenes stuff where the English-speaking actor is just saying his lines in English in between the other actors delivering their lines in their language. I've seen footage of Chad Everett doing some German TV show and delivering lines he learned phonetically, so he had no idea what he was exactly saying to the German actors in the scene. I've also read that in Bava's Planet of the Vampires, everybody just spoke their lines in their own language (English, Italian, and maybe French or Spanish?) and then everyone was re-dubbed for each country's release! Seems a pretty confusing way to work as an actor, but I guess they pull it off . . .

[Mikey]

It almost reminds me of how they recorded Star Trek The Animated Series.

Basically sending out tape recorders and scripts to all the stars and letting them record the lines and send them back.

Then a dude in the studio spliced them together to make a coherent story.

[hedrap]

Depended on the actors. Adams and Takarada could both speak pigeon-Japanese/English so they could talk enough. Adams learned a good amount of Japanese as he ended up leaving his family for one of the Monster Zero girls, IIRC. Guy went a little haywire.

Tamblyn in Gargantuas was winging it. He had an English script and replied when the other actor stopped. Japanese sets were quite tight with emphasis, movements and marks. So you just had to wait it out and react.

Later on, the English actors were predominantly people from abroad who were already living in Japan and understand Japanese. They weren't actors, just transplants, which is why they are really stiff. The non-Japanese in 90's Godzilla are gawd awful. Then, everything 90's was originally dubbed by Australians and Godzilla became "Gurzilla" or "Godzilard".

[cjefferys]

It's like a lot of European films back in the day, they were shot MOS (silent, not sync sound) and the actors were all multiple nationalities, all acting in their own language because all the dialog would be dubbed in later anyway. The sets must have been quite confusing.

Later on, the English actors were predominantly people from abroad who were already living in Japan and understand Japanese. They weren't actors, just transplants, which is why they are really stiff. The non-Japanese in 90's Godzilla are gawd awful. Then, everything 90's was originally dubbed by Australians and Godzilla became "Gurzilla" or "Godzilard".

Oh yeah, the English "actors" in modern Japanese films are terrible, it's like they were just pulled off the street because they were gaijin. I've had some theater experience, if I lived in Japan I could bury most of these guys in the auditions, I'd definitely pursue getting acting work over there.

[Mikey]

I totally forgot about the spaghetti westerns