Rant: c-dramas and dubbing, STFU

[cashew]

If you watch C-dramas, the first thing you'll notice is that all of them, without exception, are dubbed over in post-production. There are multiple reasons for this, and I'm pretty tired of judgey outsiders bitching about it. So here's the industry reason why C-dramas are all dubbed in post:

1. Cost: using original audio from filming requires higher production costs. Most C-dramas are made on shoe string budgets. Especially in the earlier days of the 80s and 90s, when China was super poor. Even now, many C-dramas are still funded through disparate fundraisers rather than a media production company. So like...check your privilege.

2. Filming culture: during filming directors give instructions while actors are acting. Actors are expected to obey those stage directions in real time. There is no "quiet on the set" practice. Furthermore, multiple shows shoot next to each other as a cost cutting feature, resulting in the original audio being unusable.

3. Dialects: In a country with over 1.4 billion people, there's a couple hundred dialects. These dialects causes pronunciation differences that need to be smoothed over so the audience can buy that the characters actually understand each other. Simply compare Shanghainese and Cantonese to see how the two dialects are completely incomprehensible to each other to understand why this is necessary.

And the reason actors don't always dub themselves in post-production is also multivariate:

1. Schedule: this is actually the most common reason, the actor is too busy to come back to re-record their lines.

2. Actor's voice clashes with the character's image: this is often a consideration when adapting from an animated series.

3. Actor is not good at voice acting: some actors can't get into character inside a recording studio because they're used to acting with other people in the room. Acting and voice acting are two separate skill sets.

4. Actor is bad: dubbing is meant to cover up the shitty acting capabilities of the original actor.

So no, the dubbing culture isn't always because the actors suck or the producers don't care about the quality of the show. While it's true C-dramas have been...uh, pretty bad in general recently, the dubbing culture is not the cause. STFU.