Disney's HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL

Alyson Reed is funny as the drama teacher-- but oh, those awul songs.

Wally Sevits...

I've encountered a number of blog entries from teenage females who
like this film a lot. For example:

Scroll down the right side, and she claims it is her favorite movie.
I'd like to think she is not merely a victim of the Disney Marketing
Machine.

Tony Calguire...

At that age, EVERY pop culture phenomenon that comes along every four
months is their "favorite thing ever".

hancock4...

The whole thing is pretty lame. Would anyone know how this movie was
received among young people? I would think an old fashioned musical
like this one wouldn't be of that much interest. Seems like more
oriented toward a 1950s audience.

Also, I understand some singing voices were dubbed by other singers.
Would anyone know who is singing for themselves and who is faked? In
any event, all songs were pre-corded and it is very obvious they were,
kind of detracting from the movie.

William George Ferguson...

As pointed out in another post, all movie and tv musicals dub in the
songs, which are recorded in studios to get the best sound. This has

ANIM8Rfsk...

Ahem. "At Long Last Love"

Bill Steele...

I had that in mind when I said "almost." Very rare exception. Another
would be where a show is filmed live on stage, as in "Top Banana."

wdstarr...

I think I recall reading somewhere at the time that "Cop Rock" miked
the actors and stage and all the music numbers were performed live
as filmed. (1. Presumably to pre-recorded instrumentals. 2. That's
not to claim, of course, that they were always, or ever, done in
single takes.)

This has

nothing to do with whether or not the performers can sing their part, and
everything to do with the necessities of shooting the scene.

David Fury shot a 'making of...' featuretted on the Buffy musical, which
is included on the DVD. At one point we see them shooting the opening
(pre-title sequence) number with Buffy, the Fabio-hunk, the goat demon
and the two vampires. They are playing the pre-recorded music during the
scene, and SMG is actually singing her lines as she goes through the
scene. She's not really trying to sing them well, but she is singing
them, which probably helped make the finished product look better than if
she had just lip synched them (it's easier to make it look like she is
actually singing the song, if she, well, actually sings the song, even if
that's not the sound we're going to hear on the finished track).

Bill Steele...

Then you'll have trouble with almost every musical ever made. It's the
standard way of shooting musical numbers: the recording is played back
during shooting and the actors lip-sync. It's the only way shots from
different angles, long shots, closeups, and so on can be edited together
with a continuous soundtrack.

Brian Thorn...

Its also far from rare for actors to have someone else do the singing,
i.e., Audrey Hepburn in "My Fair Lady" and Christopher Plummer and
Peggy Wood in "The Sound of Music".

Let's face it, there aren't that many people who can sing like Julie
Andrews in her prime, and most of today's pop/rock "singers" just
can't carry a tune, nevermind approach Andrews' vocal skills. Country
seems to have a few good singers (Martina McBride, for example) but
pop/rock is a mess, with artists like Mariah Carey performing vocal
gymnastics simply to hide the fact that she can't hit the same note
twice.

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