The “…*Maybe.*” RESPECT Teaser Trailer.

I never thought about it before about two minutes ago, but I know with an absolute certainty that the actress absolutely must get Aretha Franklin’s voice right if you want to do a movie about Aretha. Does Jennifer Hudson do so, in this RESPECT teaser trailer? …Yes, but tightly under controlled conditions.

It’s not perfect. Aretha had more… duration? Reverb? I don’t know the terms, but she sounded slightly less clipped in her songs than Jennifer Hudson sounded here. But it’s not bad! It’s like WALK THE LINE: Joaquin Phoenix was never going to sound as good as Johnny Cash did (if he could, he’d be touring with his own band right now). He just had to sound as good as he needed to, in order to sell the performance. I think that Ms. Hudson has some hope of doing the same. But we’ll see.

4 thoughts on “The “…*Maybe.*” RESPECT Teaser Trailer.”

  1. Unlike Aretha, Jennifer has had formal training from a fairly young age.. so is more controlled..
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    Aretha is likely to remain a unique talent.
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    Mew

  2. I know just enough about mixing to be very impressed by the sound guy.
    Not to take anything away from Miss Hudson’s ability or professionalism, because I’m sure she’s getting as close as humanly possible.
    Her vocal track is being cloned a number of times, different modulation applied in a number of different ways to the various tracks, Aretha’s own vocal track included at I’m guessing between 1:2 and 1:3, and then the whole shebang is summed into one master vocal track.
    Which is itself cloned and tweaked to bring it forward in the mix.
    I’m torn between my heard hurting thinking about it, and wanting the guy to walk me through what he did.

    1. Yeah, being upset that they had to go to effects in order to get Ms. Hudson sounding enough like Aretha is like being upset that they had to go to effects to in order to get Mr. Downey to fly.

      1. Heh. It’s even sillier than that. Every microphone colors the sound, every preamp colors the sound, every manner of storage colors the sound, translating analog sound into digital source colors the sound, transmitting the signal colors the sound, speaker amps and speakers color the sound, heck, even cables color the sound. That’s before you start considering EQ, compression, and the like that are kind of effects in that the deliberately alter the sound, but…
        Then there are actual effects, which have been used by pretty much everyone since The Beatles went a bit nuts with them at Abbey Road.
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        (Shrug) Effects themselves aren’t a problem.
        Not even when Cher wonders if you believe in life after love. (Not my cup of tea, but it’s interesting and catchy.)
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        Effects applied thoughtlessly are a problem. Two big examples of this are the various pop artists who can only sing through the wonders of autotune, and the awards show that decided to alter the time signature of “Let It Go” and were shocked that the singer couldn’t keep up. But there are any number of examples where overproduction has drained the life out of a performance.

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