It's clear that she was talking too fast but it was also clear that they edited/post processed that segment to make it seem as if she was going even faster.

Didn't notice myself - is that possible? They did kind of set it up when they had the fast background music as she was talking though.

But I don't see how they could have edited in the German guy saying he couldn't understand her.

Edited or not, what is certain is that she talked too fast and messed up on the pitch. That's really what matters.

It's very easy.

There are two ways of doing it.

One method is to edit things so that at each camera angle change you remove a fraction of the soundtrack.

The other is to simply speed up the sections where she's talking and use special software to keep the pitch constant.

Stuart and Sugar both mentioned it how fast she spoke. Even if they did speed it up for effect in post, she still must have been talking fast for them to mention it.

I've just watched her again. I can actually hear the cut as one of the scenes of her talking changed - sloppy editing there. She does genuinely seem to be talking fast though. If it is processed or synthesised, then they must have some damn good software doing it.

It's certainly caricatured, definetly, but again even if it is processed, it's also certain she messed up there. So she won't be able to use the editing as an excuse later (though I'm sure she'll try).

Yes, even she admitted that shoe was talking to fast.

But they exaggerated it. To the extent that I thought they were actually preparing to speed her up to chipmunk speed to make a comic point.

The software is quite straightforward (if that is how they did it): you just remove one cycle in every n and do a bit of filtering to remove artifacts.

The editing was blatant, but I don't think they timestretched it. It's true that timestretching is easy these days and would simply take a click of a button (and timestretching something to sound faster is much more likely to come out sounding fine than timestretching something to sound slower is), but I don't see any reason to suppose that this is what they did. Laura, after all, does talk that fast and was babbling pretty incoherently in any case.

They didn't speed her up, but they played a sort of fast, plinky plonky music underneath it to make it sound more frantic and comedic. Her facial movements and blinks etc were not sped up.

Even if she wasn't speaking too fast, I'm not sure a non-native speaker would have been able to pick up the important points from the tirade of twoddle she was actually talking.. as Ed Byrne on the You're Fired said you'd be still dwelling on her pitch opening! And if you actually made it to "the people that are buying are the people that are going to be the people" try working that sentence structure out!

LAURA so first of all, as I'm sure you are aware the world has changed and we know that the gourmet hand-cooked natural crisp market is the next big thing. It is in England, it is over the world. and this is what we are here to introduce to you today. and you can see we're really excited by it because we have a pretty good idea of where Germany is going with the crisp market. This is one of our lines that we have introduced now because this is recent at the moment"

GERMAN MAN er.. let's go one step back because I didn't understand sorry.

and also just to <mumbles something> here quickly, if you wouldn't mind <trails off> the two flavours I'd like to bring to you today are Aberdeen Angus beef with a hint of chilli and second of all we have our English Stilton with paprika flavour

GERMAN MAN: I have really trouble to understand, what was the second one?

LAURA Smokey paprika, with again one of the nations favourite flavours.
I'm very confident that the people that are buying these are the people that are going to be the people that make success in the coming years

GEMRAN MAN: <tries crisp> It is not at all my taste.

I was laughing not by her speed, which was obvious, but at her moronic use of jargonistic over-complex vocabulary that would bamboozle most English speakers let alone a German. Germans don't do word play in their own language let alone in ours. When you speak to foreign language speakers speaking slowly and clearly is only 25% of it. You also need to speak in easy to understand words in short sentences in non-idiomatic phrases, avoiding metaphors etc. The editing was the least of her problems.

They did not 'speed her up'. They merely cut out any moment where she might've stopped to take a breath, which is sneaky but technically that's the speed she spoke at - minus any pauses she may have made between sentences.

What I can't believe is that Stuart the Menace actually warned her not to do this.

That was my impression of the most likely technique.

I agree with the OP. I got the impression her voice had been adjusted too, but shrugged it off at the time. Stuart's advice made a lot of sense but Laura ignored it. LS himself made similar observations about using 'Export English'.

Who cares about Laura? Stop! That's a rhetorical question. She's clearly destined for the bin. Soon.

Not difficult to time stretch with good quality nowdays. Particularly since it would only be a small speed change.

I would agree with that !

Laura Moore came across as though she had never met a foreigner before and was a typical Brit abroad ie. it's not my job to even attempt to speak your language.

When the Stella said that she and Joanne were going to do the main pitch, Laura's reaction was juvenile and bad-tempered.

Laura Moore needs to grow up and FAST !


I wondered at that too. Why would that snake in the grass do anything to help a colleague?

Baggs is a vile humanbeing.

I agree that Laura's speaking was not sped-up, they just cut out an pauses.

Regardless, the guy she was talking to had no idea what she was saying.

Stella and Joanne won that task !

Another explaination though is the effects of stress/lack of sleep and nerves. With some people, the more wired they get the faster they talk. Yasmina last year noticeably talked faster and faster as the series got near the end. On the shopping channel she hardly paused for breath.

Stuart looks to have the opposite reaction, running out of energy and concentration.

I don't think the editors did it to be 'sneaky' or to 'paint Laura in a bad light'. It was just a little 2-minute-comedy segment. I thought it was funny!

I don't understand why he didn't cut in when she started to race away with it.

Well, there was the perfect opportunity for someone to blame if the task went belly up. And he had warned her about it previously, which I still find quite remarkable even though I don't even remotely like Stuart.

Because it looks bad to cut in or worse talk over a collegue.
It's also very unsupportive as it says that you think they are messing up/an idiot. The customer doesn't have to speak any English to pick up on that. Stubaggs has to wait for her to stop naturally.

Well even if they had it wouldn't have affected the way either the customer or Stuart had perceived her...nor the outcome...besides which she's still utterly useless...

Well, she'll probably be on the winning team next week, so there's a high chance she'll reach the interview stage.

Indeed. And of course the camera was focused on her mouth, adding to the effect.

Speeded or not, the client asked her twice to repeat herself. She didn't take the hint or Stuart's advice. She's not very good. I hope LS fires her in slow-motion.