Yeah, feels like that or some sort of mock speak miming that the actor does so they can then dub over during post production in Italian, French, Japanese, etc.

I feel like there’s something like that in older 2D animation as well, right? Where they’d animate a character’s mouth to generally move so that when an actor added voice later it was convincing “enough”.

And neither of you thought to link anyone else to it? At least OP can claim obliviousness…