Adult native speakers of German told the pear story in German while or after watching the pear film (Chafe, 1980). With respect to temporal measures, storytelling after watching the film was comparable to storytelling described in the archival literature. The overload occasioned by simultaneous perceptual (visual) and productive (speech) processing shifted some temporal measures dramatically for subjects telling stories while watching the film: percentage of pause time/total time almost doubled, and pause duration quadrupled. Frequency of pauses remained unchanged, but articulation rate slowed moderately. These findings pinpoint the phrase (defined here as syllables/pause) as a stable response measure in speech production. Use of various units for the interpretation of speech production is criticized.