Week 11 - Voice Recording and Editing

13.05.2019

After completing the first set of character recordings, I had moved onto what was remaining: Hope and the Librarian. Having Monday taken by showcasing our game in front of the whole class for peer review and feedback, I had only Tuesday left for my final recordings and editing. Considering the circumstances, I asked our team leader if my deadline could be extended towards Friday, to which he agreed. This gave me a plenty of time to peacefully finish my recordings and invest all the rest of my time in editing.

---

14.05.2019

Everything was completed successfully without much of a hassle. The only drawbacks were that during my recording with Hope, it took me quite some time to nail the required and anticipated tone, pronunciation, intonation and overall character. Laura did the best of her capabilities and, perhaps, I had overextended her capabilities. Or, perhaps, I was stuck on a predetermined visualization of what exactly should the character sound like, which made the recording a little bit hard. Nevertheless, I believe the procedure was fortunate and I am happy with the end result.

As for the role of the Librarian, which James O'Farrell was initially cast for, we've stumbled upon the difficulty of finding the correct pitch. The constantly shifting tone of James' voice resulted in an unsatisfactory result and having other students in the studio that were witnessing the process and joining us for the fun bits, I've decided to cut James off. In stead, I extended an invitation to Samantha Jane Bland who I've previously known to nail an elderly woman voice.

Provided the initial plan to have the Librarian with a German accent and after several attempts, we've found out that the syndrome of mixed accents had snuck into the room. It was not long after that our German turned into Scottish with a mixture of Irish and various English. While it was not anticipated, I believe it played us a good joke for a more comical and satirical scene.

You can find the original recordings of Hope and the Librarian along the rest, here.

---

17.05.2019

Now it was high time to start editing all the complied files, cutting them out, applying filters, changing the pitch, extending them or shortening them. I had already begun picking out the best files from the previously recorded sessions, getting used to Adobe Audition that seemed to be quite difficult in the beginning. What I found complicated within it was the vast amount of options that left a newbie like me left lost and confused. After several guides and tutorials on YouTube and Google, I was beginning to get the hand of it.

In my arsenal, I didn't use too many filters in order to maintain the raw and indie-like vibe, where I was mostly relying on the actor's feel and professionalism. I had several troubles with finding the correct volume, but I've found that the best sound was achieved through the option Match Volume, matched to Total RMS, Target Loudness -25 LUFS. Adjusting the pitch by 1-2 semitones in either direction depending on whether I wanted the voice to sound more manly (in the case of the Busker and the Puzzle Master) or womanly (I really needed that feel of a voice-cracking teenager for Huxley and Humphrey, while Teddy was shifted only with 0.5-1 semitones, considering Abbie's already childish-sounding pitch; Hope's voice was adjusted the most in order to give her more of a girly feel).

All of that took me some time, split into two versions of the original recordings.

Version 1 is the initial cutting of the recordings to the audio clips I liked the most, mix-matching if needed. You can find it here.

Version 2 is the finding of the correct pitches and further adjusting of the audio files. You can find it here.

I was approached by Rylan in regards to the music recording that I was unexpectedly tasked with recording last week, and we agreed that he's going to re-record the songs again at home, provided that his microphone is better suited for musical instruments.