This reflection will cover 2 double periods of my group recording dialogue for the comic strip. Since my voice is quite deep and raspy, I took on 2 roles from the comic: the Charioteer and the Assasin. For the Charioteer, I just went with my normal voice. However, for the Assasin, I had to make my voice even deeper and raspier, much like how Christian Bale creates his Batman voice. Joanna Fu played the Daemon Queen, and Lucas and Josh assisted me in creating fighting noises. Justin was in charge of handling the camera for documentary purposes. We did the recording in a music practice room because it was private and much quieter than any other room in school, which thus reduces the amount of inane background noise able to picked up by the boom mic.
We recorded by scene, starting off with the pre-fight scene between the Assasin and the Charioteer. Since I was the voice of both these characters, what I proposed to do was to record all the lines for one character, and then the same for the other, starting off with the Charioteer. The way we recorded the dialogue was that the speaker had to say his or her lines for a specific section of the script at least 3 times perfectly, each time experimenting with different ways that the line could be said. Once that is done, the speaker would move on to his or her next line and repeat the same process. Because I have done acting extensively and have also done voice-over work before, it was easy for me to get into the characters for recording. However, this also resulted in myself creating many weird or funny facial gestures which were unfortunately captured by Justin's cinematography.
What we realized during the recording process was that it was very tedious. Sometimes we had to repeat the lines numerous times either because he/she messed up the line or was not saying it right. Each group member constantly gave comments on how to improve the speaker's lines in terms of getting more into character. As a result, we tended to waste a bit of time and often got quite rowdy due to conflicting opinions. Nonetheless, it was great fun and we all had our share of laughs. The other thing I realized during the recording was that our voices got really sore after awhile. Especially mine, since I had to put on a really deep and raspy voice which of course strained my vocal cords. We often had to go out to fetch some water and rest because we simply did not have the vocal energy to continue to shout, scream, grunt or even talk in front of the mic.
One thing that really bugged me today was my peers' refusal to get into character or even say his or her lines properly. This mainly applies to Josh and Joanna. Josh only needed to scream "Mother!" in front of the mic in a youngster's tone of voice which he could do quite easily by accessing his falsetto, but yet it still took a lot of persuasion and inane begging to ask him to do it in front of the microphone multiple times. Joanna is the voice of the Daemon-Queen, so we told her to sound more royal, with more authority. However, after giving her tons of ways to improve, it still took her a long time to actually say the lines the way we wanted her to. She always either laughed during the recording of her dialogue, or was saying it too fast, stuttering, sounded too girly and adolescent, or just fooling around. No matter, in the end, we got what we wanted.
After about 2 double-periods of recording and straining our voices to the max, we went on to capture the tape onto Final Cut Pro. However, just as we were about to relax and rest, we found out that our tapehead was dirty and thus all of our footage was CORRUPTED. NOOO!!!!! This meant that we had to record again. However, this time, we know exactly what we had to do and thus are able to complete it much more efficiently.
We recorded by scene, starting off with the pre-fight scene between the Assasin and the Charioteer. Since I was the voice of both these characters, what I proposed to do was to record all the lines for one character, and then the same for the other, starting off with the Charioteer. The way we recorded the dialogue was that the speaker had to say his or her lines for a specific section of the script at least 3 times perfectly, each time experimenting with different ways that the line could be said. Once that is done, the speaker would move on to his or her next line and repeat the same process. Because I have done acting extensively and have also done voice-over work before, it was easy for me to get into the characters for recording. However, this also resulted in myself creating many weird or funny facial gestures which were unfortunately captured by Justin's cinematography.
What we realized during the recording process was that it was very tedious. Sometimes we had to repeat the lines numerous times either because he/she messed up the line or was not saying it right. Each group member constantly gave comments on how to improve the speaker's lines in terms of getting more into character. As a result, we tended to waste a bit of time and often got quite rowdy due to conflicting opinions. Nonetheless, it was great fun and we all had our share of laughs. The other thing I realized during the recording was that our voices got really sore after awhile. Especially mine, since I had to put on a really deep and raspy voice which of course strained my vocal cords. We often had to go out to fetch some water and rest because we simply did not have the vocal energy to continue to shout, scream, grunt or even talk in front of the mic.
One thing that really bugged me today was my peers' refusal to get into character or even say his or her lines properly. This mainly applies to Josh and Joanna. Josh only needed to scream "Mother!" in front of the mic in a youngster's tone of voice which he could do quite easily by accessing his falsetto, but yet it still took a lot of persuasion and inane begging to ask him to do it in front of the microphone multiple times. Joanna is the voice of the Daemon-Queen, so we told her to sound more royal, with more authority. However, after giving her tons of ways to improve, it still took her a long time to actually say the lines the way we wanted her to. She always either laughed during the recording of her dialogue, or was saying it too fast, stuttering, sounded too girly and adolescent, or just fooling around. No matter, in the end, we got what we wanted.
After about 2 double-periods of recording and straining our voices to the max, we went on to capture the tape onto Final Cut Pro. However, just as we were about to relax and rest, we found out that our tapehead was dirty and thus all of our footage was CORRUPTED. NOOO!!!!! This meant that we had to record again. However, this time, we know exactly what we had to do and thus are able to complete it much more efficiently.
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