After rewriting our script, speaking with Sara and Martin, as well as practicing timings with our old animatic and rough voice overs, Hayley and I began to start finally recording our, hopefully, final audio. I was worried about this process because obviously last time it didn't have the successful ending that we had hoped for, but at the same time, it was exciting because we were bringing in new narrators and crafting new personalities for the characters that we had thought up ourselves! We were putting voices that weren't ours, to the face of our designs.
This time around, we got to use a different studio booth that we booked out, which had more technology. We however, stuck to what we knew, and used the Audacity software and the microphone with headphones, which worked fine for us. We did multiple tests for each line, and weren't afraid to give directions and be bossy when telling our narrators what to do. At times we did have to alter the sensitivity of the microphone depending on the speaker and how high pitched or low pitched their voice was. For example, Hayley's boyfriend who has a rather deep voice, didn't need as much microphone sensitivity because his voice was quite loud and was picked up easily. But it was all a case of trial and error, and experimenting.
We began in chronological order, starting off with the new opening scene with the father newt complaining how warm the weather is for the season (spring). We tried a few different accents and methods, ranging from very broad, to more sophisticated and elegant. We liked the more northern sounding accent, because it simultaneously sounded quite flat and boring which is what we had envisioned our father newt to be like. We did also like the more posh sounding line, however we didn't keep this up throughout the recording and it didn't sound as natural as we had hoped for, so unfortunately we decided not to include it in our animation. It was easy to do multiple recordings, and it was actually really beneficial for us to do so, because we had more to choose from and a variety to think over.
Next we went with the mother newt because this is the character who speaks next and we wanted our recordings to flow and be just as cohesive as we were doing it. We started off with getting Hayley to record this character because I felt like she naturally sounds very relaxed and easygoing, however we did this a good few times but both of us agreed that she sounded more stressed that the father newt, and we wanted her to actually sound cheery and upbeat about the warm weather. Hayley suggested I have a go, and both her and her boyfriend said that I sounded better as the mother newt, therefore Hayley would then take my place of the female bird. This was fine with me, and taught me that though you might think someone fits a certain character, when you actually hear the voice, you might change your mind and find them a better fit!
We then went back to Hayley's boyfriend to record the lines for the next scene and we only recorded this twice. The first time, I felt like he sounded a bit too scripted, and story like, whereas we were aiming for natural, and conversational. I felt like we did achieve this the second time around, which is why we didn't record it again, and I also think that it matches his first scene, because in actuality it is only supposed to be one conversation but cut into difference scenes. I also think there there are a perfect amount of pauses, and overall I am very pleased with this outcome!
The last character we decided to record in the booth was the female bird, as we weren't going to have the male bird speak at all, just nod and blink in agreement with his partner. As I said before, originally I was going to voice this character, but as I got into narrating the lines Hayley advised that I be the mother newt, so there is still some recordings in this video of me speaking. This is the character we recorded the most because we both found it difficult to 'act' really chatty and conversational, but also a bit disheartened because of the more saddening subject topic. We also got a big tongue twisted, which we didn't think about when going over the script, so in the future I will have to keep rereading it out loud to make sure everyone can narrate it with ease. In the end we went with Hayley's narration and I am happy with how she sounds and I think she fits the persona perfectly.
Overall, this session was really successful and it taught me a lot in terms of writing a script and then turning it into a reality. Though something might sound good in your head, getting other people to speak it out loud is a different story and will not always go as planned. Sometimes this is a good thing but not always so in the future I will have to be prepared for things like this because I definitely was not this time around.
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