SOUND PRODUCTION TASK 2

TASK 4 RECORDING A VOICEOVER

 My partner, Ian Williams and I have produced a voiceover of a scene taken from Shrek 2 scene- Are We There Yet. The clip we have chosen is a 30 second clip of dialogue conversation between Donkey and Shrek. Ian recorded as Shrek and I, Donkey as well as Princess Fiona.

 Our script is as follows:

SHREK:  The kingdom of far, far away, Donkey. That's where we're going. Far. Far. Awaaaaay

DONKEY: Alright, alright I get it. I'm just so darn bored.

SHREK: Well find a way to entertain yourself.

DONKEY :  ---Sigh---- x2 popping noise x3

SHREK: AARGH for five minutes, could you not be yourself ? For five minutes !

DONKEY --- Pop---

SHREK : AAARRGGHH are we there yet ?

PRINCESS FIONA: Yes !

DONKEY : Oh finally !

After recording our voices for our chosen scene it was then time for us to progress onto the post production stage and edit our voices as well as the clip and merge them together to produce our intended successful ADR. The clip was downloaded from a website                                          (www.clipconverter.cc) and converted into a MP4 format of which we then saved and imported onto Garage Band straight away. We then proceeded to upload our voice recordings and chose the best one out 5 takes. That recording was then uploaded onto Reaper for us to compress and normalise.Our Shrek voice over has been finalised. After many attempts, Ian and I had failed to record our voices in sync with the animations despite editing the recording numerous times on Reaper had compressed our recordings as well as equalised it but however struggled with the synchronizing of our voices to that of the animations lip movement. So as to move forward and solve the problem we decided to record our voices straight onto Garageband and then proceed to Compression and Equalisation on the programme itself . This enables us to have a well synchronized voice over that matched the animations lip movement in time, producing a clip that captured dialogue as well as sounds of different sources and environment that matched the narrative of the script and the visual effects of the moving image.

STAGES OF PRODUCTION 

Pre-Production: Choosing 30 seconds out of the 2 minute clip to record our voiceovers onto. Then proceeded to downloading the clip and converting it into a MP4 format.  The MP4 format of the clip was then imported on to Imovie of which we trimmed the clip to the 30 seconds we had chose to base our production on . While the clip was being rendered, we conducted our research for the script of that particular scene and printed it out , highlighting our various lines so as to make an clear indication of our roles.

PRODUCTION: Our production process involved having to record ourselves using a voice recorder with a built in condenser microphone. That picks up direct sound and ambient sound from the environment. Using a condenser microphone that is uni-directional allows sound to be picked up in every direction which includes background and surround sound that gave off an atmospheric quality to the overall outcome of a recording. 

POST-PRODUCTION : After recording our voices  for our chosen scene it was then time for us to progress onto the post production stage and edit our voices as well as the clip and merge them together to produce our intended successful ADR. The clip was downloaded from a website ( www.clipconverter.cc) and converted into a MP4 format of which we then saved and imported onto Garage Band straight away. We then proceeded to upload our voice recordings and chose the best one out 5 takes. That recording was then uploaded onto Reaper for us to compress and normalise.

Compressing our recording allowed for the sound to be described as 'wet' rather than an uncompressed recording of which would be 'dry' and not as clear or crisp as we would want it to be for achieving a professional standard. To normalise our recording on a Apple Mac computer we had to press Cmd+Shift+N and to compress our recording we clicked 'FX' which was on the left side of the rerecording under the Track bar, then from the Cockos list we selected the Reacomp compressor. A box pops up allowing to change the Ratio,Knee,Attack,Release,Threshold and Make up gain of which we changed according to the following : Ratio- 3:1,Knee- 20dB, Attack-20ms, Release-100ms,Threshold-10dB bellow peak level, Make up gain- 0dB. After the compression of our voices we rendered the track and incorporated it onto Garage Band onto the project we had already added our clip to.

However we were not successful in lip-synching our recorder audio from Reaper onto the actual clip that we had downloaded on to Garage Band. Hence forth, we deleted the recorded track we had edited on Reaper and recorded straight off Garage Band, further processing it by compressing it onto Garage Band itself. We found this to be much more easier as we were then able to watch the video clip of Shrek and record our voices in sync. This visual help aided in the outcome of our final Shrek piece as our ADR was successfully in synchronization to the movement of the characters mouth movement.

Because of our change in method in producing the ADR for Shrek, we did not have to split our voices or edit our recording to match the time of the characters mouth movement. Simply because, as mentioned earlier, we had recorded our dialogue onto Garage band itself while looking watching the clip which ensure we spoke at the necessary time and included pauses in necessary intervals. Our next process was to add in effects. Our main aim for this clip was to create a mood by using enhancing music so as to keep the audience entertained while also contributing to the emotional quality. Our aim was to enhance comedic qualities and enhance humour to our intended audience of which are children.  We included a theme tune that sounded quite country like and bizzare that dismatched the grumpy and impatient mood of Shrek. This ironic juxtaposition we believe added to the humour of the scene, as our song of choice was extremely up beat and unconventional of the narrative to include.

To enhance the realism of the scene we also added horses footsteps by ensuring they sounded as horses hooves , as well as adding sound effects of wheels of a carriage moving , while also incorporating a horses sound effects such as noises that horse make ( nahys ) that when heard, can be clearly and distinguishably distinct that they are horses walking with a carriage and making their animal noises. Once our voice track was synchronized with the moving image, we muted the original soundtrack, saved the project, finalized it and exported it.