Voice Editing

Hey there! Glad to see you stuck around because now were beginning to scratch the surface. I'll explain below what it is I did after you listen. So, here's an example I uploaded of a small clip from the very intro to my pilot episode. Now it's nothing crazy...yet, but it's a nice way of opening you up to what I do. Well get to the action scenes soon but for now sit back, turn your volume up and let the scene take you to the world of Fall Out. (Intro of EPS 1: Fall In)

The show 

Thanks for listening! Now the show I've been working on for the past year is called Fall Out. The story takes place around the year 2400. The world had been plunged into an apocalyptic wasteland about 250 years prior and what's left of the planet are factions, cities, and military groups placed all around the globe. The story begins with our "B" main character (Bucky) whose name isn't mentioned just yet, describing/ painting a picture of where we are, and how things came to be.

The editing processes

The Voice

How everything came together, now that's a mystery. Kidding. So, to break it down a wee bit, after I wrote the script and recorded my voice, I wanted to give a tiny bit more depth than I was already capable of (This is called changing the pitch). Just enough to get the point across so we hear an older man. A little too much and you start to sound more like a villain from the next avenger's movie. And a little too high in the opposite direction you start to sound more like a character from Alvin and the chipmunks (unless that's the sound you're going for).

Okay not so difficult, but if you're attempting to do this, I do recommend you take your time and mess around with the recorded voice a few times until you find that perfect pitch you're looking for.

Next while editing the voice you want to make sure the recording is clean and clear. Keep an eye out for peaks as you go back and listen to it. When you stumble upon a line or word that had peaked during recording. You're going to want to highlight where the peak took place and bring down the volume on it. Or you might need to use Normalize. Preferably if it's an easy fix, just lower the volume a little bit until it comes out at an appropriate level, but you may even have to re-record the part that's peaked if it's too badly damaged. Now if the recorded voice came out clean but it's a little too softly spoken, what I do is simply use amplify. And from there adjust the volume on your desired section you'd like to raise or lower.

There's a lot more you can do to a voice such as adding an echo or a reverberation to give the auditory image of what the characters surroundings are. Like are they in a garage, where the echo might be minimal but nonetheless there still is a miniscule trace. Or is the character in a large open space where the echo might be larger and deal more reverberation. Depending on the size of the space will also depend on how loud the character is talking or if they are yelling.

Another thing to consider, is the character in a room or a car and are there other people talking from another room? Distortion will come in very handy for this situation because it muffles the voice, giving the effect that someone is talking from outside of the car or from another closed room.

For the scene you had listened to earlier all I wanted was a clean voice and a change in pitch because it was only a narration introduction. In the next post I will begin to cover sound placement and building the soundscape of the world I designed for you to hear. 

(On a side note, the illustration you saw drawn before your eyes is credited to my illustrator James Stead.)