Low Pro-Dow
production and Animation
wEEK Eleven- Fourteen
16/11/2020
Fun Health update
Another little personal bit - I'll let you know when I'm talking about the project again.
Been a few weeks since I wrote one of these, huh? Long story short - I don't have a tumor in my head (yay), my condition keeps getting worse though (boo.) I'm now at the stage where everything feels like a challenge, and when 4 pm strikes, I have a 50/50 chance of my body giving in a little and forcing me into a bedridden state. After some fun blood tests, we still have no answers... So we're gonna have MORE blood tests!
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I may be making light of the situation but after 12 months of being ill and getting worse with no answers... I'm so frustrated. Every day my roommates have had to do more and more for me, while I lay in bed overthinking then stressing about the lack of work I've completed. I know my health comes first, but that voice in the back of my head won't let me rest. I feel as if I'm not good enough, that I'm hindering the project as a whole. I hate it so much.
This isn't the first project I've done while seriously unwell. Heck, I did my final year at college getting rushed in and out of the hospital! No idea how I got an A, but I do know that means I can get through this too. Yes, the university is a lot more challenging than college, and the expectations are much higher, trust me, I know. However, I have to keep telling myself I can do this. I am going to get through this. I always do.
The difference between now and college was, we eventually figured out what was wrong. I was getting treatments, and getting better. Right now, we don't know what's wrong or why I am getting worse. We have every theory from glandular fever to HIV, but no way of relieving symptoms or improving. So I keep going. It's all I can do so I will.
Now back to the actual project!
Whoa, this isn’t about a single week!
That's right, this covers a whole bundle of weeks! I found myself going back and forth a lot while working through auditions, working with voice actors, gathering audio, editing audio/visuals, and making plans for moving forward. Of course on top of all that I've been balancing my academic work! It felt only right to put all the development from my progress together in a slightly more linear way.
So, what have I been up to?
Auditions, responses, and casting​
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Out of all the people who originally applied and were sent the audition files, only 6 (Including myself and Kasper) submitted an audition.
Kasper and I then reviewed all the submissions, taking into consideration both performance as well as audio quality. As we are unable to physically gather to create more consistent recordings.
All the auditions were good, and all gave us a lot of inspiration in different ways. However, not everyone could get a role.
In Total, we received 3 auditions for Douglas/Dimond Dozen, 3 for Taylor, and 2 for Stacey.
Douglas/Dimond Dozen
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Taylor
Stacey
The Stacey submissions consisted of myself and one other submission. While the other submission was great performance-wise - their audio quality was lower than we required. Because of this, I got the role of Stacey by default. Even though I don't feel I am the best fit for the role, it is our best option for consistent audio quality.
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Taylor's voice was something we were very unsure of at first. So we reviewed them all with a pinch of salt. After reviewing them all, while one submission gave a lot of good variants, they were unable to do a Scottish accent. The second submission was from the same person we received the Stacey audition. Due to their audio quality, we couldn't go with them either. Because of all this, Kasper decided to try out for the role, and instantly it felt like a perfect fit.
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Submissions for the role of Douglas consisted of myself, and 2 external auditions. While both gave good performances and audio quality - one of them stood out among the rest. William Malone's portrayal of Douglas/Dimond Dozen left Kasper and me in stitches! His voice fitted perfectly with our visions, leading us to chose him over everyone else.
Rejection emails
Acceptance email
Kasper
Voice acting and recording​
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As we were not able to meet up and record in person, we needed to do virtual recording sessions. For this to be successful, we needed to make sure everyone was able to record their own audio, communicate with each other in real-time, and assure files can be sent correctly. As the auditions required applicants to capture and send in their own audio, we were already off to a good start!
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Recording took place over the course of 2 days. We met-up using the EnBee Studio discord server, which allowed us to bounce ideas off each other. This was a very important aspect I wanted. As it was my first time writing, I am very aware that some of the dialogue could have sounded more natural and conversational. Being able to develop the tone via a read through was something I felt was a priority! Our first day mainly revolved around this development of the original script.
The second day had a bigger focus on recording and directing. During this, I got recordings of group read-throughs, made some final notes, then worked one on one with William and Kasper. With each of them, I went through every line individually and discussed with them how the line could/should be performed, then recorded many variants of each line. While this took a long time, I felt it was important to get something that felt/sounded natural coming through the actors' voices.
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As for my own recordings - I asked Kasper to help direct me. We already felt I was not quite the right fit for Stacey, but that didn't stop us from trying to get the best possible result that we could! Kasper suggested quite a few line changes, and I recorded far more variations because of it. While we had more takes to chose from, some lines still disrupted the natural flow of conversation. However, we decided to work with what we had gotten so far and proceed with creating an animatic. The hope was that seeing the scene come together would help us see what we should be changing as well as how.
Kasper
Me
william
Editing
Once I had all of the voice audio, I began going through each take to find the best fitting lines. The voice audio required some mild adjustments, mainly the removal of background noise.
I searched online for relevant royalty-free sound effects as well as music. Using all the audio content I gathered, I used Adobe Audition to edit them all together, to create the audio for the animatic.
As we did not have the storyboard frames that have been re-drawn in the style of the scene yet, I used the rough frames I created to make an equally rough animatic.
