I found an tutorial on the Operation Black mesa page. Its about voice acting and i guess it work smiler to starcraft.
Its an very long text. So the best thing you can do is to click on the link and view the original page. (the original page have photo's)
Here is comes, Its just Copy past.
I thought I'd write a short piece on what I consider to be relevant for a Voice actor in training. This article has actually been sitting in my pc for the better part of two years now, but after seeing the other prima VA article posted up recently I decided to put mine up as well :)
You might shake your head in disapproval and think;
«Why is this even relevant? Voice acting isn't hard, anyone can do that.».
If you now find yourself nodding because I hit your opinion spot on, you might be surprised after having read the entire article. Doing good or at the very least 'decent' voice work can be just as demanding as making a high poly model or designing a beautiful map, it requires time, patience, creativity and a good ear for those killer lines that really makes a good game shine.
Voice work can, in essence, be cut into three major pieces; Preparation, Execution and Finalizing. I'll be covering each of these three steps while providing audio examples.
Preparation: Getting ready
In order to start recording at all, you'll be needing a microphone. The most common (and least expensive) type of microphone you'll be able to get your hands on are the standard ones that come with your pc if you bought a packaged one or the microphone on your headset if you have one.
The flaw with this type of mic is that the quality can be very varying, and unless your microphone can provide a clean file without background hissing or other forms of noise, chances are you'll be turned down in an application.
Never fear though, as even though your microphone might not record perfect quality, you can make up for it by being an ace sound engineer, applying filters and playing around with the settings, but since most budding actors usually don't have even a basic grasp of using software like that its a better call to just get a good microphone and save yourself the trouble until you've grown proficient with a program over time. I'll be covering a selection of sound editing software a bit further down that are both free (or almost) and easy to use, to help you achieve this goal should you want to delve into it.
If you REALLY want to record sound of high quality, you might have to dig into your pockets and part with some money.
Personally I went and bought an «H4 Handy Recorder» made by Zoom as seen here on this website:
Samsontech.com
It's going on four years now since I bought it, so the nextgen version of the H4 is out. It looks somewhat cubic and chubby compared to the somewhat sleeker design of the H4 shown in the link, but it makes up for that with a lot of useful extra features.
The reason why I like this recorder is that its directional, which means it picks up and focuses on the sounds emitted toward its front, excluding sounds that come from other sides.
Secondly you can choose what quality you want to record the sounds in, choosing between the small neat mp3 file to the big heavy 96khz frequency wav file.
You can also plug in earplugs and listen to your recordings straight from the recorder like an unbelievably fat mp3 player, which makes it somewhat easier to deem wether you made a good recording session or not.
But enough about that, for those interested in getting a serious piece of recording equipment without building a studio in their basement, you can check the link for more details on the H4 or message me privately if you feel the need for a second opinion from someone who's used it for some time :)
Speaking of studio's, thats the second solution, but unless you know someone who works in a studio or go to a school/have access to a studio and can get you in if you ask nicely, I wouldn't really recommend it.
On the upside you get professional help from a sound technician, use of gear you could only use otherwise if you took up a loan and the ability to go truly bananas without the microphone giving you any trouble.
On the downside though, you'll most likely have to pay for the use of a soundstudio, which in the end will probably cost you as much as if you'd bought a recorder of your own. In addition you have to set off a goodsized portion of the day just to make sure you make good use of the time you get once you're there, and if you screw up you have to rince and repeat the process.
Next step is software, and even though I poked some fun at it earlier, it's something you should have and should be able to use, at least for doing basic clean up and preparation of a soundfile.
There are quite a few free or 'as close to free as makes no difference' sound editing programs out there, here's a list of a few of them:
Goldwave
FL studio
Audacity
I've tried only a little bit of FL studio and none of Audacity so I can't say very much for their ease of use, but they both have the benefit of being completely free. Audacity in particular has no bars as its an opensource software program.
The program I'm using is Goldwave. Even though its interface looks somewhat simplistic at first, its a great program because of its intuitive use and ample alternatives when it comes to pretty much everything. Some more advanced options can become slightly tricky though and the stock plugins and filters could use an upgrade, nevertheless, for an actor who is mostly planning to slice and dice his sound files into a presentable piece its more than enough.
The only real downside with goldwave that I've encountered is that its a timed trial. You can trial the program for a certain amount of time before it locks you out until you cough up the money for the full version. Considering how easy it is to use I had no problems parting with that money, which isn't much either.
And since we're on software, there is one thing you need to be very wary of when working on sound clips for game mods and I can't stress this enough.
Find out what format they want the soundfiles to be in.
And no they're not in essence all the same, even though I've worked for both HL1 and HL2 mods where requests have gone in every direction for both .mp3 and .wav for both games. First and foremost it uncomplicates things if you record or save in the correct format (depending on how much editing you're planning to do), but some games like for example «Battlefield 2» have their sounds hardcoded into the game engine, and as such are very insistent on both the filename being correct to the letter as well as being the correct format (BF2 uses .ogg).
Step 3 is a rather easy one compared to the previous two (and a half if you count the format section above), but is equally necessary. You need to know how and where to host or bundle your files. The most common way I use myself is simply to zip or rar the soundfiles into one merry bundle and then send the wound up pack to whoever its marked for. This is an easy and secure way of doing it with no chance of the files wandering off on their own.
Some times though, if you're not overly concerned with the security of the files you're sending, you can use hosting sites for your soundfiles.
When I wrote up the first blog I scoured the net for a suitable hosting service where the readers could stream the audio clips without having to download them first, and finally I came up with a site that fulfilled most of my needs:
Yourlisten.com
It's easy to register and easier to upload sounds. I've got it bookmarked for future reference.
Another site that has proved invaluable to me when sending larger packs, seeing as the limit is 25 MB per attachment on most emails, is a site called:
This site allows you, for free (it only throws questions at you every once in a while asking if you want to sign up, which is very much worth it and still free, or if you want to pay an extra small fee and get bonus features, none of which I've needed at time of writing) to send a package of up to 2GB to whatever email you wish (The reality is rather that it sends a notification to the email on the recieving end with a link that the recipient can click to directly download the package) DIRECTLY. No hosting that others might stumble across. No middleman. Free. Awesome.
Step 4 is finding a location, or in most cases 'locale', in which to record. Your ideal location should have the following traits in order to be a sufficient 'studio':
Normal size: If a room is too large or too small it will affect the quality of your recording. A too large room reverberates imprinting the size or echo of the room on the soundclip and a too small room/ dampened room can give the sound a flat character. Neither are good attributes to your recordings. Your source material should be as non-affected for better or for worse as you can get it in terms of quality, that way you can skew it to which way you like later in the editing phase.
Noise: Even though this might be somewhat hard to accomplish, your locale should be as unpolluted as possible by noises and sounds coming from both outside and inside the room. You can't work if your clips are continously chorused by passing cars or similar sound sources.
Isolated: Yes I really mean isolated, but only so much so that you don't have to worry about anybody hearing what you're saying or how you're saying it. If you know of an area thats somewhat soundproof to other rooms that helps as well. If you're somewhat new to acting and recording this is something you'll most likely encounter at first and then disregard as you grow in confidence and experience.
The final step for preparation is also perhaps the most important apart from having hardware to record with.
The most important tool for creating a sound clip, is your own body, and if your body isn't prepared for the efforts you're going to put it through you might as well just drop it.
The most obvious part of your body you'll need to warm up is your voice. A warm and flexible voice will be more comfortable to work with, will sound better on a recording, makes you relax and trust your voice more in addition to making it easier to experiment with your lines should you get stuck on a particular line.
Here is an example of exercises that helps you warm up:
Remember that you can stream the file directly by pressing play on the small player. No need to download. I know it sounds corny but bear with me here xD*
Mmmmm
Yourlisten.com
Other exercises you'll find useful are articulation exercises, the better a player can hear your characters lines, the more interested he'll be (of course if your lines are bad he won't be interested anywho, but we get to that later).
In general not having good enough diction is perhaps the most telltale sign of an unexperienced VA and the most apparent fault anyone will notice. Luckily its very easily fixed as long as you're aware of the dangers surrounding it. The example I'll use here is a very common rhyme, but it is a very tongue in cheek rhyme if you do it really fast:
Yourlisten.com
Lastly, you also need to have contact with your body. Even though you're only heard and not seen on a voice clip, you'll find its hard to record lines where you really sound scared to death because you're fatigued, being shot at and are one second away away from being stepped on by a giant mech if you're just sitting around comfortably in your chair.
Exercises for getting your body into motion are simple ones like stretching, massaging your muscles and generally just looseing up any stiff muscles you can notice.
Having a body that isn't asleep while only your upper torso does all the work is a requirement for making the more demanding lines sound credible.
In reality, all work should emanate from your center, which is a section of your body ranging from your thighs and up to your lower abdominal muscles, but getting to know that technique takes education under professional terms and I'm just getting to know this technique myself under my opera studies, so unless you're planning to become a professional voice actor, you can pretty much ignore these last few lines.
What I've experienced though, is that lines come more easily if you're in motion in addition to sounding more credible. So if you get stuck on a difficult line, try walking back and forth or just staying in motion while you say the line. Take care though not to use soundclips where the movement is so audible that its apparent on the recording (shuffling of feet, creaking floor etc). The danger of talking away from the microphone is also very much present in this situation.
Thats it for the first part of the tutorial, in the next I'll go step by step on the actual content creation, working on a line from the OpBM script and show step by step how I'd go about creating it.
========part 2
In reality I was hoping that I'd be able to complete this article much sooner, but as luck would have it, I was stripped of both time and inspiration to do so.
And luck indeed it was, as during that time I learned techniques about analyzing and working with text that has later become invaluable to me in my work as an actor, and I'll be sharing some of this with you in this article.
So let's not beat about the bush, but instead get down to business. By now you're probably settled with a modest place in which to record your lines, you have all the software required (or you've shanghaied a friend to do the work for you), your recordingequipment is on standby and you're all warmed up and good to go.
Suppose you got this line from the Operation Black Mesa script:
“Just like I thought, his shoulder has been dislocated, hold him for me. This is gonna hurt you a lot more than it’s gonna hurt me Shep.”
How would you go about doing this line? If you're halfway reaching for your recorder already I can tell you immediately that you're doing it wrong unless you've had a stroke of genious and have a great idea on how to do the line, which implies that you have a complete understanding of its implications, direction, tone, setting and persona.
The things I'll be going through now might sound a bit «of course its like that», but its almost baffling how often it's forgotten or not considered by the Voice actor.
1) Understand your line.
You can not convey what you can not understand.
Make sure you know to the best of your ability what's being said in the line. There is an insane amount of information just waiting to be mined from any given line, you just have to know where to look.
We can tell from the example line that the character is examining somebody and confirming already existing suspicions/Fears, which means that he is concerned about the wounded characters well-being and hates to see him in a shape like this. Also, this statement implies that the two have shared past story, even if its as simple as the medic having hauled you out of the wreck at an earlier point.
We can also glean that he's got someone with him either as an acting orderly or was simply grabbed by pure chance for being the closest and the character cracks a joke at the implications of fixing said shoulder. Maybe trying to cover over another emotion? Is he afraid the wounded character might not make it if he does set the shoulder?
And the wounded man in question is named Shep (or as we all know, Shephard).
If there's something in the script you do not understand, as a word or the like, look it up or ask the developer responsible to shed some light on the issue. With all the made up terms and scientific language that tends to show up in mods for flashy effect it can be hard to find out what the writer is talking about even if you use a dictionary. There is nothing more embarrasing in voice acting than an actor who obviously has no idea what he or she is talking about.
Also, be sure to have a pen handy when going through the line and jolt down any ideas that spring to mind whilst reading the lines over and over. Some of the best ideas show up during the first read.
2) Find the twists
I only know the term in Norwegian so I'll go by a direct translation of the term which is 'break'. (Note; see the Cry of Fear Videocast #4 for another and more visual example on how to work with text)
And no that does not mean break as in 'pause' or 'rest' but break as in breaking something. And by 'Break' I'm talking about a shift in the characters mental process.
Again lets take the example for illustration:
“Just like I thought, his shoulder has been dislocated, hold him for me. This is gonna hurt you a lot more than it’s gonna hurt me Shep.”
In this line there's at least three breaks. A break is basically a term for when the character takes a new direction. I'll colourcode the line to illustrate my point:
“Just like I thought, his shoulder has been dislocated, hold him for me. This is gonna hurt you a lot more than it’s gonna hurt me Shep.”
Each coloured line is now carrying a single thought, and the point where a new colour begins is called a break. In the blue line, the man speaking is giving his diagnosis, he expresses maybe his concern, trying to calm himself by stating the medical condition or simply informs the 'orderly'. In the red line he turns to said orderly and gives him/her an order. In the green line he addresses the wounded, maybe trying to calm the wounded down by cracking a joke.
Now in order for you not to be mistaken and think its based on a matter of who you're talking to, I'll consider a second example:
“It’s too fast, I can’t get a lock, switching to..HOLY SHIT!!! ”
So to sum up, a break is where the character takes a new direction, gets a new idea, gets interupted or in any case changes in his mental process.
Okay so now you know how to identify changes, but how to act those bits of the puzzle?
Simply understanding the line and seeing the changes in the line isn't enough, you have to know the subtext.
3) Decide on the subtext.
I slightly touched on this in the previous point, but its important enough to state twice.
The subtext is simply, what are you really saying in the line? What is the characters purpose with the line? Sure a text can read;
«Hello buddy!»
But the subtext decides what you really mean when you say it. To illustrate consider this; How would the line have been said by your best friend seeing you again for the first time in a year?
How would it have been said by someone who's been waiting for you for an hour because you misjudged the time? How would it have been said if the person in question hates your guts? Etc.
Subtext is all in all what you really mean when you say a line.
Let's take the example again;
«Just like I thought, his shoulder has been dislocated...»
Now the fun part begins in earnest. This is where you start playing with the text. Its up to you, and largely the developer responsible for the script, to decide what the character is thinking and feeling at the time of speaking. For sake of argument lets apply two variations. The first would be that «It's not bad» which is a positive phrase. That variation leads us to believe that the man is relieved to find out that it wasn't anything worse. The second variation is «This is bad», in which the line implies that the wound is outside the mans capabilities to fix or that its going to be a real bother to heal.
It also plays a big role who you're talking to and under what circumstances. I'll go further into circumstances further down below.
For the observant reader you'll have noticed that I've basically just used 'yes' and 'no' phrases. This is basically what it boils down to. Either you're positive about something, or you're negative about something. The reason why, to what level and variation of yes or no is all up to you.
4) Consider the setting
This part really ranks in with subtext, but I've heard it done wrong so many times that I think it deserves a special mention.
Never forget the circumstances. You talk in a very different way if you're talking to someone who's inside an outpost about to be overrun by brainsucking snails than if you were inside said outpost screaming your head off with one of those snails munching on your ear. Or if you're trying to convey a message to someone while being shot at by a heavy machine gun emplacement you'd probably be talking in a very different way than if you were the guys manning the machinegun with explicit orders not to let anyone get past a certain point with death as the only alternative.
5) Consider your fellow VA's.
Just recently I played a mod where I was made painfully aware of what happens when the VA's don't take eachother into account. Time and time again during my lessons in shakespeare we've been told to listen to eachother when on the stage. You have to listen to your fellow actor in order to build a believable response.
This holds especially true for game development, where the voice is the only thing you can relate to past animations, and good voice acting can sometimes help out an animator and vice versa.
The trick of managing this (since you more often than not can't really get together and practice) is to keep the other VA's line in mind when you say your line. Playing out a dialogue isn't a one man game, it requires you to be alert not only of subtext, meaning and everything else I've covered, but also how you end your line tonally, at what level you continue after the other VA has said his or her line and where the conversation is going in general.
So in conclusion; Know what you're saying, know how you're saying and what the character is trying to achieve with his/her line, know what he/she feels about it, consider the setting and communicate with your fellow actors.
In this blog I'll be writing about the final aspect that you'll be likely to encounter as a Voice Actor in the hobbysection and the Freelancer department. The reason why I write 'in the hobbysection' is because this part is more likely than not in the hands of a professional sound engineer in the event of you getting a professional VA job, allowing you as the Voice Actor to concentrate more on your own stuff.
However, if you work Freelance across borders, and don't land a job so close you can attend a studio session, you might find yourself in a situation where you're encouraged or even required to edit your lines yourself, either because the sound engineer has more pressing things to take care of on his timeshcedule, and/or because the team is small and consists of a small group of people specialised in their own area of expertise.
Nevertheless, in the modding and VA Freelancer world, it pays off to know a bit of software editing, and since you'll be sitting on your computer afterwards picking out the parts you think sound the best anywho, why not wrap it up nicely and save the poor engineer the tedious and easy yet time-demanding work of cleaning up your files.
So, you've made all the preparations necessary, you've got a good microphone, you warmed up, you did all the paperwork and now you're itching to get down under the hood of the sounds you've made. What now?
First of all, make sure you have your copy of whatever audio editing software you wish to use open. If you're still unsure about which one to use, check out my first blog in this series about the preparatory phase. Personally I'll be using Goldwave to illustrate. More often than not I've found that some tuts take things for granted that might confuse completely new beginners, so if you think I'm going a bit basic on this one, bear with me.
In the more advanced programs such as QuBase there's a lot of faffing about in order to even get to edit the sound. You have to import files, set gates etc. Very useful if you're working with longer tracks and need to keep track of all the effects you're adding, but for a quick clean-up detail, its not effective unless you're a sound designer, and even then it might be faster to use one of the free programs.
In all the free programs is just a matter of 'Drag and Drop'ing the file into the programs screen, or if you want to go the technical direction, go to 'File' -> 'Open' like you'd do with any normal document in for example Microsoft Word.
Then its just a matter of finding the file you want to edit and clicking it.
Your screen should now look something like this:
User Posted Image
And in my case sound like this:
Yourlisten.com
As you can hear there's quite a number of faults in this recording. One of them was kind of unexpected, which was the doubling (sounds almost like there's two sound files overlayed at two points). If this happened to my sound clip straight from the recorder, and it would not be going through filtering, I'd have to redo it, simply because I have no idea how to remove that kind of static. On the other hand, doing the line over again might even be faster than going technical on the one you have, which would be the case with this one.
Secondly the quality on the microphone is low. For this recording I used my headset microphone, which gives decent quality when I talk on programs like Skype or VT, but when I use it for recording, the quality drops significantly, even when using the buildt in recording feature in the software and not the standard windows recorder.
As you can hear, the clip has a too defined beginning and end, there's background static coming through the roof (well through the window and door, but you get the picture).
I also took care to mute down my S's and T's, otherwise the clip would've been unbearable to listen to.
So we have three things we have to do with the clip in order to make it at least passable for use. Let's see what we can do about that background static.
If you're using Goldwave, click and drag so that you mark the entire sound area. Take care to use the lower one. The biggest field is the detail view and might not, depending on the size of your file, cover the entire file. The slimmer one on the bottom is the overview field and shows the entire file in all its glory.
When you've marked the area it should turn blue or at least give some colour indication that its selected.
You are now ready to edit the selected area.
Go to 'Effects' -> 'Filter' -> Noise Reduction
Then its just a matter of trying and failing on what filter you want to apply. Personally I just go with the stock options provided in the roll-down menu near the bottom of the window and tweak as necessary if it doesn't fit my needs. For this operation I simply Used "Light Hiss and Hum removal", which is in my view the one that screws the least with your soundfile (Don't want metallic echo on it do we?). You can test the effect the filter has on the play button to the right of the roll-down menu, and even if you add it by mistake you can remove it again by going to *Edit* -> *Undo*
User Posted Image
Yourlisten.com
If you listen to the clip above, you'll hear that the blowing of the wind combined with the ingrained static of the microphone has disappeared. I used the filter twice to get all the static away, but still you can hear remnants of the birds in the background. Had this been a recording I was planning to use somewhere I would have had to scrap it because of those birds (or the TV or whatever it was, bottomline is its not supposed to be there). And would you look at that, we even removed the double effect! Some time adding filters can affect your soundfiles in surprising ways, so never be afraid to experiment.
Ok so now the soundclip doesn't sound as messy as it did before. Onwards to glory!
Next step is to smoothen the start and the end. In order to do this, mark the beginning of the file in the detail or the overview window up to the point where the the actual sounds begin. If you want to use the hotkey click the icon on the toolbar that looks like a small clock with an upward turned arrow. If you want to do it the old style; click 'Effects' -> 'Volume' -> 'Fade In...'
A new box will open and again you'll have a range of presets to choose from. There are two types of fade that I use the most and that is "Fade in, Linear" and "Fade in, Logarithmic". The difference between the two is that the Linear fade will fade in gradually while the logarithmic completely wipes the starting point of sound (or the end if you fade out, and makes an abrupt yet smooth fade just before the clip starts.
For now we'll use "Fade in, Logarithmic".
Then select the end of the sound clip and repeat the process, BUT with "Fade out..." Again you can hotkey by using the clock with the downward pointing arrow.
If you have a clip like mine, odds are you can trim off some dead time. When using the logarithmic fade it goes completely silent, its like a black hole for audio. Use it with care.
Now comes the detailwork. If you have bits and pieces within the soundfile that you want to get rid of, you can use the logarithmic fade for great effect inside the clip. Be aware though, that the silence the logarithmic fade creates is so complete that it will sound unatural beside a voice clip unless you've recorded in a room with no echo or background at all.
If you need to go closer to get the fading done properly, use the zoom hotkeys on the tab above the hotkeys for volume change (eg. the fading among other things). You can see it at one of clock of the far right volume clock.
Also remember that if you fade out, you must remember to fade back in, otherwise you might create a pop as the sound is abruptly returned from complete silence.
In this reference clip you'll hear how unnatural such a sudden silence sounds:
Yourlisten.com
But still the opening and end now sounds very much cleaner, and would more readily fit into a game or vid. The background static that I meantioned is still there as you can notice, and makes the sudden silences all the more clearer. This is one of the reasons I'd have to scrap this recording in favour of a new recording.
So, unless you're unsure what kind of setting your boss wants it in, you can try adding a weak reverb in order to mask the silence, but for that I'd advise getting a set of plugins or using a different program as the stock presets for adding room-feel to sounds in Goldwave also imprints a metallic tinge, like if you were talking from inside a metal barrel. Unless your character is SUPPOSED to be inside a metal barrel, this won't help us in reaching our goal.
Finally there is only one thing to do. Increase the volume. This is something you have to just adjust to by trial and error as it depends very much on the quality and intensity of your recording. But a rule of thumb is that as long as the waveform in your image doesn't expand beyond its track (E.g. the top and bottom goes all the way up past the screen and likewise for the lower part in the opposite direction) you're pretty safe.
In my example you could probably increase the general volume of the entire clip doubly so. To change the volume of your clip, click either the clock with no extra symbols on the toolbar, or go to "Effects" -> "Volume" -> "Change Volume".
And voila, your clip is now cleaned up and ready for use unless you feel like playing around with the filters.
This whole process I've showed you in this three part blog is pretty much what I go through before each recording session. I hope this has been of help to anyone aspiring to get down and dirty with Voice Acting and that it has given some insight into the process of making a single voice clip without the extra fluff that can accompany a sound bite.
Remember im just Mr copy past. Not the original creator.
I found an tutorial on the Operation Black mesa page. Its about voice acting and i guess it work smiler to starcraft.
Its an very long text. So the best thing you can do is to click on the link and view the original page. (the original page have photo's)
Here is comes, Its just Copy past.
I thought I'd write a short piece on what I consider to be relevant for a Voice actor in training. This article has actually been sitting in my pc for the better part of two years now, but after seeing the other prima VA article posted up recently I decided to put mine up as well :)
You might shake your head in disapproval and think;
«Why is this even relevant? Voice acting isn't hard, anyone can do that.».
If you now find yourself nodding because I hit your opinion spot on, you might be surprised after having read the entire article. Doing good or at the very least 'decent' voice work can be just as demanding as making a high poly model or designing a beautiful map, it requires time, patience, creativity and a good ear for those killer lines that really makes a good game shine. Voice work can, in essence, be cut into three major pieces; Preparation, Execution and Finalizing. I'll be covering each of these three steps while providing audio examples. Preparation: Getting ready
In order to start recording at all, you'll be needing a microphone. The most common (and least expensive) type of microphone you'll be able to get your hands on are the standard ones that come with your pc if you bought a packaged one or the microphone on your headset if you have one. The flaw with this type of mic is that the quality can be very varying, and unless your microphone can provide a clean file without background hissing or other forms of noise, chances are you'll be turned down in an application. Never fear though, as even though your microphone might not record perfect quality, you can make up for it by being an ace sound engineer, applying filters and playing around with the settings, but since most budding actors usually don't have even a basic grasp of using software like that its a better call to just get a good microphone and save yourself the trouble until you've grown proficient with a program over time. I'll be covering a selection of sound editing software a bit further down that are both free (or almost) and easy to use, to help you achieve this goal should you want to delve into it. If you REALLY want to record sound of high quality, you might have to dig into your pockets and part with some money. Personally I went and bought an «H4 Handy Recorder» made by Zoom as seen here on this website:
Samsontech.com
It's going on four years now since I bought it, so the nextgen version of the H4 is out. It looks somewhat cubic and chubby compared to the somewhat sleeker design of the H4 shown in the link, but it makes up for that with a lot of useful extra features. The reason why I like this recorder is that its directional, which means it picks up and focuses on the sounds emitted toward its front, excluding sounds that come from other sides. Secondly you can choose what quality you want to record the sounds in, choosing between the small neat mp3 file to the big heavy 96khz frequency wav file. You can also plug in earplugs and listen to your recordings straight from the recorder like an unbelievably fat mp3 player, which makes it somewhat easier to deem wether you made a good recording session or not.
But enough about that, for those interested in getting a serious piece of recording equipment without building a studio in their basement, you can check the link for more details on the H4 or message me privately if you feel the need for a second opinion from someone who's used it for some time :) Speaking of studio's, thats the second solution, but unless you know someone who works in a studio or go to a school/have access to a studio and can get you in if you ask nicely, I wouldn't really recommend it. On the upside you get professional help from a sound technician, use of gear you could only use otherwise if you took up a loan and the ability to go truly bananas without the microphone giving you any trouble. On the downside though, you'll most likely have to pay for the use of a soundstudio, which in the end will probably cost you as much as if you'd bought a recorder of your own. In addition you have to set off a goodsized portion of the day just to make sure you make good use of the time you get once you're there, and if you screw up you have to rince and repeat the process.
Next step is software, and even though I poked some fun at it earlier, it's something you should have and should be able to use, at least for doing basic clean up and preparation of a soundfile. There are quite a few free or 'as close to free as makes no difference' sound editing programs out there, here's a list of a few of them:
Goldwave FL studio Audacity
I've tried only a little bit of FL studio and none of Audacity so I can't say very much for their ease of use, but they both have the benefit of being completely free. Audacity in particular has no bars as its an opensource software program. The program I'm using is Goldwave. Even though its interface looks somewhat simplistic at first, its a great program because of its intuitive use and ample alternatives when it comes to pretty much everything. Some more advanced options can become slightly tricky though and the stock plugins and filters could use an upgrade, nevertheless, for an actor who is mostly planning to slice and dice his sound files into a presentable piece its more than enough.
The only real downside with goldwave that I've encountered is that its a timed trial. You can trial the program for a certain amount of time before it locks you out until you cough up the money for the full version. Considering how easy it is to use I had no problems parting with that money, which isn't much either. And since we're on software, there is one thing you need to be very wary of when working on sound clips for game mods and I can't stress this enough. Find out what format they want the soundfiles to be in. And no they're not in essence all the same, even though I've worked for both HL1 and HL2 mods where requests have gone in every direction for both .mp3 and .wav for both games. First and foremost it uncomplicates things if you record or save in the correct format (depending on how much editing you're planning to do), but some games like for example «Battlefield 2» have their sounds hardcoded into the game engine, and as such are very insistent on both the filename being correct to the letter as well as being the correct format (BF2 uses .ogg).
Step 3 is a rather easy one compared to the previous two (and a half if you count the format section above), but is equally necessary. You need to know how and where to host or bundle your files. The most common way I use myself is simply to zip or rar the soundfiles into one merry bundle and then send the wound up pack to whoever its marked for. This is an easy and secure way of doing it with no chance of the files wandering off on their own. Some times though, if you're not overly concerned with the security of the files you're sending, you can use hosting sites for your soundfiles. When I wrote up the first blog I scoured the net for a suitable hosting service where the readers could stream the audio clips without having to download them first, and finally I came up with a site that fulfilled most of my needs:
Yourlisten.com
It's easy to register and easier to upload sounds. I've got it bookmarked for future reference. Another site that has proved invaluable to me when sending larger packs, seeing as the limit is 25 MB per attachment on most emails, is a site called:
www.yousendit.com
This site allows you, for free (it only throws questions at you every once in a while asking if you want to sign up, which is very much worth it and still free, or if you want to pay an extra small fee and get bonus features, none of which I've needed at time of writing) to send a package of up to 2GB to whatever email you wish (The reality is rather that it sends a notification to the email on the recieving end with a link that the recipient can click to directly download the package) DIRECTLY. No hosting that others might stumble across. No middleman. Free. Awesome.
Step 4 is finding a location, or in most cases 'locale', in which to record. Your ideal location should have the following traits in order to be a sufficient 'studio':
Normal size: If a room is too large or too small it will affect the quality of your recording. A too large room reverberates imprinting the size or echo of the room on the soundclip and a too small room/ dampened room can give the sound a flat character. Neither are good attributes to your recordings. Your source material should be as non-affected for better or for worse as you can get it in terms of quality, that way you can skew it to which way you like later in the editing phase.
Noise: Even though this might be somewhat hard to accomplish, your locale should be as unpolluted as possible by noises and sounds coming from both outside and inside the room. You can't work if your clips are continously chorused by passing cars or similar sound sources.
Isolated: Yes I really mean isolated, but only so much so that you don't have to worry about anybody hearing what you're saying or how you're saying it. If you know of an area thats somewhat soundproof to other rooms that helps as well. If you're somewhat new to acting and recording this is something you'll most likely encounter at first and then disregard as you grow in confidence and experience.
The final step for preparation is also perhaps the most important apart from having hardware to record with. The most important tool for creating a sound clip, is your own body, and if your body isn't prepared for the efforts you're going to put it through you might as well just drop it.
The most obvious part of your body you'll need to warm up is your voice. A warm and flexible voice will be more comfortable to work with, will sound better on a recording, makes you relax and trust your voice more in addition to making it easier to experiment with your lines should you get stuck on a particular line. Here is an example of exercises that helps you warm up:
Other exercises you'll find useful are articulation exercises, the better a player can hear your characters lines, the more interested he'll be (of course if your lines are bad he won't be interested anywho, but we get to that later). In general not having good enough diction is perhaps the most telltale sign of an unexperienced VA and the most apparent fault anyone will notice. Luckily its very easily fixed as long as you're aware of the dangers surrounding it. The example I'll use here is a very common rhyme, but it is a very tongue in cheek rhyme if you do it really fast:
Yourlisten.com
Lastly, you also need to have contact with your body. Even though you're only heard and not seen on a voice clip, you'll find its hard to record lines where you really sound scared to death because you're fatigued, being shot at and are one second away away from being stepped on by a giant mech if you're just sitting around comfortably in your chair.
Exercises for getting your body into motion are simple ones like stretching, massaging your muscles and generally just looseing up any stiff muscles you can notice. Having a body that isn't asleep while only your upper torso does all the work is a requirement for making the more demanding lines sound credible. In reality, all work should emanate from your center, which is a section of your body ranging from your thighs and up to your lower abdominal muscles, but getting to know that technique takes education under professional terms and I'm just getting to know this technique myself under my opera studies, so unless you're planning to become a professional voice actor, you can pretty much ignore these last few lines.
What I've experienced though, is that lines come more easily if you're in motion in addition to sounding more credible. So if you get stuck on a difficult line, try walking back and forth or just staying in motion while you say the line. Take care though not to use soundclips where the movement is so audible that its apparent on the recording (shuffling of feet, creaking floor etc). The danger of talking away from the microphone is also very much present in this situation. Thats it for the first part of the tutorial, in the next I'll go step by step on the actual content creation, working on a line from the OpBM script and show step by step how I'd go about creating it.
========part 2
In reality I was hoping that I'd be able to complete this article much sooner, but as luck would have it, I was stripped of both time and inspiration to do so. And luck indeed it was, as during that time I learned techniques about analyzing and working with text that has later become invaluable to me in my work as an actor, and I'll be sharing some of this with you in this article.
So let's not beat about the bush, but instead get down to business. By now you're probably settled with a modest place in which to record your lines, you have all the software required (or you've shanghaied a friend to do the work for you), your recordingequipment is on standby and you're all warmed up and good to go. Suppose you got this line from the Operation Black Mesa script:
“Just like I thought, his shoulder has been dislocated, hold him for me. This is gonna hurt you a lot more than it’s gonna hurt me Shep.”
How would you go about doing this line? If you're halfway reaching for your recorder already I can tell you immediately that you're doing it wrong unless you've had a stroke of genious and have a great idea on how to do the line, which implies that you have a complete understanding of its implications, direction, tone, setting and persona. The things I'll be going through now might sound a bit «of course its like that», but its almost baffling how often it's forgotten or not considered by the Voice actor.
1) Understand your line.
You can not convey what you can not understand.
Make sure you know to the best of your ability what's being said in the line. There is an insane amount of information just waiting to be mined from any given line, you just have to know where to look. We can tell from the example line that the character is examining somebody and confirming already existing suspicions/Fears, which means that he is concerned about the wounded characters well-being and hates to see him in a shape like this. Also, this statement implies that the two have shared past story, even if its as simple as the medic having hauled you out of the wreck at an earlier point. We can also glean that he's got someone with him either as an acting orderly or was simply grabbed by pure chance for being the closest and the character cracks a joke at the implications of fixing said shoulder. Maybe trying to cover over another emotion? Is he afraid the wounded character might not make it if he does set the shoulder? And the wounded man in question is named Shep (or as we all know, Shephard).
If there's something in the script you do not understand, as a word or the like, look it up or ask the developer responsible to shed some light on the issue. With all the made up terms and scientific language that tends to show up in mods for flashy effect it can be hard to find out what the writer is talking about even if you use a dictionary. There is nothing more embarrasing in voice acting than an actor who obviously has no idea what he or she is talking about. Also, be sure to have a pen handy when going through the line and jolt down any ideas that spring to mind whilst reading the lines over and over. Some of the best ideas show up during the first read.
2) Find the twists
I only know the term in Norwegian so I'll go by a direct translation of the term which is 'break'. (Note; see the Cry of Fear Videocast #4 for another and more visual example on how to work with text) And no that does not mean break as in 'pause' or 'rest' but break as in breaking something. And by 'Break' I'm talking about a shift in the characters mental process. Again lets take the example for illustration:
“Just like I thought, his shoulder has been dislocated, hold him for me. This is gonna hurt you a lot more than it’s gonna hurt me Shep.”
In this line there's at least three breaks. A break is basically a term for when the character takes a new direction. I'll colourcode the line to illustrate my point:
“Just like I thought, his shoulder has been dislocated, hold him for me. This is gonna hurt you a lot more than it’s gonna hurt me Shep.”
Each coloured line is now carrying a single thought, and the point where a new colour begins is called a break. In the blue line, the man speaking is giving his diagnosis, he expresses maybe his concern, trying to calm himself by stating the medical condition or simply informs the 'orderly'. In the red line he turns to said orderly and gives him/her an order. In the green line he addresses the wounded, maybe trying to calm the wounded down by cracking a joke. Now in order for you not to be mistaken and think its based on a matter of who you're talking to, I'll consider a second example:
“It’s too fast, I can’t get a lock, switching to..HOLY SHIT!!! ”
So to sum up, a break is where the character takes a new direction, gets a new idea, gets interupted or in any case changes in his mental process.
Okay so now you know how to identify changes, but how to act those bits of the puzzle? Simply understanding the line and seeing the changes in the line isn't enough, you have to know the subtext.
3) Decide on the subtext.
I slightly touched on this in the previous point, but its important enough to state twice.
The subtext is simply, what are you really saying in the line? What is the characters purpose with the line? Sure a text can read;
«Hello buddy!»
But the subtext decides what you really mean when you say it. To illustrate consider this; How would the line have been said by your best friend seeing you again for the first time in a year? How would it have been said by someone who's been waiting for you for an hour because you misjudged the time? How would it have been said if the person in question hates your guts? Etc. Subtext is all in all what you really mean when you say a line.
Let's take the example again;
«Just like I thought, his shoulder has been dislocated...»
Now the fun part begins in earnest. This is where you start playing with the text. Its up to you, and largely the developer responsible for the script, to decide what the character is thinking and feeling at the time of speaking. For sake of argument lets apply two variations. The first would be that «It's not bad» which is a positive phrase. That variation leads us to believe that the man is relieved to find out that it wasn't anything worse. The second variation is «This is bad», in which the line implies that the wound is outside the mans capabilities to fix or that its going to be a real bother to heal. It also plays a big role who you're talking to and under what circumstances. I'll go further into circumstances further down below. For the observant reader you'll have noticed that I've basically just used 'yes' and 'no' phrases. This is basically what it boils down to. Either you're positive about something, or you're negative about something. The reason why, to what level and variation of yes or no is all up to you.
4) Consider the setting
This part really ranks in with subtext, but I've heard it done wrong so many times that I think it deserves a special mention. Never forget the circumstances. You talk in a very different way if you're talking to someone who's inside an outpost about to be overrun by brainsucking snails than if you were inside said outpost screaming your head off with one of those snails munching on your ear. Or if you're trying to convey a message to someone while being shot at by a heavy machine gun emplacement you'd probably be talking in a very different way than if you were the guys manning the machinegun with explicit orders not to let anyone get past a certain point with death as the only alternative.
5) Consider your fellow VA's.
Just recently I played a mod where I was made painfully aware of what happens when the VA's don't take eachother into account. Time and time again during my lessons in shakespeare we've been told to listen to eachother when on the stage. You have to listen to your fellow actor in order to build a believable response. This holds especially true for game development, where the voice is the only thing you can relate to past animations, and good voice acting can sometimes help out an animator and vice versa. The trick of managing this (since you more often than not can't really get together and practice) is to keep the other VA's line in mind when you say your line. Playing out a dialogue isn't a one man game, it requires you to be alert not only of subtext, meaning and everything else I've covered, but also how you end your line tonally, at what level you continue after the other VA has said his or her line and where the conversation is going in general.
So in conclusion; Know what you're saying, know how you're saying and what the character is trying to achieve with his/her line, know what he/she feels about it, consider the setting and communicate with your fellow actors.
==============Part 3
FOR PART 3 I RECOMMEND TO VISIT THE ORIGINAL PAGE: http://www.moddb.com/mods/operation-black-mesa/tutorials/voice-acting-tutorial-3
In this blog I'll be writing about the final aspect that you'll be likely to encounter as a Voice Actor in the hobbysection and the Freelancer department. The reason why I write 'in the hobbysection' is because this part is more likely than not in the hands of a professional sound engineer in the event of you getting a professional VA job, allowing you as the Voice Actor to concentrate more on your own stuff. However, if you work Freelance across borders, and don't land a job so close you can attend a studio session, you might find yourself in a situation where you're encouraged or even required to edit your lines yourself, either because the sound engineer has more pressing things to take care of on his timeshcedule, and/or because the team is small and consists of a small group of people specialised in their own area of expertise.
Nevertheless, in the modding and VA Freelancer world, it pays off to know a bit of software editing, and since you'll be sitting on your computer afterwards picking out the parts you think sound the best anywho, why not wrap it up nicely and save the poor engineer the tedious and easy yet time-demanding work of cleaning up your files.
So, you've made all the preparations necessary, you've got a good microphone, you warmed up, you did all the paperwork and now you're itching to get down under the hood of the sounds you've made. What now?
First of all, make sure you have your copy of whatever audio editing software you wish to use open. If you're still unsure about which one to use, check out my first blog in this series about the preparatory phase. Personally I'll be using Goldwave to illustrate. More often than not I've found that some tuts take things for granted that might confuse completely new beginners, so if you think I'm going a bit basic on this one, bear with me.
In the more advanced programs such as QuBase there's a lot of faffing about in order to even get to edit the sound. You have to import files, set gates etc. Very useful if you're working with longer tracks and need to keep track of all the effects you're adding, but for a quick clean-up detail, its not effective unless you're a sound designer, and even then it might be faster to use one of the free programs. In all the free programs is just a matter of 'Drag and Drop'ing the file into the programs screen, or if you want to go the technical direction, go to 'File' -> 'Open' like you'd do with any normal document in for example Microsoft Word.
Then its just a matter of finding the file you want to edit and clicking it.
Your screen should now look something like this:
User Posted Image
And in my case sound like this:
Yourlisten.com
As you can hear there's quite a number of faults in this recording. One of them was kind of unexpected, which was the doubling (sounds almost like there's two sound files overlayed at two points). If this happened to my sound clip straight from the recorder, and it would not be going through filtering, I'd have to redo it, simply because I have no idea how to remove that kind of static. On the other hand, doing the line over again might even be faster than going technical on the one you have, which would be the case with this one.
Secondly the quality on the microphone is low. For this recording I used my headset microphone, which gives decent quality when I talk on programs like Skype or VT, but when I use it for recording, the quality drops significantly, even when using the buildt in recording feature in the software and not the standard windows recorder. As you can hear, the clip has a too defined beginning and end, there's background static coming through the roof (well through the window and door, but you get the picture). I also took care to mute down my S's and T's, otherwise the clip would've been unbearable to listen to.
So we have three things we have to do with the clip in order to make it at least passable for use. Let's see what we can do about that background static.
If you're using Goldwave, click and drag so that you mark the entire sound area. Take care to use the lower one. The biggest field is the detail view and might not, depending on the size of your file, cover the entire file. The slimmer one on the bottom is the overview field and shows the entire file in all its glory. When you've marked the area it should turn blue or at least give some colour indication that its selected. You are now ready to edit the selected area.
Go to 'Effects' -> 'Filter' -> Noise Reduction
Then its just a matter of trying and failing on what filter you want to apply. Personally I just go with the stock options provided in the roll-down menu near the bottom of the window and tweak as necessary if it doesn't fit my needs. For this operation I simply Used "Light Hiss and Hum removal", which is in my view the one that screws the least with your soundfile (Don't want metallic echo on it do we?). You can test the effect the filter has on the play button to the right of the roll-down menu, and even if you add it by mistake you can remove it again by going to *Edit* -> *Undo*
User Posted Image
Yourlisten.com
If you listen to the clip above, you'll hear that the blowing of the wind combined with the ingrained static of the microphone has disappeared. I used the filter twice to get all the static away, but still you can hear remnants of the birds in the background. Had this been a recording I was planning to use somewhere I would have had to scrap it because of those birds (or the TV or whatever it was, bottomline is its not supposed to be there). And would you look at that, we even removed the double effect! Some time adding filters can affect your soundfiles in surprising ways, so never be afraid to experiment.
Ok so now the soundclip doesn't sound as messy as it did before. Onwards to glory!
Next step is to smoothen the start and the end. In order to do this, mark the beginning of the file in the detail or the overview window up to the point where the the actual sounds begin. If you want to use the hotkey click the icon on the toolbar that looks like a small clock with an upward turned arrow. If you want to do it the old style; click 'Effects' -> 'Volume' -> 'Fade In...'
A new box will open and again you'll have a range of presets to choose from. There are two types of fade that I use the most and that is "Fade in, Linear" and "Fade in, Logarithmic". The difference between the two is that the Linear fade will fade in gradually while the logarithmic completely wipes the starting point of sound (or the end if you fade out, and makes an abrupt yet smooth fade just before the clip starts. For now we'll use "Fade in, Logarithmic". Then select the end of the sound clip and repeat the process, BUT with "Fade out..." Again you can hotkey by using the clock with the downward pointing arrow.
If you have a clip like mine, odds are you can trim off some dead time. When using the logarithmic fade it goes completely silent, its like a black hole for audio. Use it with care.
Now comes the detailwork. If you have bits and pieces within the soundfile that you want to get rid of, you can use the logarithmic fade for great effect inside the clip. Be aware though, that the silence the logarithmic fade creates is so complete that it will sound unatural beside a voice clip unless you've recorded in a room with no echo or background at all. If you need to go closer to get the fading done properly, use the zoom hotkeys on the tab above the hotkeys for volume change (eg. the fading among other things). You can see it at one of clock of the far right volume clock. Also remember that if you fade out, you must remember to fade back in, otherwise you might create a pop as the sound is abruptly returned from complete silence.
In this reference clip you'll hear how unnatural such a sudden silence sounds:
Yourlisten.com
But still the opening and end now sounds very much cleaner, and would more readily fit into a game or vid. The background static that I meantioned is still there as you can notice, and makes the sudden silences all the more clearer. This is one of the reasons I'd have to scrap this recording in favour of a new recording.
So, unless you're unsure what kind of setting your boss wants it in, you can try adding a weak reverb in order to mask the silence, but for that I'd advise getting a set of plugins or using a different program as the stock presets for adding room-feel to sounds in Goldwave also imprints a metallic tinge, like if you were talking from inside a metal barrel. Unless your character is SUPPOSED to be inside a metal barrel, this won't help us in reaching our goal.
Finally there is only one thing to do. Increase the volume. This is something you have to just adjust to by trial and error as it depends very much on the quality and intensity of your recording. But a rule of thumb is that as long as the waveform in your image doesn't expand beyond its track (E.g. the top and bottom goes all the way up past the screen and likewise for the lower part in the opposite direction) you're pretty safe.
In my example you could probably increase the general volume of the entire clip doubly so. To change the volume of your clip, click either the clock with no extra symbols on the toolbar, or go to "Effects" -> "Volume" -> "Change Volume".
And voila, your clip is now cleaned up and ready for use unless you feel like playing around with the filters. This whole process I've showed you in this three part blog is pretty much what I go through before each recording session. I hope this has been of help to anyone aspiring to get down and dirty with Voice Acting and that it has given some insight into the process of making a single voice clip without the extra fluff that can accompany a sound bite.
Remember im just Mr copy past. Not the original creator.
GL HF