Production// Voice recording

Recording from a basement

Today I recorded the main characters voice, earlier in the week I'd recording two other secondary characters so I was already familiar with the set up and software. I've been recording from a small basement in Hyde Park on the software 'REEPER' which is a free software that I highly recommend, even as someone who isn't musical and will most likely never will be. The set up involved a mic stand, opposite a wall covered by a vintage 1960's curtain I'd hung up to reduce he recordings bouncing off objects surrounding the mic.

A big thank you to James Grimshaw for providing me with his set up; including a computer with software, a Focusrite interface, a long cord, a mic and a pair of headphones. He also helped me understand the software basics, such as making sure the levels were okay and how to record on different channels. I ended up imagining the software was a lot like photoshop in order to get my head around it quicker (I'm talking about the thing with layers).

How recording went

I approached each recording with each line having a rough 'playing time'. I had to do this because I had already begun animating from an animatic, that wasn't made to any recordings. So certain lines had to be within a certain time limit in order to fit in a certain shot. Recording line by line, I spoke to each voice actor about how I wanted the character to sound/how they could sound in the situation they were in - I found this was a good way of doing it, so kept doing it. I hadn't recorded outside of university before so this was a bit stressful, but soon I felt very much at home with the software and recording process.  With certain lines, I had to change them within the recording session because the original recording sounded too rushed to sound natural.

Wait, I should of done this way sooner.

Because of health problems I've lot about 4 weeks on this project, which is massive. It's effected every part of this project and I'm currently working 11hours straight daily in order to make up for lost time and finally I'm back on track. I'm still due to record three more voices, including two characters who are on screen and I need recordings before I can animate those scenes as they involve speaking animation.