Would There Ever Be a Possibility...?

[Nogrod]

Oddwen's clip is almost a page long and there's three hobbits, Gandalf and the narrator involved in it. We are going to make a trial with it tomorrow. Lommy comes over to my place and she'll record one hobbit's lines and I will do the Gandalf parts - and hopefully Greenie has time and enthusiasm to join us making another hobbit so Oddwen would have one hobbit and the narration left to her. I'll send it all to you all to hear as it's done. Then we can hear how different voices act together.

Matthew: If you can please make another go for Boromir (or whoever you want). Just lower the input levels a bit so that your voice doesn't break and try to get the mike (and yourself) at least a little away from the computer. Let's see if a second try brings better results in light of recording quality. You acted nicely already in the first clips.

Others: Keep those clips coming (just record a short passage of someone's lines and send them to me) and we'll get this thing going! Send me a PM to get my email address to send them into. Remember this is just testing so do not take it too seriously. But we need first to hear how your equipment works and surely we'd all like to share your voice.

I promised to send those "raw-materials" to Nerwen as well so that she could try out whether her software would produce better results.

Meanwhile - as the testing goes on - we should actually start the discussion what is the chapter we should try first and who should play which role.

I have no strong preferences to either question.

[McCaber]

I'd love to help out with this.

I don't have mic equipment, so I can't contribute to the voices. However, I can help with soundtracks, as that is more my area of expertise and I have the hardware to do it.

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

I actually need to save some time to even make some recording... and first I should probably save some time to read most of this thread since my last post here, as I have only vague idea what's been arranged meanwhile... I wouldn't have been of much use lately anyway, as my voice was still recovering after I was ill (though maybe an Orc would do then; I was recording some singing for my brother however, so hopefully it didn't ruin my voice again)... I will try to come up with something soon, but if I don't, don't bother with me, maybe you won't even need me, depending on the thing you pick to record...

[MatthewM]

Originally Posted by Nogrod

Matthew: If you can please make another go for Boromir (or whoever you want). Just lower the input levels a bit so that your voice doesn't break and try to get the mike (and yourself) at least a little away from the computer. Let's see if a second try brings better results in light of recording quality. You acted nicely already in the first clips.

I sent you three more takes as Boromir, the other day actually. Did you get them? I tried different mic placings, taking the chord as long as it stretched.

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by MatthewM

I sent you three more takes as Boromir, the other day actually. Did you get them?

Sadly no. Okay. I'll PM you... ***

Otherwise some nice news.

Lommy came here today and played Frodo's part in the clip Oddwen sent me. Greenie will come on Wednesday and I try to persuade her to take Merry. I try to find time to recording Gandalf in that clip. Then we would have a clip including four different actors in it! That should give us a taste of how it might sound like.

Btw. Many of the clips are now from Rivendell. They are nice scenes but there is one problem considering the actual trial of making one whole chapter and that is the fact that The Council of Elrond is composed mainly of long monologues...

*** EDIT: I sent you Matthew a mail instead of a PM so that you can reply to it. Thus we can remove the possibility that the address was wrong. I have a few ideas in the mail I sent you to try out.

[Gwathagor]

The only microphone I have is built into the keyboard of my laptop. I'll try it anyway, but hopefiully I'll be able to dig up something more legit when I go home (in a month).

[Thinlómien]

Yes, I did Frodo, and it was horrible. I do not like hearing my own voice recorded, especially as I always thought it less feminine, clearer and less squaky. Whatever. Anyway, I let Nog keep my Frodo in order to demonstrate how it works with a "dialogue", but I don't want to be Frodo when we do the recordings. So, don't regard it as an "audition" for the role. I also tried some Legolas and deleted it - because someone whose English is more fluent has to do the part and because I sounded even more girly than normally when I was trying to sound like Legolas... poor guy...

[Eönwë]

Augh! My voice is breaking (even worse than usual)I suppose this means I'm out, or can only do only minor characters, as my voice wll obviously change too much to be recognisable as the the same one.

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

All right, I FINALLY managed to read all the thread between my last posts... I have a few comments to that...

Originally Posted by MatthewM

One more question, for now - How are we going to incorporate the "Frodo said.", etc. into the dialogue? Do you know what I mean? For example Frodo speaks, and then in the book it says "Frodo said" to let the audience know who just spoke to avoid confusion. I suppose with actual voices it may not be hard to tell but to some it may.

Originally Posted by Rikae

Certainly I would prefer to stay as close to the original as possible, changing only those things (like "Frodo said") which would be awkward or redundant in this format. I would much rather see each character given a recognisable enough voice, than to hear "Frodo said"'s all over the place. The only other instance I can think of where deviation from the text would be the most sensible route is where sounds are described, as it would be far more intuitive and make the best use of the medium if we provided the sound itself. Other than this, why not stick to the text?

I think the "Frodo said" things should be left out. Just as Rikae said. In most of the audio plays, it is managed like that in the first scene a character is being called a name by someone else (if possible, several times), so this way the audience knows his name. Or, actually in our case it is quite possible that the character may be introduced by the narration. Or, if not, another classic trick is to introduce a character by adding some "situation briefing" at the beginning (which is made up by the screenwriters). See, in the Czech radio play the narrator was Bilbo Baggins and at the beginning, Frodo said something and Bilbo's voice interrupted: "This is my nephew, Frodo Baggins. He is a nice guy. He had been growing with the Brandybuck but I adopted him..." Of course, that play was without really just a conversation play and all was done by the dialogues, but the basic idea is this and it is also a variant to use. I see Mac probably imagined it to go in some way like that. But that will really take lot of effort and would practically mean writing a totally new story (stageplay).

Originally Posted by MatthewM

About the background music, I meant mainly for in between scenes, not over dialogue, really...if we use it wisely (and sparingly), like Rikae said, it could be nice...for example, a transition into another scene could be cued up with some bg music for a couple of seconds, maybe with the narrator speaking over it.

The only words we would have to change, as mentioned, would be words that signify sounds, in which we have to try and produce that sound - saying it would be quite bad for this medium, and I'm sure all would agree on that!

Concerning background music, I am really for just sounds in the background, and leave the music... maybe only during very long narrative sections, just soft one, and as Matthew said, between the scenes...

Now concerning the present things. I will record something soon - only a question, it does not matter what I record, Nog? Whether a dialogue, narration, a mix of both; a dialogue between two characters - should I act them or, like, what exactly is the purpose of this? Just technical thing (to find out that I need to buy a better microphone or probably a microphone with longer cable, as I am quite sure the computer humming will be heard in my case), or also to show my acting capabilities and such? (The thing I have in mind is, if I record a dialogue between Gandalf and Frodo, and in the end I turn playing Gimli, the sample won't tell much, as my voice or acting may not be good for Gandalf nor Frodo, but good for Gimli.) Speaking of that, I have no clear idea of whom I'd like to play - well, how could I when I don't know what chapter we are going to record or such. But I don't particularly care (although I just got an idea what I could record... we'll see).

Hm, not sure if I said all I wanted, but I will post if I remember. It has been enough for now anyway, I think

P.S. Oh yes, Nog: And mainly: How long thing should the recorded sample be? And in which format (I was not able to figure out from the posts whether it has to be wav or whether converting it to mp3 does not matter - I think depending on the length of it, wav can be quite a big file).