I've returned to my voiceover so I could remove some of the background noise and overall make my voiceover sound more cohesive even though it contains chunks from different recordings. I selected various noise samples from my exported edit and used the Noise Reduction (process) tool a few times to remove unwanted humming and static. I found this in itself evened out the voiceover a bit since the sound of the humming is no longer audible, so any harsh changes from one recording to another isn't as noticeable (I hope at least).
I then used this base to experiment with different types of reverb. I want to experiment with some other effects and echoes to see what sort of qualities I can bring to my voiceover if I want. I suspect I won't choose any effects for sure just yet, since I'm unsure if I want to go for a sort of dreamy quality as it's in an imaginary mind-space or if I want it to be more of a regular voiceover. I also think there are some interesting in the 'Audio Type' selection under 'Dialogue' so I plan to play around with that as well. Here are some of the reverb tests that I've made so far after cleaning up my voiceover edit.
After a few more sessions in the sound booth, I've managed to record a few voiceover takes that I could use to piece together my final voiceover. I've spent a while going over which chunks of audio I like the most, and pieced them together in one recording. I am not finished with it yet, I still need to go back, remove some background noise since some clips are inconsistent with the other clips, readjust the pitch and volume, and adjust a few other things.
This part of my project has been a real challenge for me as it is again far out of my comfort zone, but I wanted to share my progress with it since it's going to be part of my film eventually. I also feel that everything will feel more cohesive once I add in an overall soundscape, other sound effects, and reverb. Again, it is not completed yet but here is what I've put together so far.
Over the last week I've been working to get some initial takes of my voiceover. Doing my own voice acting is something that I admit I've been terrified to try out - any sort of acting, even voice acting, is way beyond my comfort zone. However, since this project is so personal and it feels so important to me I am doing my best to work past that and make a decent voiceover. Once the sound booth at UCA was up and running after some technical issues, I spent a few hours over the course of two days to get as many initial take as I could. For the first clips I kept it relatively simple so I had a base and to ensure that I had the ability to do it and that it should indeed be me doing it in the first place. Over the next few weeks I'm going to work on adding more expressiveness to my voiceover...I hope as I practice and do it more I'll get better. I did find that the second day I recorded I did better and felt more comfortable so I hope that continues.
While I'm not including any of the voiceover clips in this post (maybe I'll include some once I have a final version), as I spoke the words I thing I had a better idea of what I wanted my poem and animation to be like. I decided to scrap the line "When I think of my family I feel dread" as I feel that this line in combination with the other lines, was unbalanced and leaned towards a more negative feeling towards my family. This is not what I wanted as I more so wanted to express a sort of 'guilty' or 'split' feeling in regards of my family.
I also spent some time looking at some spoken word/poetry readings in hope that it'll help me get more expressive in my recordings. Here are some I found powerful...Neil Hilborn has always been one of my favourite poets to listen to.
I've spent some time rearranging some of the phrases in my list to see how they sound in different orders. I find it difficult to pick between them, so I think I need to take a short while away from them so I can judge them better since I've been writing and rewriting them. There are still a few things I'm considering adjusting (ex. perhaps changing pancakes to blueberries) and/or removing from the list to shorten it but I figured I'd post this up so I could possibly get more opinions.
After more discussions, I have a somewhat solidified list. I still need to narrow things down...I'm trying to remove things that I don't feel are as impactful or phrases that I feel are somewhat repetitive/do not offer much more than other phrases already have. I'm finding this quite difficult since all of them have emotional weight for me so it's hard to pick the 'less important' ones but I'm also trying to consider what may or may not work in terms of visuals and transitions as well. These are just my initial thoughts on the list and obviously they may still change and develop.
I'm also trying to look at some more animations and tutorials in hopes I can try to get a more concrete idea of what I want my film to be and/or some techniques that may be helpful. At the moment I'm looking into the possibility of using blend shapes to morph an object into a range of different shapes but I'm not quite sure if that'd be the best. I also wonder if perhaps animating bump/displacement maps may be an interesting thing to explore.
I've had a Post-Pitch script draft for a while but I got sidetracked by my contextual studies essay. Now that I've finished my essay, I'm redirecting my attention back to this project so here is the updated script with more science, along with some notes I wrote regarding the changes.
I've gone back and added subtitles to hopefully fix the timing on my animatic so I can now add narration and sound effects to it along with some music as long as I have time after finishing some concept paintings. I've also updated my script so it matches up with my storyboard/animatic.
I hoped to get more than this done today, but I took some time to finish touching up my script using the amendments Phil sent. I'm guessing I might need to move some things around in the script once I start doing more storyboard panels. I also spent time organizing my concept art files, research, influence maps, and making sure my storyboard files were more organized than the last project. I wasted a lot of time trying to figure out what panel/layer/effect was where during From Script to Screen. Hopefully it'll save me time later on. These are only the first few storyboards but I think it's coming along alright so far. Also, I found a video I watched ages ago about a Leviathan...I really thought the sound effects for the creature were inspiring, so I'll include it on the bottom of this post.
I'm not sure if my Leviathan was too hidden in this or not, but I just wanted it hinted at but maybe it should be shown more or be present in more scenes? I tried to get his presence just by his shadow and noises until the end where his eyes and teeth are seen. I'm also debating if I want some cells floating about too so the more mutated bacteria can be ripping them apart in the end instead of the kelp fronds if that'd make more sense (my idea with them ripping the kelp is that the kelp is part of your body). I tried to space out the dialogue and the scene descriptions the best way I could to have them make sense...I'll aim to get a rough animatic made in either Flash or Photoshop tomorrow to make it a little more clear for either this script or a new script. Also, there are a few notes/comments that are at the bottom.
While making my storyboards I realized that some things could be sped up, made simpler, or just needed to be changed because it didn't make sense/didn't flow right. Here is my revised script, I tried to strip out some unneeded detail as well so it's fewer pages than my previous draft. It's probably still too detailed, but I can move some things into notes.
Since I'm not experienced with writing scripts I decided to make a draft so if I really messed up then hopefully someone will tell me. I'm a bit concerned with how long it is, I'm not sure if I'm making it way too detailed, if my story is too long, or something else. I do think I can get a lot of it across visually, however. I was also not 100% sure how to type transitions out, I know I can put 'CUT TO:' which I did, but sometimes I just typed out the movement within the script because it's more subtle (again if I did this wrong please let me know). I also realized I don't really have a title for my story...I was debating about 'Compass' or 'Glitch' or something like that but I'm not sure yet so if anyone has any ideas please leave feedback!
Since I made my like-for-like storyboard using Mad Max: Fury Road I figured I'd use the same film for practicing scriptwriting. Here is the link to the video clip I used, it's more than one page but there is a lot of dialogue in this scene.
