Audio assignment: ADR/Solo

D1  Critically assess ways in which performance techniques contribute to a range of radio drama and other audio recordings

D2 Present solo audio performance work using a wide range of appropriate vocal skills, demonstrating versatility

Image 1: The first video game.

ADR:
Video games are very much a big part of our generation. Obviously, they've been popular ever since being created, as such, back in maybe even as early as the 50's (but only becoming popular in the 70's.) And they have been popular ever since. As part of my research for this assignment, I set out to look into the audio's of these early games; but it proved a lot more difficult than anticipated as most games then either had no dialogue, if you think of PacMan for example, and then even those with human characters, were always created with subtitles as a 'voice'. And even then, I couldn't pinpoint as to which was the first video game to be dialogued. Instead I shall introduce you into some of the worst voice-acting that feature in video games. Now, I'm not entirely sure that this was a good method of learning for me, but by listening to these weak ADR pieces, allowed me to personally identify what not to do, instead of just being told what not to do; if that makes sense?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRhDmUzWuBI (Try listening and not watch the clip itself!!) Here is a link to some of the worst voice-acting to feature in various video games. As a general comment, all of these that feature in the link above, seem to be lacking emotion. Or those that do hold emotion, they seem to be over-exaggerated which tends to make it sound weird and out of place. If we skip to 0:22 of the video link, we have a character from 'The House Of The Dead:2'. His voice is really straining, and perhaps that's part of the character, but it actually makes the last part of his line in-audible. Listening to it, sort of makes one cringe, he's straining his voice so violently that it makes it hard to listen to; it is in no way easy on the ears. Diction is another key thing for ADR work, and the diction in this specific clip (The House Of The Dead 2) is also weak. As I've already said, the last part of his line is unclear, which means anyone actually concentrating on playing the game would be very unlikely to understand more than I can. "He's there" is one of this characters line, and by simply listening to and annotating this clip, you can hear him use a 'd' sound to begin the word 'there'. Phonetically, it reads 'dair', he made the 't' into a harsh sound. So with this said, obviously it's clear (excuse the pun) that diction is an important aspect for ADR. Diction assists us actors massively, because if you're diction is of a weak standard, your audience will loose interest as they begin to struggle to understand what it is you're saying.

So then I thought, the only way I can begin to learn the ways of video game ADR is to look into some of the more stronger voice-overs for various video games. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MLqW5i_eH8 (Again, try to listen and not watch!!) This is a link for some of the best and most strongest ADR piece's I could find. And immediately, I can see the difference. We'll take the first clip, for example: Red Dead Redemption. His (the character) very first line has a easy punchiness to it, "what you are", the southern American accent comes across easily and immediately also.  For the rest of his line, his voice is incredibly clear and the slight gristle to it allows your brain to perhaps picture a scruffy cowboy- which is exactly their aim. The link above tells me that this specific character has had a tough life, and the more I listen to his lines, you can begin to hear the pain behind the voice: he begins to threaten the elderly man (also in the scene) and the anger rises in his voice and which could very easily be a link to his rough past...and bearing in mind this is all simple based on his voice!
In another good ADR video game clip would be Halo 4 (this time a female character). With only just listening to this clip, I can hear she is clearly distressed and is standing her ground-which makes her sound dominant and most definitely not weak in any way. The way she elongates the word 'planet' makes her sound a little on the odd-side, but it makes sense seeing as she is a bizarre blue-like character. So in a way, its a clever but subtle way of using words.  She sounds angry and that is all down to the way she starts off at a normal volume level and ends up shouting the final words.



When we were first casted, I took the time to research and really analyse the voices of the original characters in the trailer, in order to be able to mimic them identically. And I also needed to pay some time into scripting my selection of lines.

Halo Reach- trailer

Halo proved a lot harder than I had expected. Myself and Brandon scripted this beginning paragraph together and managed to conjure up the right sort of wording:

"It appears that noble team’s discovery last night was not an anomaly/ large covernant deployments have occurred undetected/ and we are now under attack across the ‘veairy’ territory including orbital defences. As per the winter contingency we are countering on every front. Nobles reconances has also identified sophisticated covernant army hiding campinies/ and has pinpointed whats believed to be an additional covernant forces the origin of is which yet to be determined."

Image 2: Vocal notes on the Halo trailer.

As you can so read, it doesn't really make an awful lot of sense. Words such as 'campinies' are simply all we can identify when trying to script it, so it was the best we could do. It also didn't help that, on the clip, it is spoken very quickly too. But that leads me onto working on how to copy exactly how the trailer itself says it.  In the vocal notes image to the right, I've listed the things I noticed the voicing did in the trailer: 

• Begin as soon as the digital date appears in the bottom right of the screen
• 'An-om-oly' (phonetics)
• A very digitalised voice
• Emphasise the 't' sound in 'un-detected' and 'orbital'
• 'V-airy' (phonetics)
• 'Nobles reconances' -very whispy, 's' sounds are dominant
• Focus on saying the words correctly- 'covernant army hiding campinies'- she says this slowly
• The last line-said quickly. 

My main priority was getting my mouth round the tongue-twistery words at the same speed as the trailer. And although I apparently talk fast, trying to keep on  top of my articulation and diction with all the big words was tricky. I made it an important thing to recite my favourite tongue twister and to really work-out my tongue before any ADR work:

'How much wood could a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood' 

I've pretty much learnt this one to perfection so it was very much about how quickly I could say it but still making sure it was still understandable to the ear. This really warmed up my tongue and got my mouth moving- especially as I try to really over-exaggerate the use of my mouth when focussing on voice work, purely because it helps the words leave my mouth with more accuracy in terms of articulation. My other favourite tongue exercise would simply be running my tongue around the edges of my mouth. Really trying to stretch and warm it up. In previous vocal sessions, I have been made aware of that the endings of my words often blur into one another, making the diction of my words unclear. Hence why I really tried to pay attention to how clear my diction was during ADR purely because, as said earlier, it's really important to be able to hear what I am saying otherwise the trailer will have no real interest to anyone. 

Whilst rehearsing, I experimented with shouting my paragraph and at the end of every word I would make it into a really harsh finish. So for example, 'it', I really over-emphasised that final 't' sound, so it resulted in a really angry and harsh finish to the word. This was purely just for me to ensure the endings of my words were strict enough so that it wouldn't lower the level of my diction. 

Another voice weakness I have furthered my analysis into would be the softness to my voice. I, for the life of me, can't understand how I have a soft voice, as I hear it as quite harsh and that it sounds awful. But I believe people have named it 'soft' purely because I often speak quietly and that there are no real harsh sounds to my voice while I speak. This softness is not something I want to come across in my ADR recording purely because I want to show my versatility in my voice.  Fallout 4- launch trailer Fallout 4 is the second ADR video game clip I feature in, but this time only for one short line. But this is where I wanted to make sure the softness in my voice disappears. 

"Your a man out of time, but alls not lost" So to start with, the line is to be delivered in an American accent which pretty much swipes all traces of softness to my voice, as the American accent can be quite harsh in sounds. But, in the clip, the voice is really quite deep. This actually wasn't an issue, as it might've been for others, as I can hit quite a low tone. I experimented with making the first word, 'your', quite whispery and then making the-'but alls not lost'-  the line in which is clearly delivered in a deep tone. Admittedly, the first half of the line is delivered quite softly but the second half is definitely more harsh-which is what I wanted. 'Alls' the 'a' sound in this is a very throaty sound which allowed me to speak it in a deeper tone. The same with 'lost', with the accent, I add an 'a' sound to it, instead of the 'o'. And naturally an 'a' sound is harsher than the 'o' sound. 

Still on the subject of the use of voice for these ADR recordings, microphone technique plays a big part in the experimentation these fun recordings. Back at the beginning of this project, we were given the use of one microphone (in groups) and then were completely free to use whatever we wanted to create a radio advert. These were our only instructions, and the whole exercise was to experiment with objects and our voices to make noises to include in our adverts. My group had a few ideas, which I shall talk you through, as they all included good examples of voice/audio work, with hints of our own imagination.
So our first idea was a 'drink aware' advert. Matt could make a good car noise with his mouth, and by vibrating his vocal chords, he could make the car sound further away, to give off the effect of the car driving past. We experimented, next, with making the noise of a 'break screeching' and then we simply clashed a few chairs together to make the 'crash' sound. The screeching of the break was were this idea failed. (Bearing in mind this was just a fun activity, we changed our idea) We then tried a 'charity advert' and we knew we wanted the beginning to be all jolly and happy and for the ending to be the complete opposite. We used spare wrapping paper to give the literal sound of 'unwrapping presents' and the sound of children's voices were done by us. Then we tried to use the xylophone to create a changeover piece of music, and then we each took it in turns to talk about water shortage in third world countries. Our final piece ended up being quite silly, with the slogan 'don't forget nan this Christmas'  which simply consisted of us all putting on different voices.
But as silly as this exercise became, it was actually a very good introduction to audio for us, I think. When listening to other groups, I could clearly see the faults in their vocal and mic abilities because as soon as the mic was in use, everything you do vocally gets magnified. So some were mumbling too much which was really unclear through the speakers, some definitely needed 'pop' shields as their voices were too harsh on certain sounds, but this exercise also gave me an idea behind mic distance, Lewis, in his group, stood further back from the mic and shouted and the effect was really clever- he sounded so far away, despite the fact we weren't even in a proper recording studio.
      But with using this information, I made sure I paid close attention it during our ADR recordings. In the Fallout 4 trailer, myself and Milo have a short section in which we have to 'distance our screams' just as the vehicle our characters are in, falls off a cliff. (Hence the scream becoming distant, as we fall further down.) To make our screams, in the studio sound distant, we would have to start close to the mic, and then quickly run back, whilst still screaming. And this was actually harder than expected, especially as me and Milo had to stay the same distance away from the mic. We practised taking three large steps back, at the same time as screaming, and then after the three steps made the screams die down, and this seemed the best option, especially as there wasnt much further to walk back... but if we were to do this scene properly, they would perhaps edit just a straight scream, and quieten it in time with the fall, and even add an echo effect to it to achieve the distance scream effect. In contrast to keeping away from the microphone, my dialogue in Halo Reach- "Your a man out of time, but alls not lost"- I experimented with saying this at the normal distance from the mic, but it sounded too ordinary. So I tried saying it closely into the mic, and it made my voice sound a lot deeper and closer to the action which worked really well with the character.  This was a fun bit of microphone use experimentation which I think definitely benefited my performance. 

Image 3: Moon on the Tides:
Poppies 

Image 4: No Roses For Harry

Solo audio:
For this section of the assignment, we had to find two contrasting pieces of text that challenged different aspects to our voices. The most contrasting pieces of text that I could find was a children's book and a war poem; you can't get any more contrasting.

'Poppies'  By Jane Weir [GCSE Anthology, Moon On The Tides, AQA]
'No Roses For Harry'  By Jene Zion, Illustrations by Margaret Bloy Graham [Red Fox, Mini Treasures]


 We were given ideas as to what two pieces to choose, and I knew exactly what poem and childrens book to do. 'No Roses for Harry' was a childhood book of mine. Whenever we stayed at our nans, this is what she read to us. So I know the story really well, and I also enjoy it. It has a good story line and a nice little ending to it. I am really into poems, and when we did them at school I fell in love with them even more. 

No Roses For Harry, as I said was very much a childhood favourite of mine. And I can still very much hear how my nan used to read it: slow, carefully and emotion-full. And this is exactly how I want to read it. To beginning with, I started off researching vocal hints for reading children's books aloud. http://www.readingrockets.org/article/hints-how-read-aloud-group Time was one of the first tips that I came across for reading to children, and it was more to do with not rushing. So I timed myself reading this book twice, once without the emotion, emphasis and pauses and then once including all these: So with just reading, as one might read to themselves, I got a time of 03:05.09. And although it is a small book, I noticed that my diction was unclear and the story also unclear due to the speed I was going at. For this I wasn't on purposefully saying it fast, but I was just reading it...without any emphasis or pauses or emotion in the voice. This time round, I got 05:31.13. This was me really taking my time in reading it, adding all the emotion into my voice and purposefully emphasising the exciting bits of the story, as though I was telling it to children. The two times are considerably different, and it really proved to me how much time you can waste when putting in the effort of reading and taking note of the target audience and their attention span etc. The second time round I could clearly see the difference: the story was a lot clearer, it sounded more exciting and you can start to feel for Harry when he was so desperately trying to loose it, or when he got a new sweater and he was really pleased. The emotion on these bits of the story could come through more because of how much slower I was vocally. And in general, the story seemed more full because it was so much longer, but the 5 minute bracket is probably good time bearing in mind the attention span of children whom very often get bored of something quickly.
    Enthusiam: was one main point for reading to children. http://storiesandchildren.com/how-to-read-aloud/ This link spoke mainly about how enthusiastic can you make your body and eyes look when physically reading to children, but it can also be shown through your voice. Enthusiasm in the voice comes from the emotions you choose to show in your voice. For example, "Harry didn't like it the moment he saw it, he didn't like the roses." If facial expressions helped me during this assignment, I would start to draw my eyebrows closer together to show a slight angry expression, and then start to widen my eyes when saying 'he didn't like the roses'. However facial expressions have no use to me during this, and it is all voice-based. So, again, for this line, I would emphasise 'moment'  with a angry (maybe more grumpy) tone. The next few words, 'he/saw/it' could be said in, again, a grumpy angry and snappy tone. Emphasise on the final word 'roses' tells the audience that this was the main problem. In contrast to this negative tone, "The sweater began to disappear right before Harry's eyes. First one leg - then the neck." This is the most exciting bit of the story, from Harry's perspective anyways, and speed is key in showing the enthusiasm and emotion here. Starting off with a deeper tone on 'the sweater'  and then changing that completely when reaching 'right' and saying this with a much more higher and excited tone. "Harrys eyes" could be said in a very much unbelieving tone! When reaching the hyphen, a pause of disbelief here could happen. And leave the final word 'neck' almost like a cliff-hanger/question to keep the attention of the children until you make a start on the next line.
These two examples are very much how you include enthusiasm into your voice, as well as emotion. But they two marry one another in terms of reading aloud. Emotion comes with enthusiasm and enthusiasm comes with emotion.

http://memfox.com/for-everyone-current-read-alouds/ Mem Fox is an Australian childrens book author. She has written over 60 different childrens books over the years, her most popular being Possum Magic, which happened to be Australia's gift to Princess Charlotte, the daughter of Prince William and Kate. Fox is also very well-known for the audio versions of her book. The link above will take you straight to an audio version of Possum Magic.
Whilst listening to it, I took notes on how she emphasised words, her emotion and speed etc:

With listening to Fox's audio pieces, it became apparent to me that character voices were key but they don't necessarily have to be completely exaggerated. Her character voices were very subtle and sounded alike. In class, we had a session where we listened to everyone's books and most others had really fun character voices, but I kept mine normal. Looking back on the project, I wish I had played around with the voices more, but I think I found it hard because all of this emotion and the fun voices were simply spoken into a microphone, whereas if I had done to a class of children, I would've experimented with it a whole lot more. However, in my book there is very little character dialogue, so it wasn't really something I had a lot of space to work on. But unlike the story The Gruffalo, my book doesn't have many chances for me to show off my voice...but I don't think it was hugely necessary in my book. 

Grandma's lines, in the book, I made sure were slowed down. Most elderly people talk slowly and tend to have good breath control because of this and not wanting to let themselves get out of breath. I didn't want to put on a silly grandma voice purely because it's not really that type of book. "After I've had my lunch and a nap we'll go for a walk" this is quite a stereotypical thing for a grandma to say, so for one I made sure I said it slowly, with an intake of breath between 'nap' and 'we'll'. Another example being, 'I wonder how he did that' I emphasise the word 'wonder' and make it sound very much like she knows that's impossible but she's playing along with it for the children. Like, when a child comes and shows you something, and your not really interested but you say something along the lines of 'of wow that's good isn't it'  with a kind tone of voice, despite the fact you don't really see the beauty in the drawing...?

The children, I simply spoke in a much higher and excited tone. Children are stereotyped for being excitable so this worked. The two children, I did in the same voice but in slightly different tones and speed to show that there were two children characters. "We've got a letter from Grandma" child number 1 here, I gave her a really excited and loud voice. It is high pitched and with emphasis on 'Grandma', shows the excitement in the voice. "She's coming to visit us!" This was said a lot more excitedly, but with the voice in a slightly lower tone than child number 1, almost as though child number 2 was a little bit older in age.

Image 5: Emma Watson.

Having a soft voice, was another key thing I identified that I would need for reading a children's book. I have been told I have quite a distinctive voice, but I don't think I have a soft voice. I sometimes notice that I give words a slight harshness occasionally. Emma Watson, I think has a really soft voice. She talks incredibly well and her voice is really, really easy to listen to. There is no harshness to her voice but at the same time, each word is audible in a much softer way.
Her voice is quite whispy, and the 's' sounds are heard but again, that adds to the niceness of her voice. Her diction and articulation pretty much perfect, she speaks very well and is an easy talk in a sense that she can be adding emotion and emphasis on words without thinking. Her voice is one of those voices that you want to listen to because you are drawn into what they are going to say next.
The clip here is of her reading a section from Harry Potter, by J.K. Rowling. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI1-SF05zOw
Some of her words, in this clip, merge into one but because of the target audience being teenagers and up, it doesn't matter as we can pay more attention into hearing what she says. Whereas, this could be an issue if this was for a childrens book. Her enthusiasm really starts to show when Hermione kisses Ron, she speeds up considerably, her voice is raised as is the pitch in which she is talking in, and you can hear a slight giggle in her voice. All things that would really work when reading a children's book.


As an extra onto this assignment, our lecture, Sally, suggested that we could have music playing the background of our recordings. I know I really wouldn't want anything that could take the attention away from the story. So I did some research into what music I could use. I am really into music, so one of the first songs that popped into my head could be Safe and Sound by Taylor Swift. feat The Civil Wars. The song has lyrics all the way through, however the instruments and the rhythm that runs through the whole song has a really calm and soft sound to it. This can be heard mainly in the introduction, with the use of use a guitar and a violin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCNDZo00TLE Up until the lyrics, in this link, [0.44] the background music would be perfect to back my childrens book audio, its slow and therapeutic. With the little knowledge I have of the editing and the production part of audio, I know that using the likes of 'audacity' (an audio editing software) they can loop the instrumental parts of the song, and quieten down the slightly louder and more agressive sounds of the guitar, to create a really soft and quiet piece of music that would fit under my childrens book audio.
         Another piece of music, as a suggestion, could be the piano backing track of Turning the Page by Sleeping At Last. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG10_YEzxqY Its a really beautiful piece of music, its soft and has a very repetitive but calming rhythm to it. It could be easy to fall into speaking in this rhythm, and it might actually help me to slow down- especially as this was one thing I had to be weary of during this assignment.

In conclusion to my children's book, I feel that the audio itself didn't go as well as I had wanted. I was nervous so I think I started to rush it in places, which defeats the whole object of taking it slow and incorporating all the emotions etc into it. I was still pleased with the outcome, but I knew that I had sped through it a lot quicker than I had wanted. There were also times a tripped up over my words, which lowered the professional level of my recording and I could tell you could hear these faults in my voice as the next line was a bit shaky every time. The character voices worked and I really tried to use my body (despite not being able to see my body in the recording) to get my voice to sound excited. I used my hands a lot, for example, and went onto my tiptoes to really strain my voice to show the excitement of the children. I made sure I dragged out the time it took me to turn the pages of the book (and this is the exact reason why I didn't type it up) because it would make me slow down, so then I could pause before I read on. My voice versatility, I think was shown through my emotions, but I think there was definitely room for more.

Image 6: Poppies annotations

Moving onto my poem. Poppies by Jane Weir. When first reading a poem, very often they don't make a lot of sense. So I took time in analysing it what it was about and what it was saying both aloud and the meaning that was hidden between the lines:

The first verse has some really nice adjectives describing the aesthetic of a poppy pin. (The poem is being said from a female point of view) She says how she pins it onto his shirt, and this implies that the soldier is her young child, as she is pinning it on for him. 'Bandaged' is a harsh word, but is perhaps signifying that she is the one injured at the possible loss of her son. She talks about the past a lot, and how she perhaps wishes for him to be that young again that they can 'play at being eskimos'. But he is grown up now, he even spikes his hair up: 'I resisted the impluse to run my hands through the blackthorns of your gelled hair'. As a mother, I'm sure all these changes are a big deal, your little boy growing up and the length of the poem simply portrays how quickly he's grown up and also how quickly war took him away from her, as she 'listened, hoping to hear your playground voice catching on the wind.' 

 It is the story of a mother loosing her son to war.
And how this has emotionally effected her. Weir tells us that this character was 'brave' but we can see more into that: we can imply that she was the injured one, emotionally not physically, as it was she who had the bandage on. She thought sourly of war, as the words in which she describes the poppies are harsh- 'spasms', 'crimped' and 'blockade.' And the last verse is very much her realisation that she has lost her boy.
This poem is perfect because it's from a females perspective of war, and its rare that you get the 'from-home' opinion of war, whereas its nearly always from the front-line.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wks8jGq701c
This link is a video of Jane Weir reading the poem. I wanted to get a feel for how she had intended for it to be said, so I can begin to understand how I need to read it. However, I was quite surprised. Her voice was quite weak, it sounds like she has a lisp and she has a very monotone voice. The sentence break-downs were quite weird too, the places she paused seemed out of place. It seemed very punctual, which to me lost the meaning of the poem. However, Weir didn't say it as slowly as I had expected, which I liked because as I've been practising it much faster than some would prefer a war poem.Having researched and heard a lot of war poems at school, when they are really slowly read, they get boring and the chances of your audience loosing interest is high. This, naturally, something I didn't want to happen so I kept the speed normal and made more of an effort on my articulation and diction.
I gathered that this should be my main point of focus, purely because I wanted the emotion to be hidden in my voice, because this  isn't a story, it has to be left for the audience to decide the emotions of the piece.

Image 6: Analysis of poem

A short exercise I did whilst practising my piece was to use my mouth as much as I could when reading. I was to keep it at the same pace and without obvious emotion, but really focus on the pronunciation and the diction of every word. 
As I don't have a means to showing you the process of this exercise, I made notes on words that I need to be careful on my pronunciation when reading. (These notes are in red.) I'll give you an example, the word 'bandaged' is a bit of a tongue twister, it challenges quite a few different sounds the mouth can produce. And I know that I can often miss out the 'd' sound of the word, so highlighted is this 'd' sound to remind to me be careful when reading. 'Steeled' is another, this challenges the clearness of my 's' sounds, but I mainly highlighted this for the exercise I mentioned, as on this word I can really widen my mouth (like a slim smile) to get the word out.






I still wanted to find a way to listen to other people read the poem, to see how they interpreted the words and the structure, so I got my sister to read a bit (annoyingly the video wouldn't send in full.)
Although it is a really short clip, I could already hear the faults in it. For one she sounds far too jolly to be reading a war poem, and for this I don't think she really took on board what the poem was about. She, like me, speaks it quite fast which really highlighted to me how its easily done but also how it completely changes the meaning of the piece. Her pauses were, to me a lot better timed than Weir in the link above, so perhaps it really is just down to interpretation.






Liken the childrens books, I really hope we can have music backing our poems. I have the most beautiful piece of music that would fit perfectly to my poem: Comptine d'un autre ete l'apres midi by C'etait ici. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvryolGa19A To me it has the perfect balance of slow parts and quick parts, and this, to me resembles the life of the soldier and his mum. He is young, at first, and life is exciting for them both but as he gets older and leaves and then dies out at war, the piece gets slower. Again, this could be a job for the editors of our piece, making the slower bits longer perhaps, or the other way round; in order for it to fit my piece better. The video is, again, a short piece of me reading the poem with the music in the background. It had a really powerful effect on the way I read it, and although you can't hear the whole recording, I noticed how I was reading in time with the music depending at what bit of the song it was at. It was clever, and actually really helped me to bring forward more thought into what I was saying which was heard in my voice.

As a short conclusion to my poem work, I felt really pleased with how this went during recording. I kept it the same as how I had practise and there were no issues when recording, so it went smoothly. If I were to do it again, however, I would most definitly have the music playing whilst reading it as for me it really really helped me vocally but it also helped the piece flow smoothly and it added emotion to it, without me having to enforce what emotion I thought the poem should hold.