Filmmaking Basics/Animatic Dialog Recording/Procedure

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This school is:: Wikiversity Film School - Narrative film production
This course is:: The basics of narrative filmmaking
This lesson is:: Recording the dialog for the animatic.

Pages of this Lesson:

Page 1 - Introduction

Page 2 - The software

Page 3 - The hardware

Page 4 - The room

Page 5 - The recording session procedure

Self Recording Procedure

For this lesson, you need to be the recording engineer.

If you are recording your own voice, you must:

Practice reading one line at a time to get the proper (natural) interpretation.
Remember, this is a drama. Make it sound like a real motion picture (not a stage play or a book reading.) Make it dramatic.
Record one line of the dialog. Often, you will record this line about 5 times trying slightly different interpretations.
Select the best reading of the dialog.
Save the file.
When you are satisfied that the recordings are good, email me and send me the files. (See more detailed instructions below.)

Guide to Actors

We want a natural speaking voice, not a stage voice. As you record, think to yourself, "Is this the way that that motion pictures sound?"

Also, remember one piece of advice. Currently, the accepted acting style is to say your lines with confidence. That is, no matter what happens in the script, always have confidence in your voice.

Are you confident?

The dialog for the
Young Person

(1) Young Person: "That was a great movie..."

(2) Young Person (contined): "but I do not understand one thing."

(4) Young Person: "How can anyone be seduced by the Dark Side?"

(7) Young Person (eagerly): "A Macintosh!"

(9) (The young person thinks for a moment.) Young Person "Hummm"

(10) Young Person (amazed and excited): "Seduced by the Dark Side!"

The dialog for the
Old Person

(3) Old Person: "What's that?"

(5) (The old person thinks for a while.) Old Person: "Hummm"

(6) Old Person: "What computer do you have at home?"

(8) Old Person: "But what computer does your father use at work?"

(11) (The Old Person smiles.) Old Person: "Ahhh!"

The End

Watch your levels

Bottom is good; Top is bad

Record at the proper levels: When you record audio, it should look like this or slightly softer (the bottom picture, not the top picture which is wrong.)

Submitting your completed assignments

OGG files

Wikiversity uses OGG: Wikiversity can only work with audio files in a format called "OGG". Ugh!

If you have the ability to convert each line of the dialog to an OGG file, that will save me a lot of time.

In Audacity, you can open a new project files (NEW) and import your audio file (AIFF or WAV) and export to OGG. You can also NORMALIZE to -3db or -6db.

If not, WAV or AIFF files are fine. MPG3, mov, or m4a are also fine. You can compress them in a zip or WINRAR if you wish.

Thanks!

My email address

Hopefully, you have my email address by now. If now, please send me a message. Click Here.

The Next Page

Now, you need to see how motion pictures and television dramas are filmed in Hollywood. This gives you the background information you need before you create the animatic from your storyboards.

Go to the lesson for understanding filmmaking

Contact your instructor

Your instructor for this filmmaking class is Robert Elliott. You can email me by clicking here.