IBM has recently made the clips of the R-Heroes series, that I had the pleasure of working on as machinimatographer and editor, available on YouTube.
These videos were produced for the IBM Rational Conferences in Orlando and Mumbai by Popcha! and Dury Design from New York.
Unfortunately YouTube doesn’t support the videos original 720p resolution (yet) but I do urge you to watch them with high quality enabled on YouTube itself.
Episode 4: “All that Jazz …” (unfortunately IBM squished the video here)
Here’s a short list of tips I wrote “on demand” for work but I thought I’d share it with you too!
Some quick and easy tips for recording your own voice on your computer using a headset or bluetooth/wireless Mic.
Here are some tips and tricks everyone can use to enhance their own voice recordings at no extra cost.
While these tips are not a replacement for the most crucial element of your recording, that is, your microphone they will help you improve your recording.
Although headset mics in the past couple of years have advanced in quality dramatically, they are by no means a suitable microphone for voice (-over) recording. This is due to the fact that these microphones are designed for voice intelligibility but not for creating an accurate, full spectrum recording of your voice.
Thus your voice will often sound much thinner through a headset mic than it would be through a normal mic, which is (usually) designed for accurate, full spectrum, sound reproduction.
That said, if you have no other microphone than a headset, or even less preferable, a wireless mic (because they compress the sound), make sure to follow these easy tips:
If your microphone/headset came with a usb plug adapter use it instead of plugging the headset into your sound-card.
If your microphone/headset came with a windsock, use it. Pull the windsock over the microphone. This will not only reduce “p” and “s” noises aka “plosives” but will increase lifespan since it keeps saliva from reaching the membrane.
Keep the microphone out of contact with your skin, place it approximately 0.5-1 inch away from your mouth and off to the left or right so that you do NOT speak directly into it, nor breathe into it from your nose. This is to prevent plopping noises, breathing noise and distortion. It will also sound more natural. If you keep the mic too close to your mouth it will sound muffled and too dark while also often creating distortion from “p” and “s” noises.
Another thing to watch out for if you are using a headset mic is that the cable does not rub against your clothes as you move, as that will transfer to the mic, also if you have long hair make sure it does not brush against the microphone too much as this will all be audible later.
If your microphone is of the “noise canceling” type, you will find that the microphone boom has two opposed openings on either side. Make sure that one of those openings points to your mouth while the other points away from it. If you twist the boom so that the air basically flows above and under those openings you will get an even thinner sounding recording with lots of wind noise so check for that.
If you actually have an “active” noise canceling microphone (usually Bose and other “luxury” brands offer these, but don’t confuse, that most are just noise canceling regarding the headphones and not the microphone), turn off the noise canceling because … it sucks, really it does!
Turn off any cellphones within 15-30 feet or so as these can cause heavy interference and potentially ruin a perfectly good take.
Turn off any fans, electronic devices, shut doors and windows and if you can move into the room that sounds the driest, meaning if you clap, there is no echo or reverb. Usually this will be your living or bedroom. Do not, ever, move into your bathroom or basement to record voice.
Make sure you are relaxed and while recording sit straight or even better, stand up. Try standing or in the same position as if you were talking to someone standing in front of you at about arms length. Watch out for how loud or silent you talk, that you don’t talk too fast or too slow and that you speak naturally.
Keep the space in front of you clear. Keep away from the corners and walls of the room and talk into the direction that has the least obstacles in its way as sound waves will reflect back (especially hard surfaces such as walls, your computer monitor, windows etc.) and reduce the quality of your recording.
Start the recording early. Basically you’ll want to start the recording, then assume your ideal standing or sitting position, take a few relaxing breaths and then say your lines, after every line, wait 2-3 seconds and record the next take of the same line.
Read your line, then say it but don’t read and speak at the same time. Even better, learn your lines and say them from memory.
Listen to your recording after every couple of takes and take notes about the sound, what you can improve and if you can, record yourself during a normal conversation with someone and later compare your recording to that conversation you had.
Don’t drink too much before you do your takes, keep your mouth more on the dry than wet side because if you have too much saliva in your mouth … well let’s just say it doesn’t sound pretty.
Pretty much everything you’ve heard about what helps to get a good voice is not true. Tea with honey? Apple Juice? Coughing syrup? Don’t even try! The one and only thing that works is water and that not too cold please!
If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, please leave a comment!
The producer is in New York, director in Los Angeles, actors in Vancouver, Seattle, Toronto, the PA’s in Britain and you yourself in yet another place on this planet.
So this is your team and you’re working on a movie or some other project together. The only thing connecting everyone is the internet and some of the tools I found invaluable for keeping in touch and everyone updated on what’s going on I’ve listed here:
MobileMe – Keep everything in sync on your multiple Macs and iPhones.
Of course there’s others out there, these are just the ones that I use most frequently and have had the best experience using. What do you use? Leave a comment!
A couple weeks (ok, months) ago I’ve been hired by the creators of the highly immersive and simply awe-inspiring “urban roleplay sim” “Toxian City”, to create a trailer for their roleplaying environment.
Toxian City is hosted within Second Life on two bordering sims, offering the players over 130′000 square meters of room to live, play, fight, dance and more with their alter egos.
For the shooting of this clip I went for a wysiwyg approach; everything you see is actually found like that at Toxian City and apart from some light post-pro effects and polishing, this very dark trailer gives you a, hopefully, lasting impression of Toxian City.
Using iShowU to capture, camera movement with a 3DConnexion Space Navigator, cutting the pieces together in Final Cut Pro, polishing a few things with Motion and adding audio and music using Soundtrack Pro and finally giving the finished look using Color this piece went through (almost) the entire Final Cut Studio Suite.
Production of this trailer took roughly 2 weeks – but could have taken 4 if there hadn’t been a deadline to be met, since this clip was to be – and was- shown at Second Life’s 5th birthday celebration.
Watch the trailer below:
If you’re interested in a high-quality, high definition (720p) version send me a message or leave a comment and I’ll give you a download link.
It’s happened, finally!
Second Life now supports the wonderful 3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator series of 6-axis controllers. It’s like a mouse but for navigating in 3D.
Now natively supported in the latest Release Candidate of the Second Life viewer you can use the SpaceNavigator to move, look and build in a more intuitive way within Second Life.
There’s one caveat though, if you happen to use a Mighty Mouse on your Mac as well as the SpaceNavigator, Second Life will fail to recognize the SpaceNavigator.
Simple fix: unplug the Mighty Mouse and use a different mouse until this issue is fixed. And should you not have any spare mice lying around, it’s probably a good idea to switch to a better mouse than the Mighty Mouse anyhow.
Now don’t get me wrong, the Mighty Mouse is wonderful, especially the scroll-ball but the resolution and accuracy leaves a lot to be desired, alas, the Mighty Mouse is still using traditional optical technology instead of the newer, much more accurate and less jumpy laser technology found in newer mice.
So, machinimatographers rejoice, finally we can get those awesome, smooth, through the wall, hover, spin and floating camera movements without wasting time setting up paths using scripts within Second Life – on the Mac!
And apart from that, the SpaceNavigator just looks really cool in the dark too!
Now if Linden Lab could fix the freezing viewer problem … but I guess step by step is the way we’re going here.
