Adding Voice-overs

This was the part we were all dreading, as it was either going to make the whole thing come together or ruin it entirely. luckily we were able to record and stitch them together to a decent standard so it went to plan. The process of recording the voiceovers was quite difficult, as we had to find a quiet area, script it, and for certain parts we had to try and make a good job of lip-syncing.

The lipsyncing was by far the most difficult. Obviously it can only be done whilst watching the actual video of talking, and so we recored it on a phone camera, and did our best to talk in time with the video. It's very hard to do without the presence of a timer, and we had to watch the video, and record the voice-overs many times before we performed at a half-decent standard. In watching the edited video, you can tell in which oarts the lip-syncing is done as the voices are unnaturally loud, and have the tendancy to speak out of time with the mouth. There is only one instence of this, so perhaps it will not be as big a roadblack as we thought.

Otherwise the voiceovers worked well. They made the piece really, as they were the only thing that explained the plot and character's background to the audience. Our worry was that with so many voice-overs needed, it would seem either crowded, or they would clash at parts. Fortunately this was not the case, asall sound aspects are mangable, including the volume, so the music could just be turned doen when the voiceover's occur.

Some of them needed to be recorded a second time, as the boom mic picked up a lot of air hitting it with constenant sounds like 'P', so that was irritating to fix. In most places we turned the volume down for a fraction of a second so the sounds are nheard, and don't ruin it.

Whilst editing, it was a common occurance for the editing prgram to give up and crash. Whether this is a fault of the software itself, or a hardware failur we are unsure. Eitehr way it was still unfixable at that moment in time, and it did a fair job of slowing us down. We had to keep saving our work every minute or so, as the crashes could occur at any point. Whenever it happened we would usually lose about 20 minutes of editing time, and have to repeat the process again. At certain times the program was near unusable, and we restarted the computer in the hope it would fix itself. It did not.

When we spoke, we had to try and restrict what we said down to about 10 seconds. Anymore time, and the camera would change to a different, unrelated shot, and so the voiceover would clash with the other and hinder the continuous flow of action.

When we had completed this, we could then insert the last of the music, and adjust the volume accordingly.