Audiobook no Jutsu!

[SirKaid]

I was goofing off at work the other day when an idea came to me. Would anyone be interested in contributing a voice to an audiobook version of Team 8?

[WarriorDrgnMage]

I would very much so!

[Darkandus]

By audiobook I hope you mean freely distributed over the internet non profit voice recordings done by volunteers who expect no pay. Otherwise the authorlord and everyone involved is staring at massive lawsuits. And shouldn't you get his permission before you start recruiting?

[Psalm Of Fire]

Link Connection Zone
This is where we'll keep the list of links for each Team 8 Audiobook chapter.

• Chapter 1

Tryout Stuff

Here are the general options we've discussed, and the parts you can try out for.

Spoiler: show

Options
Narrative style comparison:

(1.) Single Narrator - Contributing Factors: low participation, especially excellent narrator
(2.) Single Narrator, Individual Dialog - CF: High participation, especially excellent narrator, others not so excellent at narration
(3.) Multiple Narrators, Individual Dialog - CF: high participation, several good narrators
(4.) Multiple Narrators - CF: Medium Participation, Several good narrators

For now we are using option four. BUT! We are interested in any voicing for individual character, so feel free to send it our way -- you may be the person who helps us take it up a notch.

-

Roles:
This is still an incomplete list, but any perspective character has a narrator part. Feel free to try out for any of it!

Kurenai Narrator - Hinata Narrator - Naruto Narrator - Shino Narrator

So You Want to Audition?

We'd love to hear it! There's a few steps involved to make sure you're coming through clear, so hear is your user friendly walk-through.

Preperation:

Spoiler: show

First, who do you want to narrate? If you sound like a girl, pick one, a guy, pick one of those (note: actually matching the gender is prefered but not required ). Once you know who you're auditioning for find a scene from their perspective in Team 8, linked for your convenience.

Now, here are the things you'll need:

• A quiet room: No fans, traffic out your window, or screaming siblings/children/parents/that one bum who lives with you.
• A mic - naturally. The mic built into your laptop is most likely not going to cut it, either.
• A recording program - Audacity! It's free, only 2MB, and simple enough to use. The download link has been tested spyware and virus free by Cnet, so no need to sweat it there. Might as well start the download now, eh?
• A glass of water - your throat my dry up a bit, so this is always nice to have nearby. Icy cold is not recommended, it makes your vocal chords have to work harder, changes the viscosity of your mucus (altering your sound) and more.
• At least 40 minutes - depending on the size of your narration text and how much past experience you have.

Install Audacity, link your mic in, and launch the program. Sometimes if you don't have your mic prepared before starting Audacity it won't realize when you do plug it in. If that happens, just restart the program. Now you're set to rock.

Set Up

Spoiler: show

Mics are fickle things. Well, they seem like that at first, but it's time to clear that up. Let's talk about mic position.

• Optimally, the mic should be place to one side of your mouth, as close as you can without brushing up against it as you talk or blowing wind into it with 't's and 'sh's.
• To find out the best place to pick up your voice start recording and then say three lines of narrative. Remember where the mic is, then adjust it to a new position and say those same three. Make sure you remember that position as well, and then move it to one more positions and say the three lines again. Listen to the different positions, and then put the mic into the possition that sounded the best.
• Now, don't bump it. If you do you may have forgotten where it was supposed to be you'll never get that sound again. Ever! Well, it's not quite that bad, but do be careful, it's a little jarring to the listener when it suddenly sounds like the person reading to them has jumped 10 feet away.
  
  Once you're coming through clearly, and the background noise is as low as you can get it, you're ready to rock.

Narrating

Spoiler: show

Right, first thing to do: turn your mic off. Or at least, don't be recording. The first time you read through something it's going to be a mess, and a waste of your time to go back and look through.

• Now, read out loud the section you plan on narrating. Any areas that make you stumble you should stop and repeat until you can read through without tripping up, then continue on your way.
• If the section is long, it's best to break it up into 2 or 3 mini-sections. Once you've marked your first section, read it aloud again without recording, this time focusing on expression that fits the mood of the scene and character. If you read something and it just felt "yuck" like it didn't belong in the tone of the scene, try again until it matches. Its helpful if you read the sentence before and after it each practice to help keep the tone. Pay attention to your breathing too, it sounds bad if you have to suck in a lot of air in the middle of a sentence. And no, that can't be edited out and sound convincing. So when you do pause for breath at the end of a sentence or paragraph, make sure you get enough.
• Speed is important, so don't let your words drag much.
• Once you feel you can say the sentences without tripping up, and your expression matches the scene, it's time to record! So, press the record button and read your first section. Don't worry about long pauses at the beginning.
• Screw ups! So you thought you got it and you messed something up. Pause a moment, think the mistake over in your mind, and then start at the beginning of the paragraph. You can cut the messed up version of the paragraph out afterward, so there's no need to stop right now. If you get a whole load of screw ups it might be wise to start the recording over so you don't have to sort through all the errors.
• Now, you've got your first section recorded with an erroneous paragraph here or there. Record it again, and try your best again. Gambate. Sometimes the first is the best, sometimes the second, but I always find having two goo options for comparison to be very nice.

At this point you can start practicing expression for your next section and continue recording, or edit the first section; take your pick.

Editing

Spoiler: show

You shouldn't have done much of this yet because there are some important things to know.

• We need a few second of quiet recording of the room. This is so the noise filter can cut just that out of the audio to keep your recording even clearer. We'll do this part, but just make sure you have a decent sized hunk of quet in there.
• You may want to cut out your breaths between paragraphs, or sentences. Don't. The pauses are just as important as the narrative, as the listener's mind needs time to digest what you've just read. Unless the pause is over two seconds long, leave that trimming to us. What you cut out we can't put back.
• If you paused for a bit after your screw ups they'll be easier to find: just look for the chunk of empty space and you'll know where to edit. Listen in, cut the errors out, and leave plenty of space for the editor to get it just right. We'd rather have pauses a bit too long.
• If you've recorded a lot of audio and it's kind of hard to handle because of it's length, there's a zoom tool that is your friend. In the upper left hand corner you'll see a gray button with a looking glass. In fact, there are several useful buttons up there. Anyway, click the looking glass and right-click the audio to zoom out, and left-click to zoom in. You'll need to go back to your selecting tool now, so select thing thing that looks like an I.
• You'll want to bring hunks of audio together at some point. This can be done by copy-paste or by the drag tool. It's up there in the upper left hand side of the screen, the bottom middle on of the six. It looks like two connected black arrows pointing right and left. Click that, then click and drag the hunk of audio you want to move.

Once all the errors are removed and you've left a hunk of just background noise for us, and all the pieces are close to eachother, and sound natural, it's time to move on. Good work!

Export!

Spoiler: show

This part is easy. Click File>Export as Ogg Vorbis. Now you need to name it. We've got a formula, it goes like so:

• Start with "T8A", which stands for "Team 8 Audiobook", as you may have guessed. A - goes between each of these parts.
• Next is "Ch[number]". Chapter, and then the chapter number. So, just to be clear, if the part your reading is in chapter 1, it should look like "Ch1".
• Next is "S[number]", or the scene number. If you're doing the first Naruto perspective in chapter one, it should look like "S3".
• Next is your name/web handle/whatever. Since my name is long, I would abbreviate it to just "Psalm". So now my file should be thus thus: "T8A-Ch1-S3-Psalm.ogg"

Beautiful. This really will save us a lot of hassle, so thanks for taking the time. Email it to team8audiobook@gmail.com and we'll have a looksy! Thanks for the work and time you put into it.

Now all that's left to do is email it to us! Expect some kinks will need to be worked out -- pronunciations of the Japanese words seem to be the most common issue. It's "Nah-Roo-Toe", not "Nuh-rood-oh"! :P

[SirKaid]

By audiobook I hope you mean freely distributed over the internet non profit voice recordings done by volunteers who expect no pay. Otherwise the authorlord and everyone involved is staring at massive lawsuits. And shouldn't you get his permission before you start recruiting?

Yes, I meant freely distributed non-profit etc. As for the permission... I totally forgot to do that. Thanks for reminding me to not be an inconsiderate jerk. I'll go do that now.

[serbii]

By audiobook I hope you mean freely distributed over the internet non profit voice recordings done by volunteers who expect no pay. Otherwise the authorlord and everyone involved is staring at massive lawsuits. And shouldn't you get his permission before you start recruiting?

I expect he meant free (really who would pay).
Authorlord's permission would be nice but part of me sees this kind of like fanart or a fanfic. Unless AL endorses it, it's a fanwork. Though I guess we are using his words... *shrug*

Would I do a voice? Uh maybe

[SirKaid]

I'm in.

@Darkandus: Yeah, good guidelines.

I've worked on a rough-draft of how we might go about this. I'll post it in spoiler, tell me what you guys think should be altered or added or whatever.

Spoiler: show

Sure!

I'm assuming we would break it up into parts. *Goes off to scan for the different parts*

The most natural different parts are the various character dialog, but I've come up with something else that might be cool: different narrators for each perspective character. I think that would be really cool, but hard to pull off as narration is certainly a skill.

*brainstorms a bit*

Options
So here are the best options I see:

(1.) Single Narrator - Contributing Factors: low participation, especially excellent narrator
(2.) Single Narrator, Individual Dialog - CF: High participation, especially excellent narrator, others not so excellent at narration
(3.) Multiple Narrators, Individual Dialog - CF: high participation, several good narrators
(4.) Multiple Narrators - CF: Medium Participation, Several good narrators

So, next is figuring out just how many parts there are.

Roles:
I've only placed the roles required for the first chapter, as I figure we should try that before we take on the whole project!

1:
Narrator

2:
Narrator
Kurenai
Sandaime
Asuma
Iruka
Kakashi
Naruto
Sakura
Hinata
Shino
Moritake

3:
Kurenai Narrator
Hinata Narrator
Naruto Narrator

---

Tryout!

Don't worry, no one is going to Simon you, but the idea is that we need to find out how many decent narrators/voice talent there are. If SirKaid agrees this is what I think you should send in:

Narrators: Choose one scene from any point in Team 8, narrate the thing in full, and send it in. Mistakes and mispeaks are okay if there is only a few -- after all, in the final version we will be able to take those out.

Dialog Actors: Pick 8-15 lines from your desired character/s and send them in!

Universal: When you're thinking about doing this remember that you're new, have some to learn, and we won't be judging you.

Have a glass of water nearby. Milk products, like cheese, can make extra mucus build up in your throat, making your voice harder to control.

When you're about to sit down to try take a few deep breaths. Remember, speaking is natural and normal to us but this isn't, and taking several shots at it is going to feel really weird because we're so used to just saying stuff. It if doesn't sound right on the first try it doesn't mean you fail at this, it means you're just learning the ropes.

Before you start recording make sure the room is pretty quiet, no fans or the like. Place the mic just to one side of your mouth, very close, and try a few lines. Then, listen to them to make sure you're not breathing on the mic (move it further to the side) and that you're coming through clearly.

You may want to be alone when you do this, as I know I felt incredibly awkward at first.

Audio Software

After some searching and playing around, Audacity is what I recommend. This will allow you to cut out your mistakes and save in a the right format (Export MP3). Audacity is Free, legitimate software. The download link will take you to download.cnet.com. Cnet tests all its hosted files to ensure that they are spyware, virus, spam free.

Download

You'll see the record button up top. Don't worry about the rest of the interface, it's record, copy, paste, and trip commands you'll worry about.

If you need help, PM me.

Given the options above, my favourite would have to be #2, with #4 being a good second choice if there aren't enough participants for everyone to get a separate voice.

Anyone who wants in, please pick a scene from chapter one and send it to me, along with a requested character. Like Dark said, it doesn't have to be perfect as there will be time to iron out any errors. I'll do the editing, arranging, and a voice if needed.

[Darkandus]

Dark didn't say anything about quality.

However Dark would like to know if you have permission yet.

[SirKaid]

I sent a PM a few days back and haven't gotten a response yet. When/if I get one I'll post about it straightaway.

Anyway, WarriorDrgnMage reminded me that you lot need some way to send the files to me, so here's an email for you to use: team8audiobook (at) gmail (dot) com. I'll check it every so often, but I'd still appreciate a PM if you send something my way.

[WarriorDrgnMage]

I was told to post this so here I am posting it...

I'm auditioning for the part of Narrator for Kurenai

[Psalm Of Fire]

@ SirKaid: Thanks! I updated it and cleaned up the format. I have more ideas for it, but I'll implement them later. If you have any thoughts, throw them out.

@ WDrgn: So, uh, are you actually going to do it, or is that a prank posting?

[WarriorDrgnMage]

I did mean it; ask Kaid I sent my "audition" to him on Friday. I'm still waiting for a reply though...

[Psalm Of Fire]

Serbii, what voice would you want to do? You don't have to sound like the original voice actor. What were you tinking?

[SirKaid]

@WarriorDrgnMage: Sorry about that, I was swamped with work this weekend. X.X

Don't worry if your voice is at all similar to that of the official VA. I'm much more concerned with the clarity and consistency of the acting. Also, as far as the auditions go, I don't really mind if you flub one of the voices. Those lines can always go to someone else, eh?

[serbii]

Serbii, what voice would you want to do? You don't have to sound like the original voice actor. What were you tinking?

Um anyone I guess. The more I think about it the more I think "Gyah! it feels too weird >_<"

[Phht]

so Hinata?

[Psalm Of Fire]

Hey Phht! So, who you gunna narrate/voice?

[Ironwolf]

so Hinata?

Audition criteria: the smexiest "12 year-old" voice on the forum.

[lucifer10]

I'm looking forward to hearing this if you guys ever get permission to make this thing.

[spudman]

I've always felt that Kurenai should sound like Angie Harmon (used to play Assistant D.A. Carmichael on Law & Order). She has a dark and kind of husky but clearly feminine voice. She just screamed strong/smart/sexy woman.

Angie Harmon...

*coughcough* anyway...think I might try for something as well. Maybe Shino.

[Tempest Kitsune]

I could try for Gai.

[Phht]

Hey Phht! So, who you gunna narrate/voice?

I'm utterly not confident in my speaking ability for narrating or whatever. :(
I'd love to hear the audiobook if/when it's done though.

[SirKaid]

Due to size limitations it might be best to upload the audio files to Rapidshare or an equivalent and just send the url onward. I hadn't realized how big .WAVs were before.

[viridian]

It's an interesting idea... I'm not sure if we'd have people with voices that actually match the characters though.

Bad voice acting would make it feel like a badly dubbed anime.

A single good narrator might work out. Of course, I could be completely wrong about the vocal talent pool available...

[AntiNaba]

I'm afraid my voice would really only be suitable for Asuma.

That reminds me, Authorlord, which voices are the deeper ones in your canon? Should we hold auditions?