Narrowing down the cast (24/1/2014)

* Looking over the list of characters, I decided to write down at least two descriptions for each one so as to give my partner a choice between them. Granted if he feels changes, additions or combining should be done then I am ok with that.

Captain:

• Keeping a stiff upper lip for the crew's sake, the captain has been going through a lot recently and therefore the crew is keeping an eye on him. Otherwise, he is usually brave and fair towards his crew whom he trusts with his life.
• An older swashbuckler who is trying to relive the glory days. Over confident and loud, he often rushes into things without thinking because he's either bored or dying for some adventure.
• Similar to above, but far younger and takes 'leaps of faith' because he hasn't learnt to take responsibility.Could be seen as a 'Peter Pan' who never grew up.
• Kind and considerate to his crew, this character is far less inclined to fighting than most. However, when someone messes with his crew, his friends, he completely changes character and won't forgive them. 

Pilot:

• A light hearted and easy going pilot who often cares for others more than himself.
• An over confident pilot who loves to make bets, play games and do pranks on others. 
• A drinker, a gambler and a guitarist. Once part of a band, he now flies the ship without hardly ever saying a word. Only ever talking to ask simple questions or sing a song.   

Mechanic:

• Always complaining, the mechanic hates surprises and just wants to take on easy missions so he has nothing serious to fix.
• Full of pride and somewhat gullible, the mechanic loves his work, but will believe in anything if he wants it badly enough due to his old fashioned ways. He also hates to throw away things.

Muscle:

• A religious warrior who follows a creed / oath that states he can not kill anyone, but he can still hurt them.
• A large brawler who prefers actions over words to the point that he hates standing around and doing nothing. 
• A large kind hearted being who wouldn't hurt a fly, but to be useful to the crew he puts on the tough hard-as-nails persona so as to intimidate people into telling them what to do instead of resorting to violence. 
• A calculating robot who predicts things before they happen and finds it hard to determine emotions. Thus it can say the obvious or think others are being serious when in fact they are not.

The ship:

• More like a child, all the ship wants to do is have fun and doesn't know the difference between right and wrong. 
• A war ship at nature, because of this it always asks if it can destroy something. 
• An overly cautious ship that doesn't like to take risks and has often to be convinced into doing things.

Dock worker: 

• A tight fisted, grubby and greedy individual who only cares about one thing, money. 
• An overly optimistic character who is incredibly nosey and loud.
• A 'by the books', stuck up man who seems to talk down to the crew purely because of their occupations. 
• Someone who doesn't care about his job what so ever. All he wants is for the crew to be done with the payment and signing of documents as fast as possible so he can go back to sleeping or drinking.

Extras:

• Merchants trying to make a living.
• People talking. 
• Robots beeping.
• Alien noises.
• News reports.
• Advertisements.

Drawing and refining (23/1/2014)

*First of all Ed showed me the lyrics to a song he wrote for the story reel. Really liking it, I felt it could be best used as background vocals for the establishing shot of the ship and its interior, similar to how the movie 'Alien' has shots of the crew's quarters with ambient music playing over it.

Speaking of which, I liked the idea of making the cockpit / controls unique with one of the ideas I had had for a while. This being a large ball of sentient water which floats in the air. The pilot would float inside it in order to simulate gravity loss, thus feeling weightless like the ship and being an extension of it.
However, we may go for a regular cock pit to not make things too complicated. 

* Spoke about the different emotions we would like to convey in the piece which includes the following.

• Optimism.
• Annoyance.
• Sadness.
• Anger.

* With the above in mind I then decided to make a rough list of characters and who would perhaps play them. Thus figuring out how much time we would need to spend on each one. 

• Captain - Me
• Pilot - Ed 
• Mechanic - Me 
• Muscle - Me or Ed
• The ship - Me or Ed
• Dock worker - Ed
• Extras - Me and Ed

We decided to leave the ship and muscle as undetermined for now as we want to think more about them before committing someone to the role. This is also so that both me and Ed have equal roles during the project.

* Afterwards we agreed that we liked the plot, but if we felt like it needed to be longer or stuff could be added we decided that we would add a marketplace and / or bar scene.

* I then remembered that I wanted to show my partner the radio drama that gave me the idea for doing this project in the first place, it was a 'Star Wars: Smugglers Gambit' which was performed in 2012 in the style of a classic radio drama that you can listen to below.

http://starwarsblog.starwars.com/2012/11/28/smugglers-gambit-full-audio/

* Before deciding on the voices, we decided to draw as many concept sketches as possible for different crew member designs. This would help us visualise a voice for them and perhaps think of some additional personalities or characteristics.

You can see the sketches below where I drew everything and anything that popped into my mind so as to not limit myself. Many of the designs in fact came from simply scribbling random lines and then drawing over them.

* Personally, I feel we need to put together a poster or two in order to make sure our story reel at the show stands out, otherwise at the end of the day all it is is a video on the screen that people may miss.
Ed totally agreed with this idea and mentioned that he could always play the song we came up with on the guitar. He also brought up that we could include all our work notes on boards placed either side of the screen. 

* Next week we will be sharing our idea as a presentation. Therefore, Ed will put together the presentation whilst I continue to draw further possible designs and a defined list of characters. The latter will preferably have a couple of examples for each one so as to give Ed a choice.

Harvard Referencing :

• Newman, K (2012) Smuggler's Gambit Full Audio. [Audio] Available at: http://starwarsblog.starwars.com/2012/11/28/smugglers-gambit-full-audio/ (Accessed: 23/1/2014).

More possible characters (21/1/2014)

* Having made notes on voice acting last week as well as a list of possible characters, today I decided to come up with some more character possibilities and look over the voices I feel most comfortable with.

With the characters I felt that it may be best to focus on a smaller cast of characters since including the ship would make seven, despite only six voices being needed. Therefore, perhaps having fewer characters we can characterise them better.
Therefore, I thought of some new examples and combined some of the ones thought of last week in order to come up with the following...

• A rougeish lizard man who loves nothing more than to make money and cheat. I'd imagine him with a reptilian / cockney almost pirate accent.
• A high pitched gibbering monkey creature that could act as a team mascot or merely a pest that tries to get on board when the ship lands.
• A calculating and wise being with dual voices / an echo. 
• A samurai who is mysterious and talks either straight to the point or in riddles. 
• Someone who is clearly upset over something, but is still going for the sake of the group.
• A massive fan of guns and explosives. Whenever he gets the chance he will talk about them until he is blue in the face.
• A super nervous and anxious techy who prefers not to take risks and play around on his computer.
• A continuation of the loveable dick character, only he can mimic and do other voices in order to get through security.
• A drinker who when he is either drunk or sober still makes the best pilot/mechanic around.
• A fun loving, optimistic member of the group who is always clowning around and trying to make people happy.
• Someone who takes everything seriously and tries to stick to a strict conduct / code.
• Someone not too bright and doesn't really follow things. His heart my be in the right place, but he always seems to make a mess of things. Therefore, he could also be considered the audience's conduit.  
• Someone completely over confident, maybe heroic / swashbuckler like.
• A no nonsense military bad ass.  

I also had the thought that it may be an idea to just go back and only have two crew members and a talking ship. Thus we can have fun banter that characterises the crew and get to the location quicker, possibly then allowing me and Ed to do more within the story reel.
Granted we could also have the talking ship, two main crew members and a couple of others that don't talk audibly, but instead make sounds e.g. robotic or alien.
I will raise this idea with my partner on Thursday, if he agrees we may both wish to come up with our own characters so as to bounce off one another.

* Remembering that the book I read 'Voice for Hire' recommended only going for voices you felt comfortable with, I decided to make the list below. This includes all my voices as, although some are more obviously me than others, I feel that even a one man performance can give character to all his roles, thus excusing the short comings of limited voices. Plus Ed can mess around with the audio effects in order to give them cool voices if need be.
My range so far includes...

• Regular. 
• High pitch.
• Low / bass.
• Heroic.
• Mad scientist. 
• High crazy. 
• Cockney.
• Stupid.
• Fat disgusting man.
• Depressed. 
• David Bowie.

Thoughts on characters and story (16/1/2014)

* As I overslept and was forced to get a later train I decided to read my voice acting book 'Voice for Hire' (2008) by Randy Thomas and Peter Rofe.
From doing so I got the following great advice that I could perhaps use in the project...

• Page 21: Smile when you're talking happy, this is a technique that actually works.  
• Page 31: If me and my partner decide to record our lines together in order to make the dialogue sound natural then we should avoid the urge to make eye contact. This may seem odd, but it can distract your partner and stop you from following what is being said.
• Page 69: "It is your job to maintain consistency and specificity in the way your characters speak, feel and emote. Nothing will upset a voice director more than altering the way your character speaks and acts from one session to another. The integrity of your character must stay true to the writer's intentions, just as in any storyline you would see in a film, television program, or play."
• Page 70: As an exercise it advised that I draw some characters and then try and come up with at least three possible voices for them. From doing so you are more able to "zero in on the correct vocal qualities, pitch, tone, and rhythm for your character.".
• Page 71: As I have been doing already, I should continue to make a list of voices I feel that I am comfortable with. I should also continue to develop the number of voices I can do by trying to mimic a number of existing voices. I can do all this within my own space, thus allowing me to play with what I have and use my whole body to engage as the character physically. This last technique can be used to help break the gender barrier as animation is the only genre where you can do this apparently. If I come across one however, that feels as if it is damaging my throat then I should drop it, otherwise it can end any potential career quickly.

* When I finally got into college, I spoke to my partner about our ideas.

• My partner really liked the 2nd idea I came up with which involved the characters searching for a lost alien faction/civilization. He further liked this idea as he was interested in doing something involving a crew of some sort on board a spaceship.
• We wanted the ship to be as much a character as the rest of the crew as seen in most sci-fi such as the Millennium Falcon from 'Star Wars' and Moya from 'Farscape'.
• Ed bought up the idea of a group of mercenaries that I really liked, thus they are a dysfunctional family that take on odd jobs and "get rich quick schemes" to earn enough credits to fuel the ship and keep them fed (if barely even that). However, they never try and kill anyone (just like 'The A-Team').
• To make our crew as much of a dysfunctional family as possible we decided to think of around 5-6 characters that wouldn't normally not be seen together. We also decided to focus mainly on personalities and work out the species later. Currently we have the following male characters as we didn't want to distract our listeners with female characters who sound nothing like their gender...
• An adventurous captain who is always trying to get rich quickly and doesn't think ahead. These may be bad qualities but, the crew are loyal to him as he's really a nice guy who took them in.
• A tough character who is overly aggressive.
• The likeable dick who is over confident, arrogant and boastful. He will always run away from a fight unless it involves feeding his greed. However, he is an excellent charmer and hacker.
• The recluse religious sniper who is a tall slender character that speaks in harmonic chants and sign language. 
• A dwarf.
• A lazy almost stonner mechanic who would act as the audiences' conduit as he will always miss hear or not listen to things. Thus he asks the questions the audience would ask.
• The ship itself is also a character who is gun-ho and cocky. Thus the crew always have to tell the ship to calm down and do what they tell it to do.

* With ideas in mind, we then established the flow of the story itself. We wanted to make sure that it would be a cutscene that would open to the first section of gameplay for the player whilst not making them feel as if they are watching something cool rather than doing something cool which a lot of cutscenes in games make the mistake of.
You can read the current story below...

• Establishing shot of the ship in orbit of a planet. 
• Cut inside to the crew. One of whom asks why they are there again to which the crew talk about the possibility of discovering a lost ancient city.
• Ship flies through the atmosphere in which numerous other bigger ones can be seen flying past.
• Shot of the snow covered city harbor surrounded by frozen water and mountains. 
• Then cuts to ground level where the ship lands inside a dock.
• Crew splits up and leaves the player character to leave by himself. 
• Cut to white from the sun's rays.

* We then tried to think about what environment the city should be in. We decided from the start not to have it be a desert or completely city surface as we wanted to escape from the fan favourite planets of Tatooine and Coruscant from 'Star Wars' that include these.
We managed to come up with the following...

• A snow covered city with frozen harbor.
• A completely sea covered surface similar to Caribbean islands where a harbor floats on top and a city underneath. These would look like a number of tubes that are underwater. 
• City covered in jungle.

* Afterwards we did further research on storyboards and story reels, looking at examples from both 'Shrek' and 'The Lord of the Rings' movies in order to see how they would draw and show progression in their stories.

* We finally decided that we would refer to our project as a story reel with audio as a story board is static, therefore a story reel continues to play all of its frames of drawings. This would be made so that the animation department could make a cutscene out of it. 

We further felt that we could put the images onto a program such as 'Aftereffects' as that way we can make a video that includes all our audio on top of the story board/story reel.

 

* Ed also recommended that I watch the 'Halo' video below which goes behind the scenes of voice acting, so I did. Overall, whilst it was short, it did give some insight into the job of voice acting as it showed actors recording their lines together in the same booth and underlined the sort of work conditions they were under. Thus, if me and Ed wanted to do this we could. 

Over the weekend I will come up with some more characters we could include in our project, thus providing us with a whole range of characters to pick from and then decide what voices would suit each one best.

Harvard Referencing:

• Unknown (2008) Shrek - Deleted Storyboard - Deal+. [Online Video] Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqAIiVS5JAk (Accessed: 16/1/2014).
• Unknown (2009) Halo 3 ODST BEHIND THE SCENES (VOICE ACTORS). [Online Video] Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcyAk-pFF6M (Accessed: 16/1/2014).
• Unknown (2012) Lord of the Rings - Storyboard to Film Comparison - Nazgul Attack at Bree.  [Online Video] Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYjA8xQHK7Q (Accessed: 16/1/2014).

Planning (9/1/2014)

* At the start of this new module our lecturer decided to clear up a few things.

• This module is worth just as many points as the rest. So don't worry about the 'major' in the title, think of it more as 'personal'. Major is meant to mean demonstrating the skills you have accumulated over the course in general. 
• Working as a team and using assets from others is A-ok. However, both parties must always state what work is theirs and explain why you have collaborated. 
• The negotiation aspect is more about discussing what further things we can include in our overall project.

Grading:

• 'Statement of Intent' is 30% that can easily be reduced to 0% if you do not stick with your chosen idea. This is so as to reflect a real work environment in which you would be fired for doing something completely different. 
• 60% will be the actual creation. 
• Evaluation is 10%. 

* Our work for this module will be presented alongside the 3rd years during the summer show. Therefore, we must make sure we are putting something good together. We will be expected to present our ideas to the group in around two weeks time.

With this in mind the lecturer asked each one of us what we fancied doing whilst everyone was present to give advice. Since I was thinking of working on a radio drama, I received the following comments...

• Something to do with voice acting is fine. However, don't name it a 'radio drama' as that would suggest it needs to be broadcasted, thus countering my possible statement of intent. Therefore, always remember to use the right wording.
• Could make it interactive in order to make it more game like.
• Could be the audio that would be used for a cut scene, thus I could also draw some images in order to create a storyboard to go with it.
• Perhaps record audio that the player would pick up as collectables in video games. 
• Could be a narrative about games e.g. someone's experience with them.
• Radio broadcast as heard in the likes of 'Fallout', thus being something fun the player would listen to.
• Make sure to think carefully about the equipment and logistics, as some equipment would be unavailable on certain days. 
  

* After the above my friend Ed said that he was interested in my idea as he is fond of doing audio. Thus we chatted with one another and made a list of ideas and genres we would both be interested in doing, after all, if we are going to work together then it should be a project we will enjoy doing equally. 

Such ideas included... 

• Apocalyptic genre: Both being huge fans of the survival genre, we thought of maybe doing something like Fallout. However, this genre would possibly limit our sounds as most life would be non-existent (as the name of the genre suggests). Thus sounds would be limited to dust, footsteps etc.   
• Sci-fi genre: Admittedly this is the genre I wanted to do before I teamed up with Ed. Franchises we are both keen on include Star Wars, Farscape, Aliens, Red Dwarf and War Hammer 40,000.  Possibilities in general for this genre are also expanded thanks to the numerous planets, races and tech available to make sounds for. After talking about it more we both felt that, although we love comedy we would both prefer to do something more serious. However, this doesn’t mean that we cannot include fun dialogue/banter between the characters if we chose this genre. 

 

* Thinking about the advise given, we then discussed what we would be interested in making as you can see below.

• I am very interested in doing audio for a cut scene as then we could include story board images. After all, real animation companies do this in order to tell the story visually before getting a team to work on it.
• We considered making a opening cut scene in which Ed thought we could always do two takes for the same scene so as to show player choice. For example, one for the player chosen to be good and the other for when they choose to be evil.
• Ed also thought we could produce a trailer for a game which would allow us to show multiple aspects of the game and its universe. Therefore, we watched the trailer for ‘Destiny’ that we both really enjoy. However, from doing so we realised it relied heavily on visual sources, therefore if we didn’t include story boards it would be just noise to the audience. Watching the trailer we were also both keen on including talking in the scene between multiple characters with perhaps an ominous voice monologue.
• I then showed Ed the opening cutscene to ‘Star Wars: Jedi Knight II, Jedi Outcast’ which I felt was a good example of a slow paced opening that has plenty of characters talking about their mission with numerous folio sounds in the background for ambiance, thus being something more readily accomplished.  

* After thinking of all the above we both decided that we definitely did want to include story boards so as to add a visual element to the overall piece. As for the actual piece however, we both decided at the end of the session to go away and come up with some ideas for the story over the weekend in order to pick one to further develop. 

We also decided then to confirm what roles we wanted to do in the project which are...

• Me: Voice acting, scripting and characterisation.
• Ed: Support voice acting, audio and folio. 

* Ed also talked to the lecturer at the end of the session to see if making a cut scene with a story board would be fine to which . He said it would be.

Story Ideas (10/1/2014)

Today I came up with a number of ideas for the story in order to share with my partner when I next see him next. Whether or not any of these would fit into an existing franchise I don't know, but you can see the list below...

* The scene establishes a spaceship, space station or planet that is soon attacked. The audience would either see or hear this. Afterwards it cuts to either an organisation or the military who have picked up the victims' last transmission. Realising the worse, they contact the protagonist/s who may be soldiers, mercenaries, bounty hunters or even people who quit one of these occupations in order to seek their help.
One of the protagonists (a pilot) who is in the area, picks up their call for assistance. The pilot calls for their comrade who would be heard running down a metal corridor. Talking ensues and the protagonists either agree because of duty, money, boredom or the fact that someone they know was where the attack took place. The ship then takes off, thus ending the cutscene.
The protagonists could also always pick up the original transmission themselves.

* Opening monologue explains the mystery of an ancient alien faction that left its kingdom behind. It was said to hold vast riches, weaponry and a power said to match even the creators! A treasure, or more importantly a key is said to exist in the universe that will lead adventurers to the forgotten kingdom and open its locked gates. Such a kingdom and treasure was considered a myth, a legend... until now!
Title then cuts to a spaceship with a crew who talk about the story. One of them claims the kingdom to be real, as his father gave him what he said was the key when he was younger. Now the group travel to a planet which the key is pointing towards.
Other options for this story may include the hero being at a bar with the key when a group of alien thugs try and jump him. A bar fight ensues and the hero fleas either to be hidden or rescued by a mysterious stranger. The stranger, in this case knows the story and wants the hero to join him in finding the kingdom. In return he will allow the hero, who is out of luck, to use his ship to get him to where he needs to be. One of the thugs could also turn out to have been working for the stranger when the hero gets on board his ship. The thug was told to join the other ones so as to determine if the hero had the key and, if so, protect him.

* Opens with a monolog about a great war between the forces of good and evil. The forces of good are pushed back or destroyed by the evil general who asks if anyone will oppose him?
Cut to an announcer calling out the heroe's name who is a beloved star racer who is seen starting and winning a high speed race (possible credits showing during this). Afterwards, he is approached by representatives of the military who claim they need him and his amazing piloting skills. Reluctant, the hero asks why he needs to return having been absent from the war for many years. The military tell him about the recent attack and that humanity only has one line of defence left before the enemy hits Earth!
It could then cut on this as a cliff hanger, or the hero could say he needs to think about it. Of course the hero eventually agrees and then it could end with him flying off in a ship.