Voice Work for Videos

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Zelknolf
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Voice Work for Videos

Post by Zelknolf »

As part of the advertisement discussion, the notion of videos showing ALFA's features came up. Probably one of the better ways to get visibility-- "hey spend 3-5 minutes observing this thing that you've probably never seen this game do before" is a pretty easy sell for people-- but we're in a somewhat-hilarious place.

I'm probably the person who knows all of the stuff necessary to construct the content for these videos, but as folk may or may not know, I sound like a blender full of frogs and ball bearings (if I'm whispering, the blender is off)-- editing can clean up some of that, but it quickly starts to sound like the lyrical stylings of T-Pain. And so I don't actually own a microphone.

But the best format for this sort of video is going to be viewing play over the course of a few minutes and then having someone (ideally someone articulate and someone with a pleasing speaking voice) talking about what's happening and why it's unique for us. And so I'd like to throw out a request-- anyone with a pleasant-enough voice willing to be the voice on such videos? Or voice and recording (I know it's easier for some to do voice and recording at the same time)?
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kmj2587
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Re: Voice Work for Videos

Post by kmj2587 »

I'll do it if my voice is deemed acceptable. I have a halfway decent condenser mic and audio interface as well so it won't come out sounding like someone using a cheap mic.
< Burt> kmj's a jerk, that's what the j stands for. Kyle's a Massive Jerk.
HEEGZ
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Re: Voice Work for Videos

Post by HEEGZ »

Very cool. Looking forward to seeing what you can come up with. Besides an audio and vocal feed, should we consider some background music?
MaskedIllusion
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Re: Voice Work for Videos

Post by MaskedIllusion »

I think that no matter who does the voice. We should have text overlapping the video if we can. I find when doing anything "Instructional" it is easier to be able to pause and read text. It may not be as important for the advertising video but for the instructions I think it should be.
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Zelknolf
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Re: Voice Work for Videos

Post by Zelknolf »

OK! Silent video with captions for hopefully long enough to talk. Definitely needs sound, though; otherwise you have to watch it twice (once to read and once to watch).

Sounded like kmj's willing to give a try at voicing it-- don't need to read the captions verbatim, but that is the content (and I guess a learning experience if you're new to infestations). Trivially easy for me to change the captions, though, and we're probably better off suggesting that the voice over speak naturally and have me just change the text to suit.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/307 ... _As_DM.wmv
MaskedIllusion
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Re: Voice Work for Videos

Post by MaskedIllusion »

Zelknolf wrote:OK! Silent video with captions for hopefully long enough to talk. Definitely needs sound, though; otherwise you have to watch it twice (once to read and once to watch).

Sounded like kmj's willing to give a try at voicing it-- don't need to read the captions verbatim, but that is the content (and I guess a learning experience if you're new to infestations). Trivially easy for me to change the captions, though, and we're probably better off suggesting that the voice over speak naturally and have me just change the text to suit.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/307 ... _As_DM.wmv
Agreed
Current PC:
Pc 1: Kalavaria
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Retired PCs:Kyrinil, Isabella, Sayset, Iadeth, Araessa, Kalix Silvith
Past PCs: Astri, Navanna, Vess, Isett

<paazin_> I hate you.

Puny: I would stomp on a spider wearing my future babies face.

Boom: I hope he dies in a flying aids fire.
FoamBats4All
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Re: Voice Work for Videos

Post by FoamBats4All »

I took a stab at it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_VcGQ4qB2Y

Let me know what you think. My mic is definitely not the best, nor is my voice. We need someone with a silky smooth radio voice.

Edit: Now with captions.
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Re: Voice Work for Videos

Post by FoamBats4All »

Zelknolf is willing to do recording, and so am I. I am also willing to do caption editing on YouTube, and video editing to match the template provided above (outro/intro, etc.).

We're still on the look out for a someone with a silky smooth voice to help us out there.
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Re: Voice Work for Videos

Post by FoamBats4All »

A few more people have offered to do voice overs: KMJ, shad0wfax, Muse, Cloud_Dancing

I say Zelk and I write up some dialog, post it. Someone "claims" that entry, changes what they need to. We verify it for accuracy. They record audio clips, and send it to us. We record video. I edit the audio/video together and post it to that YouTube account.
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Re: Voice Work for Videos

Post by FoamBats4All »

Replaced the video with this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJO_Mky_q-4
- Redid video recording. GUI should not look stretched now.
- Added an extra section explaining how you can learn languages.

I plan on recording video/voice for ACR loot generation next. I'll plan out a script. If Zelk and other DMs who have used it could make sure it makes sense, it'd be much appreciated.
[INTRO] "Normally, in Neverwinter Nights, any new item that you want to bring in game has to first be made in the toolset and then brought into the module. This is a fairly labor-intensive process, and is a waste if the items we're dropping don't serve a story purpose beyond that there is wealth here. So to save our DMs and builders that time, we have a tool that generates loot randomly."

[Open GUI] "To randomly generate loot, first open the ACR creator. Next, navigate to the item tab. Here at the top, you'll see a Generate Loot button."

[Text Fields] "Dungeons and Dragons, the system ALFA and Neverwinter Nights 2 are based on, gives guidelines for wealth at any given level. To help the generator, we can tell it the lowest level character, how much experience the session awarded, and the number of players involved."

[Richest PC] "To keep to those standards, we also specify the wealth level of the richest PC in the party. We can determine this by using the player list. Here we see that this PC is <wealth level of whoever happens to be online/is on the test server>."

[Split] "We can also tell the generator to spawn a lot of cheap items, or to focus on high-quality items. There's also the option of telling the system to try to ensure that loot may be split."

[Type] "Finally, we tell the system what type of loot to make. We can tell it to focus on making a pair of boots, armor, a belt, or an amulet. We can also tell it to spawn a balanced bag, or even to focus on scroll or potion consumables."

[Example] "Here we are in a camp. The PCs have just killed some bandits, and are raiding their corpses. We have a level 1 PC in the party, and the group was awarded four hundred experience, including expected combat experience. We had 3 PCs in the party." / "Opening the player list, we see that the richest PC is <x>, so we select that in the loot generator window." / "We want to make sure that both loot can be split, and that we have a balanced bag."

[Output] "Clicking generate will create our loot for us. We see that we are generating <wealth amount> gold worth of loot. We told it the minimum gold drop was <x>, so <x> of that is raw gold. The rest are items, which we can now find in our inventory."

[Customization] "Sometimes we want to customize these items. We may want magical items to be unidentified, or for items to have custom descriptions. Let's first set some descriptions."

[Set Description] "One of the chat commands available to DMs is #setdesc. For more details on this, see our video on DM chat commands. Here we will set this insulating cloak to have a fancy description." [Set some fancy description.]

[Unidentify Items] "Next, let's obscure some of these magical items. Open the inventory manager. Select the item you want to set as unidentified, then click Identified ON/OFF."

[Other Videos] "See our videos on the Inventory Manager and DM Chat Commands for more information on these two tools."

[Outro] "Once the loot is generated, you can drop it on the ground around the corpses. That's all there is to it."

[Standard outro here.]
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boombrakh
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Re: Voice Work for Videos

Post by boombrakh »

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Last edited by boombrakh on Sat Jun 06, 2015 2:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
pragmatic (adj.)
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is sensible, grounded, and practical.
Zelknolf
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Re: Voice Work for Videos

Post by Zelknolf »

We might add a line explaining the problem that ships with the game, which we've made better here in ALFA.

"Normally, in Neverwinter Nights, any new item that you want to bring in game has to first be made in the toolset and then brought into the module. This is a fairly labor-intensive process, and is a waste if the items we're dropping don't serve a story purpose beyond that there is wealth here."

"So to save our DMs and builders that time, we have a tool that generates loot randomly..."
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Re: Voice Work for Videos

Post by FoamBats4All »

Zelknolf wrote:We might add a line explaining the problem that ships with the game, which we've made better here in ALFA.

"Normally, in Neverwinter Nights, any new item that you want to bring in game has to first be made in the toolset and then brought into the module. This is a fairly labor-intensive process, and is a waste if the items we're dropping don't serve a story purpose beyond that there is wealth here."

"So to save our DMs and builders that time, we have a tool that generates loot randomly..."
Edited script to use that as an intro.
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Re: Voice Work for Videos

Post by FoamBats4All »

Did another video (Installing the Client Extension): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15iGkEk1fqQ

Cloud offered to voice, and KMJ has mentioned it too. Zelk, what are two good topics for us to write scripts for them?
Zelknolf
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Re: Voice Work for Videos

Post by Zelknolf »

Still waiting on the DM half of infestations (or we could scrap my first dumb attempt at recording and try again with a better process); should try to do a player half (or a concept half, I guess? A "There's an infestation. It will spread until we fight it back. It's persistent, but not permanent, and that's why it's cool." kind of thing)

We could also use a traps video. Those tend to confuse people at first, but the actual feature is pretty nifty.
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