Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion FoLC Productions Experiment - AudioFic - Persephone's Return (Part One)

Wow, Paul! This is great! I haven't listened to all three parts yet (have downloaded), but I listened to the first part you made a few days ago and love what you're doing. I had to amplify the sound a bit in Audacity to hear well enough using my underpowered speakers, but it sounded fine as is with headphones turned up.

Like Kaylle I'm one of those people who listen to audio books at work, at least during those things I can do while on autopilot. If it weren't for Audible.com and its Terry Pratchett selection, life would be a lot less interesting.

Sometimes when I'm working -- or driving -- I've thought how cool it would be to have fanfic audio to listen to. I'm intrigued by Kaylle's experience with text-to-speech and may give that a try, but a real human reading and emoting is more satisfying, and I really like your voice. If you were planning to do some more fanfic readings, I'd love to hear them.



-- Lauren

Wow. Two posts from Lauren. In the same day! Cool!

Glad you enjoyed the first part. If there's anything else you'd like me to do, just let me know.

Kaylle, thanks for posting. Was hoping you still had the info and would put it up.

Paul

Since we've been on this board for nearly 10 years, I guess I still think of you as a kid.

James

Hi, Paul!

I test-drove your finished recording in my car. Burned the three parts to CD for a road trip, and "Persephone's Return" occupied me for 30-odd happy miles. Bravo! You've got a great voice for this.

I've always heard that one page of script equals one minute of screen time. Interestingly enough, your story, which is about 30Kb on the archive, turned into about a 30-minute story read aloud. And because I wasn't speeding it lasted about 30 miles. I just found that interesting.

What are your thoughts about audio on the archive, Paul?

Everyone else, too, what are your thoughts?

Thanks,

-- Lauren

Whoa.

That would be really cool!

Go ahead and put the files up.

As for reading... I did do a Librivox recording. A chapter of The Count of Monte Cristo. Thanks for pointing me over there. I'll probably do more with them, but this is more fun. Homier. So, sure... I'll keep going.

Like I said before, though, I wouldn't read another author's story without permission.

I'm also not sure that I can commit to a regular schedule. (For various reasons. Including the fact that the room directly below mine is currently undergoing repairs and there's a lot of background noise...) But I'd be happy to get things rolling. If we can get a few more readers, we won't have to worry as much about the schedule.

So, in short:



Let's do it!

Paul

Paul,

I like your idea. It's great!

Thank you... and keep them coming. I'm sure many authors would give permission to you record their stories.

Andreia

Here is an idea that may or may not be possible.

What if we had multiple individuals for the various roles of a story. Similar to dramatic readings done of various classical works of art.

At first glance, it might be seem awfully complicated, it couldn't be any worse than splicing together audio bytes!

We could invite the author to the narrator, and then have someone be Clark, and someone else be Lois and so on.

We could hold auditions for the parts!

or am I just needing more sleep so that these silly thoughts will go away???

James

Thanks for parts two and three, Paul. You did a good job with those as well and like others have mentioned before, your voice is easy to listen to and in great contrast to TTS software it's also a pleasure

While this software is definitely better than I've remembered from past use, it does not sound anywhere as near as real voices. This is somewhat of a letdown because an important part of listening to audio books is the pleasure of the reader's voice. Thanks all the same for those links to TextAloud, I'll be trying it for real in the next days but I don't have great hopes.

Oh and James, the idea is lovely, I just see a huge problem with trying Just imagine some three speakers who constantly disrupt each other and while those may share the workload somehow the brunt of the work falls to the editor. I don't even want to think about mixing those parts together because there have to be thousands of pieces to align from three different sources and that will take time! An additional problem which could occur are postproductional issues because of different sound qualities, volume etc (think about a shy and quiet Lois towards a loud and confident Clark, wouldn't that ruin some dreams for you? )

ok, I can see that would throw things if there were technical difficulties.

It was just an idea...

James

The thought occurred to me too, James, but then I thought it would be quite difficult.

I had another thought, though. (BTW, does anybody think that we're spamming the thread, since the subject has branched out so much?)

Anyway, my idea was - I've written several stories in first person. And two of them (No Excuse/No Excuse At All) include switching viewpoints from Lois to Clark. Perhaps these would sound good - a female reads Lois, a male reads Clark. I'd do Lois, but if this is to serve as educational hearing material, it would be better if the reader was a native English speaker.

Any thoughts? (Should I make a different thread for this?)

See ya,
AnnaBtG.

Don't worry about thread drift. Thanks, but I'm interested in this, too.

If you do want to make a new thread, though, for visibility's sake, please go right ahead.

As for recording parts, I'd thought of it, too (see the first post in this thread). There are some technical challenges to it, but it could be done. Just not sure if it'd be worth it.

But what you suggest, Anna, is much simpler. Not sure how many stories it'd work for, but worth it for ones like you mentioned.

Paul

Hm, this is surely not accurate in any way but a story of 60 kilobyte plain text amounts to approximately 1 hour of reading (based on Paul's story 32min for 29kb and 11:20 hrs for 594kb of "Meet me in Kansas City" by Chris Mulder).

Based on that, editing dialogues and narratation from (at least) three different sources will take days or weeks to complete. For shorter stories this will take much less time and it could certainly be attractive, listening to audio-fanfic in a brand new way

Reducing the workload by splitting the jobs to whole chapters would work very well, I believe. Why don't you give it a try Anna

Hi, Paul!

I put the audio version of your story up on the archive with today's update. I listened to it again on my iPod. Again, GREAT JOB!!

The poll shows more people are interested in audio fics than not. I think people will love what you've done. And, like me, hope you do some more.

James, your idea about multiple voices is interesting but may be hard to pull off logistically. It would involve lots of editing, pulling from multiple audio files. But maybe something could be worked out using Skype, or some VOIP tool like Skype, so that people could read their lines and react to each other in real time, to make it more like a play. Haven't got a clue there, myself, as I've never used Skype. But in a podcast I listen to, TWiT, the old TechTV guys use Skype all the time to hold conversations online.

Anna B., I listened to your sample and really liked it. Your English is very good!

-- Lauren

I have to say that the audio version of 'Persephone's Return' in the Archive looks pretty nifty

And, thanks for the compliment, Lauren!

See ya,
AnnaBtG.

Oh wow. It's up!

That's awesome! And I have my own front page news blurb!

Hmm. But what are you going to do with the audiofic links in the future? Put them up next to the text links for the individual story? Create an audiofic section? Both? Something else?

I spent my recording time this past week on Librivox (thanks again for that, Lauren!), but I'm going to have to get started on another audiofic real soon...

Gonna have to listen to your sample, too, Anna. Great to see someone else picking it up. Good luck with your endevour!

Paul

Hey Paul - great job on that story. (both the story and the audio file!) You've got a pleasant voice for this, I had a good time listening.

I also think audiofic is a really neat idea and I hope there's more of it in the future!

(and I can't figure out a way to say this without sounding like I'm showing off or something - which is definitely not how I want to come off! - but here goes anyway... I may have a few tips and tricks as far as reading a story goes, if anyone is interested. Someone with acting classes would probably know a lot better than I do, but I studied radio broadcasting and have had voice coaching all through College, so I do know a few useful little things.)

Thanks Lara. Glad you enjoyed.

And hey, I'm pretty new at this. Any suggestions you may have would be appreciated, I'm sure.

There are also some pretty useful tips and guides over at Librivox\'s wiki/FAQ page . Including the very helpful page entitled " Help! What if I suck? "

Paul

LOL! They called it "what if I suck?" - that's too funny!

Here's a couple little things that could be useful. It's stuff I learned in school - and I've used these myself when doing some recordings for radio adverts and phone systems ("please press one").

Btw, if it's helpful, I could record a few examples of these things to show you what I mean, if you like. You'll be able to hear the difference; there really is one.

- You should speak as loudly as if you're having a normal conversation, or better yet, place the mic an inch further and read the text as if you're adressing a classroom full of people. (don't shout though, obviously) The recording will sound "intimate" even if you do that, it's all in the way the mic captures the sound.

- Even if you read the text without emotion (neutral tone) you should try to smile a little bit as you speak. If you're reading it with emotion, then smile more. It sounds weird, I know... but trust me, you can always pick up a smile in someone's voice and it can make all the difference in the world.

- One little thing that can help you "pretend" you're reading this to someone is to read it in front of a mirror; it's easier to smile at yourself, too. I know this sounds incredibly vain - staring at yourself, but the point isn't actually to admire your looks here.

- Sit up straight, or even better, stand up. This will help your breathing for one and sometimes also help your voice come out better. Mind you, it's mostly for the breathing - like a singer.

The last thing, well... it's not really something they teach you in school, but most people I know did this (I did too) and personnaly I find it helpful. I print the text I need to read, then mark all the pauses with a red slash then I add accents over the words that I think need to be accentuated in the text. It's also useful because it forces you to read the text out loud once to figure out the accentuations - like a practice run. Of course, myself, I used to go through pronounciation exercises and several practice runs before I read something - but that's usually cause they *paid* me to read the thing, so it had to be this close to perfect.

If this is useful, then great. But I don't claim to be an expert at anything, just someone who's actually done this sort of work in the past. Mind you, my lil sound byte on Anna's thread is not my best work ever -- it's WAY harder to do this in English than it is in French for me.

Hi, Paul!

I think both would be a good idea. Have a page for audiofic and maybe a little audio icon next to the story in the catalog pages.

Yay! I'm looking forward to hearing it, Paul. Also glad to hear you're doing work for Librivox. I love that site.

-- Lauren