making an audio-movie/book

[etertay]

hey, so for a long time, ive been looking for a way to express myself artistically with the skills that i have, i have learned how to make sound effects/music and acquired a few mics, so i thought that i would try making an "audio movie" like the old radio shows they had before television.

so i went ahead and made a "pilot chapter" using just one voice actor (me) and the majority of sound effects and music also made by me (guitar opening taken from the "freemusicarchive" and many sound effects taken from "freesound.org")

the audio file is pretty self explanatory, but the basic premise is this.

: a rough "n" tough noir style hero is our main character, but with a twist, he is a pizza man.
and through being a pizza man he ends up solving a huge crime, just through being a pizza man.

http://soundcloud.com/erictaylor/audio-movie-the-frozen-pizza (posted on sound cloud)

so i would like advice on the following

1. is it good?/funny?

2.my family and friends will likely cover everything i need for voice actors, but advice all the same?

3. tips on writing entire scripts?


constructive criticism is welcome, but please no.."ur stuff sucks" comments

 

[Limecake]

The footsteps sound a little off, either they are too quiet or they need to be more 'full' to make them sound believable.

your voice levels are off by quite a bit, particularly in the beginning you can hear the excess noise and breaths from the recording. at other times your voices are almost drowned out by the music, are you running the voices through a compressor? that would help keep the vocal levels consistent (although it would also make the excess sound more obvious if that is a problem.)

your music sound pretty decent as do most of your sound effects. although sometimes they can be loud (your car door closing in particular

Be careful of your voice-acting, effects and accents really shouldn't be used unless they are genuine (or extremely subtle) most people can recognize a 'faked' accent and the effect on your bosses voice sounds a bit weird (although not as bad as it could have sounded) I don't know about the voice to open up the show, it comes across as weak and ideally should be one of the strongest voices in the whole piece.

honestly 9 times out of 10 using your own voice is the best bet, it kinda started to sound like Abed doing batman. you should be exploring the range of your vocals, it sounds more human and let's you convey more emotion (remember that since there is no visuals you have to kinda over-act to portray your emotion well)

remember that the type of music you're going for is extremely important, you have a spaghetti western music to start which might not line up with a 'noir' style (have you tried jazz?) and cutting out breaths add to the 'illusion'. you also don't need music all the time, simple 'atmosphere' could work for the car or for delivering the pizza (he could be having a party?)

These are all really pretty minor, I'm a bit nitpicky because I do this stuff for a living (I make radio commercials) really the only thing that actually threw me out of the moment was hearing all the different pauses, taking the first delivery as an example:

Customer: Hello Who is it?
(pause)
Door opens (he should have probably opened the door before asking who it is)
(pause)
Pizza man: It's the pizza man....
Door Closes
(pause)
Customer: Oh so then it's free
(pause)
Pizza man: I knew it!

all those pauses give us the sense of feeling lost (what's going on when you can't hear anything going on?) try 'overlapping' the last half a second or so of your voice overs/sound effects it should tighten the whole thing up (similar to your discussion with your boss). Or you could fill it with more sound effects.

you also need an ending, it ends cold and that really doesn't work for most things, you can fade out the music or end it with a sound effect but it shouldn't just end.

Wow, sorry for the wall of text there, it sounds good though and I hope I helped at least a little.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

snip

I don't have time to listen to your audio drama right now, but you might be interested in the following site: http://www.audiodramatalk.com/

Strange as it may sound, there's an entire online subculture based around producing audio dramas and distributing them as podcasts. Not only is it a good source for people who want something to listen to while puttering around the house or commuting to work, but they're also very friendly and helpful (on the whole) to people who want to make their own audio dramas. That forum is kind of a centralized place where different groups come together to talk about the craft; each of the groups have their own website, some of which have their own forums.

Edit: okay, I just listened to it. That was /really/ good for a 3 minute pilot, especially for a first attempt. I've heard podcasts from Brokensea (one of the bigger groups) that had worse sound effects and voice acting. Unlike the previous poster, I didn't find anything confusing about it, but then I listen to this stuff a lot; there may actually be a bit of medium literacy needed to fully get it.

 

[etertay]

thanks for all the feedback, im going to try and revise/improve the pilot episode, and also mess around on audiodramatalk.com (i actually thought there might be some sort of forum for this sort of thing)

a few things i want to explain

1. yes, i am pitch-shifting most of the voices, i realize that the "pizza mans" voice needs a little work as well, i dont know if anyone noticed, but the voice of the pizza man completely changed in the middle of the chapter (to the better i hope) as i was continuing to work on it

2. about the problematic "boss" voice, i just feel that there are only so many voices that one person can make differently enough, so i started using accents and pitch-shifting to try create some variety

3.ill make another post, when i have made some significant changes.

 

[bobmus]

I enjoyed it, and I could hear your Batman-voice improving as the clip went on. However the comments above about the delivery etc are all very accurate.