These blogs will detail the research, development, rehearsal and analysis of my audio performance pieces. We have been tasked with developing and performing a big ensemble radio play and also have 3 individual pieces to do with solo performance. This blog is about all of the analysed projects to do with audio performance in preparation for both assignments as well as any additional information and techniques/ideas I find. It will detail what I learn from listening to them, whether they be good or bad, both are beneficial for identifying key elements and faults with a performance so I can learn from them.
5/1/17:
Today was a session about exploring basic microphone technique. This session I found to be quite useful since I'm very inexperienced when it comes to vocal performance and have never had to to it as a genuine performance.
The rules we went over were as follows:
- Make sure that you don't have a tight or tense posture since it will affect your breath control, your volume and can limit how much you're able to say. So it is best to stay as relaxed as possible and keep your body loose unless your performance demands such a tense voice for a scene.
- Never sit down. It's always best to stand up otherwise this is very restricting as well.
- Always breathe through your mouth as well as your nose so that you don't get the "t" when opening your mouth next to the microphone. It also allows you to take more breath in a lot faster so you can hopefully keep the pacing consistent or to what is intended.
- If you have to get very close to the microphone then it's recommended to slant you head slightly so that the audio isn't affected by your breathing or "P", "T" and "H" sounds hitting the microphone. Even if you have a pop filter over the mic it's still a method to prevent any possibility of the distortion happening.
- Make sure to use distance correctly. This means that the distance you're standing from the microphone has to correlate with the volume of your performance. This important for the sake of clarity, if the distance is wrong it'll be either too quite, too loud and distorted or just have a lack of clarity.
The main bulk of the session was experimenting with these ideas. We had to choose one of pieces (I went with my "Blood Brothers" monologue) and then record a segment of it with variations in how we deliver it. When trying them out I was trying to test out how the breath capacity/control is affected and see in what way it affects the clarity of the final audio only result. The first one I tried after doing the straight forward read was to stand with my arms firmly by my side as if I'm in a crowed corridor. That resulted in my recording sounding quieter and a little more breathy compared to the first one. Then I laid down on my stomach and said the lines and this one sounded way too breathy and as if I had very little air in me to say the whole line at a good volume due to my diaphragm being pushed inwards a bit, restricting it.
We also tried just varying the distance from the microphone to see what kind of effects we get. We ran through segments of our speeches several times with variations in distance from the microphone. As you'd think, this affected the clarity of the recording and showed us the importance of the correlation between distance and volume. If you deliver normally but are too far away then it will sound too quite and muffled but if you're too close and too loud then it will sound hugely distorted and very unnatural.
These are the key rules in audio performance and I will be analysing.
Projects Analysed:
Radio Dramas:
The first one I looked at for a radio drama was the horror play "The Woman in Black". With in a minute of watching it I noticed something to do with the character Isabelle. When she said her first two lines as she was entering the room there was a jarring increase in volume and I can put this down to 2 things. Either while recording, she was stationary and her audio was just mixed incorrectly or she used the technique of standing away and stepped towards the microphone too quickly, resulting in the sound change happening to fast. There was no natural flow to how the volume increased with the situation presented and it me aware of what I was doing, listening to a play. Call this a nit pick but it was fairly jarring and goes against the idea of this play since it's a horror and has a focus on establishing atmosphere and a probably the most important part of setting up said atmosphere (Whether it be radio, TV, film or game) is to have good sound design/mixing, anything that's quite off can break the immersion. So a way to resolve this is to either stay still and just hope the editor is good at mixing the audio correctly or really make sure if your steps forward are paced well according to your demand. Other than that nitpick though the sequence I listened to was very well done, the actors were crystal clear, really energised and the rest of the sound design such as the ticking clock in the background did wonders for the atmosphere.
I also looked at "Cock" by Mike Bartlett. I feel finding faults in something is the best way to learn from it, and with this, I can't say that I noticed any in terms of it's acting and production quality. The audio was very well mixed and both lead actors were giving very clear, very natural performances and due to this, a lot of the lines were engaging to listen. This all applies to the segments I listened to, if there were any faults I didn't find them or notice them. So really I feel that if I just listened to this in preparation, I wouldn't have learnt much since it's done well. There isn't any behind the scenes material for it so I can't analyse but just going by this, it seems to match up with all the rules I've listed and in terms of acting is done very effectively.
Radio Comedy/Sketches:
I looked Three example for this and they are pieces I'm fairly familiar with. They are "Knowing me Knowing you with Alan Partridge" (Which is featured in our ensemble play), and sketches from "That Mitchell and Webb Sound" and "Monty Python".
I looked at the "Argument Clinic" sketch from "Monty Python". I looked at both the radio studio recorded version and the television version to compare their differences. The main difference I noticed between them was definitely how they're paced, The radio sketch is 3 and a half minutes where as the TV sketch is 4 and a half minutes despite having the exact same script. The actors are generally talking much faster and have very few gaps between their sentences. While I feel it's debatable if that is beneficial for radio as a whole, it definitely fits this style here since it's meant to be an energetic, wacky and ridiculous program. All visual elements are gone so they must be worked around. Some shows can incorporate pauses extremely well which I'll mention with the next program, but it seems as though it can't have too much silence otherwise the pacing will seem much slower due to nothing else to focus on during that moment. It also helps with adapting it since in the show they may have a visible reaction which cannot be shown on, so cutting that aspect out keeps the focus on the dialogue and results in a very frantic and well put together sketch. This sketch also has no canned laughter/audience track so the gaps would be all the more noticeable if they paced them out more.
Something else I noticed was the energy levels and volume of the overall performances. The most notable example of that is when Graham Chapman has to shout at Michael Palin, it seems more restrained, almost like he's holding it back or makes it seems as though he's really in his face, which he isn't. It seems as though he's too close too the microphone and knows it, so is holding himself back a bit. I feel this bit isn't as funny as the TV version since in that he goes all out in that and it seems more surprising when he shouts, putting us into Michael Palin's place of being overwhelmed and surprised. However I do feel that the moment where he whispered to himself sounded better the radio version because in the TV when he did it, it was too loud and didn't create enough of a contrast where as this one did and since he's required to get up close to a microphone here it's easier to accomplish. So an advantage to take from this medium is that you have a greater deal of control over volume so it's best put to use and I will be taking care to think about how loud I need to be.
I also looked at two episodes of "Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge". They use the same cast for every episode so I wanted to look and see how they make key distinctions between the characters they play. The two actors I focused on were Patrick Marber and Rebecca Front since I felt they were the best at doing that. Their main differences between characters in episodes are the use of accent, tone, varying speech speed and inflections. In one episode their characters can be a very energetic, fast talking American where as in the next, they could be slow speaking, monotone, miserable, English person. This shows the importance of versatility. Since you're on radio, no one can see you so it's all the more harder to be recognised so it's best to take advantage of that and change it up. If all the guests sounded the same then all the episodes would give off the same vibe and it would be rubbish if it didn't also have great writing but thankfully they don't and they give some varied, brilliant performances.
It's important to also distinguish between specific emotions. These guys do it very well, you can clearly tell when they're frustrated compared to when they're angry just by the subtitles of there volume and pace.
Different to "Monty Python", this show actually has a laughter track in it, so any moment after a character has said something there could be some realistic pacing with the speech since there was the something to fill in the gaps. I don't know whether the audience is actually there, my bet is that it isn't and that the laughter is actually canned. With that in mind, it means you are allowed to pace things a little more naturally and even have awkward moments. It works very well to consider the pacing of the speech in this manner to bring across the moment properly. In the script for our ensemble play, it seems as though it'll have quite a few variations of pacing for particular moments, I'll get into that when I read it again and develop it but it's made me realise that I'll have to consider each moment and wonder what the writers intention for the scene is to give off the right mood.
Of all the radio pieces I've listened to for this, this was the one that was the easiest to listen to. I'm a fan of the TV show that spawned from this and it honestly felt the same, even without the visuals, it was just like I had the show on and just looked away from the screen. The combination of all it's elements such as changing their characters effectively, having fantastic pacing/timing with all of their lines and pauses resulted in it being very funny and constantly engaging to listen to.
Cartoons/Animated films:
For this I looked at a recording session for the cartoon "Family Guy". It's a cartoon I loved that's filled with some very and talented voice actors so I wanted to see how they act around a microphone. This was easy to come by since there is a lot of behind the scenes footage. The first thing I noticed them doing was to actually act out what they're doing physically. The best examples were of Alex Borstein and Seth Macfarlane. Alex voices Lois and Loretta in the same scene and you can see when she changes her body language when switching characters. She speaks more softly and is generally more relaxed when doing Lois's nasally but is more upright with her head pushed backwards and upwards and stern when having to do Loretta's more husky, gravelly voice. Any emotion they have, they physically display it and differentiate themselves very well. There is a part where Mike Henry has to be angry and he does three takes, the first two lack energy and are OK at best but then he steps back a little bit and increases his volume and emotional intensity which gives a much better take. When one of them is acting scared or surprised they change their body language to accommodate. So I feel it's pretty important to act out your emotion despite that no one will see it, because it does have a drastic effect on your voice so the intent will be understood if done correctly. The action does influence the voice.
One thing I noticed watching this was that if there is a scene with multiple people that has to be relatively fast paced or involves a lot of overlapping, then it is far better doing it all at once rather than one at a time. If it's done one at a time then it has to be edited together and that's makes the performances difficult to manage when recording them since you don't know how they'll turn out. There is an argument/misunderstanding scene in the making of and the way everyone works off each other and their reactions to each other and overall frantic nature of the scene is so much better and far funnier than just recreating it one at a time. Even though I've used a comedy to put this point across, the principle applies to dramatic scene as well, any meaningful interaction works best when you have the other actors right there with you. Quite a few cartoon do do it where the actors take it in turns to do the dialogue and it can sound very different and takes the natural feel away from it. "Family Guy" doesn't do this for the most part and any frantic scene is often hilarious due to the actor's chemistry and how they never try to out do each other.
I also looked at an infamously bad cartoon called "The Christmas Tree", a low budget Christmas special from 1991. It is very bad and it's faults are as follows;
All the audio sounds a tad to quite and not as clear as it needs to be. The audio mixing/performances as a whole are very inconsistent since some people are actually a lot quieter than others which resulting in having to pay close attention to some people just mumbling to get an ideas of what they're saying, where as the others will at least be mildly clear but still rubbish and lack any energy at all.
By far the biggest flaw with the acting in this cartoon is the lack of emotion, these people more or less all sound the same, it's all so dull and lifeless, especially the character Ray who sounds like his actor is bored and just wants to get out of there. His actor really seems like he's just reading the lines and nothing else at all, it's completely monotone. They all have no energy and in the very few moments where it seems like they try, it seems misplaced. There's a part where one of the characters is talking and she finishes her sentence and then says "and another thing" to make another point but there is literally nothing in between the two sentences and it's incredibly jarring, especially seeing as she gets a tad angrier in that sentence (Or at least trying to) which just adds to add how out and organised everything is since she has no reason to. I honestly don't know if that moment was poor editing or if she rushed the line but either way it's not very good.
That same moment also is a good example of how pacing ignored in this whole special, all the actors are either too slow or jarringly fast. All this just adds up to something that can even be unintentionally funny and overall a mess of performances and results in nothing be engaging, especially since barely anything is delivered properly and they may only get one aspect of the performance down from time to time.
Video Games:
I looked at three video games for this although I wanted to stick to ones that were not motion captured meaning they were just recording audio, not acting on a camera with a digital model added later. I'll be looking at one excellently acted game and two appallingly acted games, those being "Bioshock Infinite", Resident Evil" and "Ride to Hell - Retribution" respectively.
Bioshock Infinite: I have played this game before and think it's a great example of voice acting so I watched to a rehearsal session of Troy Baker and Courtnee Draper recording for a scene in the game. They record their audio together since they are very rarely apart form each other in the story and the session I watched shows a scene where the Character Elizabeth has to get upset. Courtnee Draper found it hard to get the right tone for the moment so the director and fellow actors decided to give her some build up to the moment by shouting and belittling her to "Get her to an emotional place" and it worked marvellously. While I seriously doubt that would ever happen in our recording sessions, it just shows the sheer dedication of this team and the importance they put on the genuine, raw emotions of the characters they were portraying. It shows how beneficial it is to embody your character as much as you can and not just stand there saying the dialogue how you think it would be said. If it is as genuine as possible for the actor, then it'll most likely be genuine for the audience. I'm not saying that an actor must traumatise themselves to get the right reaction but just do what they can to get the emotion right. No matter what part I get I will always keep this in mind, they've shown what it can do and I need to do the same.
Ride to hell - Retribution: Due to this games terrible reputation, no behind the scenes material for it exists as of yet, however that doesn't matter since all you have to do is listen and the many flaws with the acting become apparent. The acting is far too quite at points and lacks any real emotion. There is one point in the game where the main character Jake let's out a huge scream of anger and frustration but it sounds like someone doing an impression of a scream but staying restrained intentionally. It really sounds restrained and put on. Any line that's said has no energy to it and results in everything sounding the same with no variation, so nothing sounds engaging. For example there's a scene where two characters are riding on motorbikes but their dialogue is delivered in the exactly the same as it did in the previous scene, nothing really changes. So techniques to definitely learn from this are to make sure there is plenty of variation in your voice and be able to adapt your voice to fit the current scenario. Also it showed me that even though you are only using your voice, energy is key and if there's a lack of it, it really makes everything sound dull and almost like you don't care. If it seems as though you don't care about it then that gives the audience very little reason to do so as well.
Resident Evil: This game came out at the point where video game voice acting was becoming that of a higher standard and this was really bad even for it's time. Now unlike "Ride to Hell" these people at least sound like they're trying to put some energy in and trying to project. However it still sounds terrible due to the fact it doesn't sound natural. Everything sounds forced and every vocal inflection and rhythm completely mismatches the tone of their lines. I mentioned that moment in "The Woman in Black" that really took me out of it but with this you can't really get into it at all. That moment was just one moment and it was not the fault of the acting, where as this achieves the same thing far more drastically; it ruins the atmosphere. This is a horror game and it is genuinely laughable. So from this it shows the importance of volume, proper vocal inflections and the correct rhythm. I have to make sure the tone of my voice matches the tone of the dialogue I'm saying, otherwise it will sound really off.
Adverts:
I looked a Tesco advert first. This was one that has a focus on fast, articulate delivery. This again made me think of clarity, but more specifically about articulation. A key factor of audio performance is that there is no visual aid, in a film if a word is a bit muffled you may be able to make it out from the actors lip movements, however with this there's really no chance, so being as clear as possible is ideal. This advert contains a list of products said very fast so if the articulation is off or sounds like all the words are blending together it would be a problem for both the listener and the seller since the consumer would be unaware of the products on offer and the seller would lose out because of it. Although that aside, it would also make it far less impressive and it would lose it's humour a little bit, it may even give off a lazy vibe. viewers/listeners are fairly critical of what they see or listen to and if it gives off a lazy vibe then they have less reason to care. Thankfully the actor in this did it very well so it retained the humorous side as well keeping the wow factor of how fast he was doing it, so it kept my attention.
The other advert I listened to was an AA advert and the delivery in that was a lot slower. Everything they said was clear and delivered with the correct emotion which in this case was frustration. It's almost like it's setting up someone to come in and help them and really gives off the right tone of the advert with a hint of persuasiveness which is key to any advert to try and entice the listener.
Audio books:
For this I wanted to listen to the same audio book but read by two different people. I knew that the "Harry Potter" audio books have been read by both Stephen Fry and Jim Dale so I listened to samples of the books to compare their delivery. They both had their strengths and weaknesses.
In terms of vocal variation between characters, they're both equal in quality. The make distinctions between them such as varying pitch and pace but they even add subtleties to them giving them a more gravely voice if they older and small details like that. I would say they could go a bit further and if the text they have to read saying "Said Harry" or any text that signifies who's talking it would be more difficult but when it's mixed with that it works perfectly well.
Fry on the other hand is stronger at keeping his entire delivery in tone with each individual moment, he seems to do a much better job bringing across the intention of the text. For example when he says the words "There was a huge motorbike", he elongates the word "Huge" to help with suggesting scale or to create a better picture. During a part where he had to express a characters frustration his tone would shift to something made it seem like it was from Dudley's point of view or make it sound like what Dudley missed (In this case 5 TV programs) was actually important. If this detail were in the film it would be shown visually by his frustration or adapted so an extra line of dialogue would be put in. Here however they don't have to do that so it doesn't seem forced and can flow more naturally with the good writing and great variation of delivery. Dale however doesn't do this as much, it's still there but there's less of it which unfortunately results in something slightly less engaging and more one note
Both of them overall are engaging despite having a couple of minor faults but show some very good qualities.
Now I've looked at a fair few project and their strengths and weaknesses I feel I can keep these in mind as something to work off of when I'm rehearsing for all my pieces and plays.
Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvM4Z_AAGp8&t=1s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVyOCssIXgQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58hITE_Gubc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y&t=11s
https://soundcloud.com/delilahdevinkaufman/bbc-radio-3-presents-mike
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxPzm_FS1yE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlFtMxG6mnY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLvBRCyNHJs
http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/top-10-radio-ads-2015/1376405
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=229Goiczqgk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngZM6oZmO1Y&t=1s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8q84QEMwkE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwb5Tdrpj2w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwb5Tdrpj2w
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