Editing- Female voiceover

Our opening scene involves voice overs. I had to edit in the female/villains voice over which we acquired from a voice actress on the internet. The script we gave to the voice actress included pauses between sentences where we would need to cut in order to fit the voice around the footage.

The image above shows the sound clip as one long clip as the voice actress recorder the whole script in one recording.

I then bladed the clip according to where we had the pauses on the script. This would then enable us to move the sound clips around.

                            

                            

                            

The most important part of the voice over was to make sure that the timings of when it said 'where's the money' fitted in with when the male actor on the screen said this. Therefore, we had to line up the sound clip and footage correctly.

We wanted the female to be heard as soon as the first image appeared on the screen. So I moved the sound clip that began with 'detective number 6' into this position. The next thing I had to do was to line up the sound clip which said 'I would send them the usual ransom note' before the ransom note on the tape recorder began to play. As well as this we did not want the male voice over and the female voice over to be overlapping.

The next clip describes the detective meeting the femme fatale's accomplice in the alleyway therefore this sound clip had to be placed as the detective begins walking down the alleyway. 

The final clip shows the femme fatale walking away with the money in the briefcase as the voice over says 'a girls got to make a living after all'.
After all of the voice overs were put in place I then had to cut them down to make sure that there were't any long pauses between the each of the sound clips.

Evaluation

• Overall, the sound fitted in well with the clips and we were able to edit them to make sure they were the correct length.
• The voice over helped us to convey the story and genre more.

Practical Task: Voice Auditions

I used the website CastingCallClub to post our project. Despite offering no payment, several people auditioned for the role. I cast one of them using the website, and uploaded the script, along with a message stating we may need additional lines at a later date.

All of the auditions, including the one that was cast, can be viewed on this page. The actress responded promptly with a recording, however this recording was too fast, so I sent her what we had of our film opening so far to help her get a better idea of what she should sound like.

Deconstruction of Voice Overs in Film Noir

Within the Film Noir genre it is common to have a first person voice over. The main character is usually the voice over. It allows the audience to get a clear picture of what is happening in the film and shows the story from the detectives/villains/protagonists point of view. As well as this a voice over can give extra details in addition to what the audience can see on the screen. An example of this is in 'Double Indemnity':

  NEFF
                              (His voice is now 
                              quiet and contained)
                          It began last May. About the end of 
                         May, it was. I had to run out to 
                         Glendale to deliver a policy on some 
                         dairy trucks. On the way back I 
                         remembered this auto renewal on Los 
                         Feliz. So I decided to run over there. 
                         It was one of those Calif. Spanish 
                         houses everyone was nuts about 10 or 
                         15 years ago. This one must have 
                         cost somebody about 30,000 bucks -- 
                         that is, if he ever finished paying 
                         for it.

By having the voice over from the detectives point of view, as seen above, the audience can get to know this specific character in detail therefore evoking certain emotions such as sympathy or fear for this particular character. 

The voice over may include details of the characters back story to describe what they are about to do in the film and why they are doing it. It may also include what the character is thinking and feeling about certain situations or other characters within the film. 

Normally the voice over is male however in our opening scene we may subvert this convention and use the female, femme fatale, as the voice over as this would make more sense with our storyline.

Practical Task: Voice recording

For our film, we needed someone to voice our kidnapper's monologue. Mindi wrote a rough draft of it here:

My brother volunteered to record it. The voice actor had asked to take some artistic liberties. We agreed as a group that it was acceptable. We decided that anything was fine as long as it followed the general gist of "give us the money for the girl."

I asked him to try two slightly different accents. The first one sounds better and is most likely what we will use. I also posted it on various social media sites, open for strangers to try. Devin Mombourquette's was the one we chose to use: