|
Cybermen The only effect we did at last years (McGann) recording was the Cybermen voices (Sword of Orion), so all of Nick's voices (and mine!) were Cyber-treated while he was there. I asked the guy who runs the studio to set it up so that when he was directing I could pull the effect out, otherwise it would sound stupid being directed by a Cyberman the whole time, so when we were recording I would put the noise in, and during rehearsal I would take it out. The actors like that, being able to hear the voice properly in their headphones. The effect is done with a Yamaha box, it was in the rack of their equipment. I knew how to set the Yamaha box up, from my memories of Earthshock, so that when Nick speaks he sounds like a Cyberman (doing his David Banks impression). David Banks always did his voice in a certain way, and this other guy always did a wheezy sounding voice, as if he's got a bit of a cold. So we basically copied them, I did a couple of the 'emergency backup Cybermen'. I asked one of the actors to share a mic with someone
else who had a cold. He didn't like this and wandered across to another
microphone because he didn't want to catch a cold, but the mic wasn't up,
and he wouldn't be recorded. I couldn't see this happening because I was
in my box doing backup cybermen. Daleks The first Dalek play (Genocide Machine) that we did last year we left gaps, and the actors were disappointed that they didn't get to hear Daleks or even an actor reading them in. The second play (Apocolypse Element) we did, in a the cupboard in Fulham. We had somebody in a box doing the Dalek voices that the actors could hear over the headphones, but these weren't recorded. This year when we recorded the Mutant Phase at Kennington we were able to do the same trick, we'd have somebody in the isolation booth doing 'emergency backup DALEKS'. Jason did the voices for us. He's the most apologetic Dalek I know. If he fluffed a line he'd apologise and redo the line. Very courteous Daleks, but they weren't recorded to tape, they were just something to give the actors something to bounce off. You can faintly hear Jason on the DAT because of the leak from the headphones, but it is very faint, and drowned out by Nick and I, who always do the Dalek voices, because we know exactly how to torture our vocal chords to do it. The thing about doing a Dalek voice is that it's not just the effect, but the way you do the voice to begin with. Unfortunately it's one of those voices that comes right from the throat, you can't really project it, and it hurts after a while, so I always invest in lockets that day. More Kit My hardware sampler (Akai 3200xl) has two ring modulators in it, and that is able to do the ideal dalek sound, 63Hz is the frequency. You can do it in Sound Forge, but only offline, not in real-time. I bought that sampler £2,500 brand new, just before the flagship S6000, and now you can buy an S6000 for £1,800. You can upgrade it to 256Mb, which is roughly 25 minutes of audio, which is frustrating. |