Audio Editing

Every aspect of creating a film opening comes with challenges. Audio issues weren't expected challenge, but luckily it was one I was able to handle.

The voice actor I chose for my production lives in Tallahassee, which is a good eight hours away from my home. Although it may seem strange that I hired an actor not in my local area, that is one of the benefits of animation. Voice acting can be submitted for a project no matter where a person is in the world.

The reasons I initially chose my actor over any local actor was for two reasons. One, he had acting experience. The person I had chosen, Nicholas Benetatos, had been learning and studying voice acting in his free time pretty much his entire life. I figured he would be able to make the narration very interesting and act out the role very well. The second reason I selected him was because of his equipment. At his school, there is a recording booth that the student may use. He recorded all of his lines at that booth, however, that's when things went wrong.

For some reason, the mic was giving off a strange static sound. He had no idea what he was doing wrong or what had happened with the microphone.

Luckily, I've become very familiar with Audacity, an amazing and free sound editing software. I downloaded his audio file and was able to use the “noise reduction” editing tool to take out the sound of the static.

I also used this program to edit my song down as well. Though I love the music I chose, the original song is over four minutes long. Also, the middle of the track doesn't match the tone of my film, so I had to cut it out and replace it with a later part in the song.

Even though there were audio issues, Audacity is an amazing program and solved so many of my problems with ease.