Would There Ever Be a Possibility...?

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

All right, I FINALLY managed to read all the thread between my last posts... I have a few comments to that...

Originally Posted by MatthewM

One more question, for now - How are we going to incorporate the "Frodo said.", etc. into the dialogue? Do you know what I mean? For example Frodo speaks, and then in the book it says "Frodo said" to let the audience know who just spoke to avoid confusion. I suppose with actual voices it may not be hard to tell but to some it may.

Originally Posted by Rikae

Certainly I would prefer to stay as close to the original as possible, changing only those things (like "Frodo said") which would be awkward or redundant in this format. I would much rather see each character given a recognisable enough voice, than to hear "Frodo said"'s all over the place. The only other instance I can think of where deviation from the text would be the most sensible route is where sounds are described, as it would be far more intuitive and make the best use of the medium if we provided the sound itself. Other than this, why not stick to the text?

I think the "Frodo said" things should be left out. Just as Rikae said. In most of the audio plays, it is managed like that in the first scene a character is being called a name by someone else (if possible, several times), so this way the audience knows his name. Or, actually in our case it is quite possible that the character may be introduced by the narration. Or, if not, another classic trick is to introduce a character by adding some "situation briefing" at the beginning (which is made up by the screenwriters). See, in the Czech radio play the narrator was Bilbo Baggins and at the beginning, Frodo said something and Bilbo's voice interrupted: "This is my nephew, Frodo Baggins. He is a nice guy. He had been growing with the Brandybuck but I adopted him..." Of course, that play was without really just a conversation play and all was done by the dialogues, but the basic idea is this and it is also a variant to use. I see Mac probably imagined it to go in some way like that. But that will really take lot of effort and would practically mean writing a totally new story (stageplay).

Originally Posted by MatthewM

About the background music, I meant mainly for in between scenes, not over dialogue, really...if we use it wisely (and sparingly), like Rikae said, it could be nice...for example, a transition into another scene could be cued up with some bg music for a couple of seconds, maybe with the narrator speaking over it.

The only words we would have to change, as mentioned, would be words that signify sounds, in which we have to try and produce that sound - saying it would be quite bad for this medium, and I'm sure all would agree on that!

Concerning background music, I am really for just sounds in the background, and leave the music... maybe only during very long narrative sections, just soft one, and as Matthew said, between the scenes...

Now concerning the present things. I will record something soon - only a question, it does not matter what I record, Nog? Whether a dialogue, narration, a mix of both; a dialogue between two characters - should I act them or, like, what exactly is the purpose of this? Just technical thing (to find out that I need to buy a better microphone or probably a microphone with longer cable, as I am quite sure the computer humming will be heard in my case), or also to show my acting capabilities and such? (The thing I have in mind is, if I record a dialogue between Gandalf and Frodo, and in the end I turn playing Gimli, the sample won't tell much, as my voice or acting may not be good for Gandalf nor Frodo, but good for Gimli.) Speaking of that, I have no clear idea of whom I'd like to play - well, how could I when I don't know what chapter we are going to record or such. But I don't particularly care (although I just got an idea what I could record... we'll see).

Hm, not sure if I said all I wanted, but I will post if I remember. It has been enough for now anyway, I think

P.S. Oh yes, Nog: And mainly: How long thing should the recorded sample be? And in which format (I was not able to figure out from the posts whether it has to be wav or whether converting it to mp3 does not matter - I think depending on the length of it, wav can be quite a big file).