Yesterday I was going through my old blog posts from about 5 years ago. At that time I was very active with voice acting on castingcall.club and was about 12 years old. Being that there were very few voice actors under 13 on the platform, I was cast for almost every role I auditioned for.

One of my favorite gigs was for a Youtube channel called "Star Wars Audio Comics." It was a fan Youtube channel of Star Wars that would add voices and sound effects to the visuals of the Star Wars comics. On top of Star Wars being massive in the film industry, it's also very popular as comics. So this channel had the great idea to make Youtube videos out of them with a great audio experience, as well as helping fans access the comics easier via Youtube.

I voiced characters for them for about 5 videos, my main characters being young Boba Fett and young Luke Skywalker. Here's one of the videos I voiced for young Boba:


That voice was a bit challenging since I had to do a New Zealand accent, since his father, Jango Fett, has a new Zealand accent, and Boba Fett is a literal clone of his father.

Here's a voice I did for young Luke Skywalker:

I wrote a few months ago about starting a large editing project of editing an audiobook for one of my podcast clients. I'd never edited an audiobook before it (and keep in mind, this does not include my own voice narration) but since she knew I edited audio she asked if I could edit her audiobook.

On top of editing, I helped her choose the right microphone to record her audiobook with since she wanted to record it with her own voice. I also gave her tips for recording and her voice, like making sure to drink plenty enough water so she doesn't make saliva sounds, or always staying consistent with the audio quality and how far away she is from the microphone. These small things are very important for audio books to meet the "ACX standard". ACX is the gateway from recording your audio book to publishing it to Audible for your listeners to access. The standard requirements are listed:

• contain only one chapter/section per file, with the section header read aloud
• have a running time of no longer than 120 minutes
• have room tone at the beginning and end and be free of extraneous sounds
• measure between -23dB and -18dB RMS and have -3dB peak values and a maximum -60dB noise floor
• be a 192kbps or higher MP3, Constant Bit Rate (CBR) at 44.1 kHz
  

I'm sure some of that stuff didn't make any sense, but it's specific audio quality details that need to be edited and consistent throughout hours of audio.

After a few months once all the recording was finished, I got to work on the editing. It took quite a while, as my editing consisted of mostly editing the pacing and tedious breaths and mouth-click removal in the audio. 

The pacing editing was probably the hardest. I had to use a lot more of my own judgment as to what parts should be faster or slower. For example, in between chapter announcements, I wanted there to be at least 3 seconds of silence. For the actual narration parts, like in a very dramatic emotional moment, I want long spaces to add to the effect. 

After I was finished editing everything, I sent her the files to review.

She was very happy with the results, and soon had a small list of edits she wanted me to fix. Half of the edits were re-records of audio portions because she wasn't happy with how she narrated them, or because she made changes to the book text and therefore had to re-record it. I made the changes and she's now reviewing them!

A few days ago, I made a new "without music" video, this time it was part of a song from the movie franchise: Highschool Musical. I've seen a lot of people make "without music" videos of highschool musical songs, many going very viral. While they do great jobs with the voices and lip syncing making it very funny and entertaining to watch, the sound effects weren't very accurate or well done. 

I didn't want to re-do a song that someone else had already done, so I found a song that no one had edited yet called "the boys are back again", with 2 of the main characters singing and dancing in a junkyard scene. Here's the original:



I've never seen the movies, but I knew that this video would be hilarious and awkward if it was just their voices and sound effects. So, all day last Saturday I edited the first 50 seconds of the song and made this!:



Doing the sound effects was very exhausting and kinda repetetive, since most of it was them dancing around and I had to match each step and scrape of their feet with the sound of shoes on dirt. but I'm very proud of the result! And the best part was definitely doing the voices, which took about 30 minutes and I had fun doing dumb and silly voices for it.

I've considered buying a new computer laptop, a Macbook Pro. But I want to wait until I'm traveling more and will use it at least 5 times a week, as right now I only use my ThinkPad laptop about twice a week. But the ThinkPad isn't very efficient, and I've heard great things about the latest Macbooks for video and audio editing. I'm planning to graduate before easter, and when I do I hope to move out to Alabama for a few months. I'd take my desktop with me, but it'd still be very handy to have a Macbook to use on the road. My brother that I'm visiting wants to take me to his favorite coffee shop, that he brings a laptop to work at, and he suggested I come along as well. I love editing and working at coffee shops, but sometimes the ThinkPad can be very slow. 
I won't buy a new Macbook until I'm actually traveling more, which probably won't be until I graduate in April. I also specifically want one with an M1 or M2 chip, which is a new very powerful computer processor perfect for high-quality editing and rendering.

Tomorrow I'm leaving to see my brother in Nashville, Tennessee, for a Christian conference. There will be a ton of podcasters there as well, so what I'm most excited about is meeting some new possible clients. My brother knows a lot of finance podcasters, so he'll be able to introduce me to his podcast friends. Admittedly, finance podcasters usually pay the most due to their ability to use money from other income sources to fund the podcast. Also, for algorithms, any categories of podcasts related to finances pay the most in ad revenue. A video about gaming on Youtube with 1m views will make about the same as a finance video with just 200k views.

I'm going to be away for about 8 days, and then I'll fly back home with my brother for our other brother's wedding in California. I'll be in Nashville for about 4 days, and then I'm driving with my brother from Nashville to his house in Alabama. I'll also be able to visit his Church and meet his friends there. He even has a favorite coffee shop he goes to every day that I'll go to with him and use my laptop to work there.

It'll be a great way for me to experience almost living on my own without moving out yet. I'm very excited!