Podficcing The Dead Isle

[dirtydirtychai.livejournal.com]

Hi all~ 

So, copperbadge's The Dead Isle. 

I loved reading it the first time, loved it even more the second time, and I even broke out of my chronic lurking habit to participate a little in the editing for self-pub process, such was my love of this book. It's become one of my comfort reads, and I am super excited about it being available soon in actual book form. 

But sometimes, I like to listen to my books. Especially my comfort reads. There are certain audiobooks and podfics of fandom favorites that I always turn on when I have a project to work on (like FayJay's The Student Prince [podfic here]).

I was painting the other day, as you do, and scrolling through the audiobooks in my iTunes playlist and, while in the mood for a little steampunk adventuring, I settled instead on Neil Gaiman's American Gods, the 10th anniversary full cast version.

Too bad there's no podfic of The Dead Isle yet, I thought.

Wow, this full cast version of American Gods, with the different actors doing the accents and all, is really neat, I thought. 

It sure would be cool if there was a podfic of The Dead Isle with a full cast, doing the different accents, I thought. American. Australian. English. Purva's blended accents... wonder what that would sound like. Accents from all over the world. Like the café. 

And then I emailed Sam, becase the idea of a podfic where I could hear little samples of the voices of the café from all over the world was too much to leave abandoned in fantasy land. 

As Sam pointed out when I first pitched the idea to him, this is a really, really big book. If we go through with this project, we will need all hands on deck. It's a super big project, and it won't be completed any time soon. It will definitely be a labor of love - but IMO, it will totally be worth the trouble. 

This can go two ways. Well. This might go one of these two ways.

1) We could do something like switching off between chapters, or between points of view and passages, but the reader does the dialogue for that passage. For example: one reader could do just the Geppetto passage at the beginning of chapter 4, and another could do the rest of the chapter - there would be no switching off at dialogue lines for the reader acting as Jack or Claire or Ellis, the same reader would do all the dialogue until the end of their passage/chapter. 

2) My favorite - the full cast recording. If we get enough male-sounding voices and Aussies/people who are willing to give an Aussie accent a go, then we might very well attempt the full cast recording. There will be lots of bit parts, so if you don't want to commit to a really big part, you could read just a few lines of dialogue for the minor parts. Off the top of my head, there's Sir William, the Divine Father at the London Temple, the Father LaRoche readings, Nicholas, Gregory's sister and brother-in-law, the random crewmen on the ship, random Australians, Saturday, William, random Tribals on the Res, and many more. All you'd have to do is read your lines, send them in, and wait for that chapter to be released! 

Of course, that would also mean a rather large committment on the parts of the people doing the primary characters' voices, but it's not as if we're running on a deadline or something. We can take as much time as we need. I figure we can still trade off narration between chapters - get as many people involved as we'd like, that way, for people who want to read but don't want to be a character.

We would also need a number of people to work on compiling all these little sound bites together - or even just to offer advice, if you have experience but don't want to get too involved. If we get enough people, we could even divide up the chapters between groups and, once the primary characters' dialogues have been sent out, then each group could work on their chapters individually, at their own pace. Does that make sense?

So this is me, sounding out the café to figure out how much interest there is in participating. Want to try out that American/Australian/British/German/other accent on a project where, if you mangle it, no one has to ever know it's you? Want to be the voice of Ellis Graveworthy? Would you like to offer us some advice? Do you have audio editing ninja skills? Know about a program/website/thingie that will make this easier for us?

Please comment and let me know if you'd like to participate, in what capacity, and how to contact you. 
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FB Group: Copperbadge Cafe
The Dead Isle Podfic LJ Comm: http://deadislepodfic.livejournal.com/

Comments

[pandarus]

I'm reluctant to go with my YES PICK ME impulse because I know that in general committing to a project is instant kiss of death for me, for some reason - I become The Queen of Procrastinatia and it all goes horribly wrong. So, er - I'm tempted, because I love the idea, but I probably couldn't be counted on to be a good collaborator. That said OH MY GOD this sounds like a fabulous book, and bless you for bringing it to my attention. I shall be falling upon it ravenously asap.

(Um - glad you like TSP, incidentally. Yay! Thank you!)

[dirtydirtychai]

Well, remember, there are lots of smaller parts that don't involve a huge commitment~~ hehe

[jjhunter]

Reiterating my commenting from the LJ version of this comm, because I much, much prefer using DW:

I'd love to participate!

What I'm good for:
- female voice, light to no accent English
- well-paced narrator/reading voice
- willing to learn sound editing
- good at giving articulate, concise feedback & picking out bloopers

What I'd need help with:
- learning how to do sound editing (I have minor experience with Garageband only so far)
- setting up a recording space & making the best use of my new shiny Zoom H2 -- I've been having trouble getting it to record at a proper volume without picking up artifacts

[dirtydirtychai]

Noted! :)

[izzady]

Oh this is a really, really, really cool project. I would love to participate in some way (or ways)!

I would enjoy reading if there's room for me.
I've done some podficcing, though not a ton. I am female with a medium register voice. My accent is canadian (city), but that's very similar to some american accents (the generic tv accent, for instance - and for some reason, californian. It's not even close to nearby, but californians sound almost exactly like canadians to me).
I suppose technically for the US part, they're all in Boston most of the time, which I think has a pretty specific accent, but that might be a bit hard to pull off.

I've done some beta listening as well, and I like to think I'm fairly good at that.

My sound editing skills are not extensive, and I only have experience in Audacity, but if you need more hands on deck for that I would be happy to pitch in, especially with guidance from someone more experienced.

[dirtydirtychai]

There's always room for more! :D

[toshimi]

I would love to participate if you're still taking volunteers! I can be contacted by PMing this journal.

Voice-wise, I'm a young female with a pretty high-pitched voice. (I frequently get mistaken for a child on the phone.) Midwest/New England accent. I can do a passable RP English accent, and I'm working on making my Bostonian accent convincing. I've never attempted Australian, but I could try. I have no actual experience with podficcing or voice acting, though.

Sound-editing wise, I have pretty much no experience. I've used Audacity a few times, but that's the extent of it.

(Also hi, I know this is totally out of the blue, I usually just lurk at the cafe!)

[dirtydirtychai]

Welcome! :D

I've added you to the google doc of the volunteer list. Please have a look to see if you need to make any corrections.

GDoc (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AgtUgzSYX5GQdHIyOS1Xb0ozMGpBNVJmWUZEaU54NFE)

Also, please see the latest post (http://deadislepodfic.dreamwidth.org/534.html) for the latest news and details. :)