Audio - Video Game: Storytelling - page 200

▪ At what point(s) in the game story is this line likely to play?
▪ What is the current emotional state of the speaker, and attitude to-
ward his listener(s)?
▪ What does this character want right now?
Someone included in the recording session needs to know the answers
to each of these questions.
Another very important reason to have a narrative expert on-hand dur-
ing recording is to handle on-the-spot rewrites. While an experienced
game writer who's scripting for the spoken word may be good at what she
does, no one is perfect. And sometimes there's a turn of phrase that
looked fine on the page, but that sounds terrible when read aloud.
Perhaps a case of alliteration was overlooked, or maybe a tongue twister
was lurking in the mix. Sometimes the line, when spoken, just sounds
corny, false, or off-tone. Whatever the reason, if a line needs to be re-
worked on the spot, you want a professional dialogue writer to handle it,
or to at least vet whatever other options might be improvised or suggested
by the actor or director.
In the not-too-distant past, this kind of involvement often meant flying
extra people around the country for recording sessions—an expensive and
logistically challenging proposition. But with today's high-speed Internet
connections, there are now excellent options for patching off-site person-
nel into the recording session without sacrificing audio fidelity (which is vi-
tal for real-time evaluation of each line reading).
One thing I'll caution against is trying this approach over a conventional
phone line or, heaven forbid, a cell phone. I've had experience with both,
and the unfortunate reality was this: line readings that seemed just line
over the phone sounded completely different—and often not accept-
able—when the high-fidelity versions of the files were eventually delivered.
Phones just can't be relied on to accurately deliver a trustworthy repro-
duction.
Takes Selection
So you took my advice in the previous sections, and included a narrative
expert in the recording sessions to make sure high-quality, usable, and
context-correct lines were captured. Nice job!