Rise of Nobility: Official Discussion

[Nathan Butler]

Here we go. A nice place to kick of RON discussion.

So, discuss away!

[Hybrid Sith]

This is a great show, really enjoyed it. Superb quality.

[keithabbott]

Thanks for your comments. I'm glad you enjoyed our project. style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif I'm just now getting around to joining the forums here. I am the producer of RoN for those that may have any questions or comments.

Keith

Rise of Nobility (http://www.riseofnobility.com)

[Nathan Butler]

Keith: To letcha know, that's high praise. Hybrid Sith there is Steve Fluharty, the awesome mixer of No Way Out.

[keithabbott]

Added a new mp3 of the week to the RoN site today. This one is really special because it was entirely mixed by David Jacques who was one of our mixers. It was an early effect concept for the Xizor arrival. This might give you guys a little more insight on his contribution.

Keith

[keithabbott]

In two weeks I'll be uploading Part 1 of 2 of our outdoor foley archives. From what I can recall that includes: walking and running in a forest effects, walking through brush, scraping tree bark, sticks breaking, tree leaves and maybe a few other things. Either way, if you guys like some of the effects and want to use them you're more than welcome. Just be sure to credit myself, Luke Harris-Evans and Ann Boeslager.

The file size of part 1 is about 4megs.

Keith

[Hybrid Sith]

Cool! Will those be in surround sound or just raw style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/scratchchin.gif . Let us know when you post em'

[keithabbott]

Just in stereo. style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif No surround sound hehe.
Keith

[CeeWulf]

Sounds cool. Despite the contraversy, I thought RoN was really well done. Some of the best sound I'd heard in an audio drama.

[keithabbott]

Originally posted by CeeWulf@Feb 18 2004, 11:34 PM
Sounds cool. Despite the contraversy, I thought RoN was really well done. Some of the best sound I'd heard in an audio drama.
Yeah I agree. Just because Xizor lusts after Padme, doesn't mean we don't all too. I mean..come on. That's not a controversy!!! style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/dictator.gif style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/devil.gif

Just curious, when you say sound do mean mixing? sound quality? use of effects? quality of effects? the whole 9 yards? or did you have something more specific in mind? I'm just curious if there was anything we could have improved in that regard.

Not that aSD requires a lot of effects muscle, but...it may come in handy for the other sequel.

Keith

[CeeWulf]

Pretty much the whole nine yards. I thought the effects were very realistic, the mix was virtually seamless. I genuinely liked everything about it.

[keithabbott]

Some of the effects were soso I thought. Mostly cause I had to get a few of them from the public domain. And the original quality may not have been that great. It really depended. Reverb helped a lot to mask bad effects! Thank goodness for the environment calling for it. style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif

The one set of effects that gave me the most problem was believe it or not...the pod. The panning was a beast to get right during the drive by. But the hardest part was the sound of it powering off. Originally, I had some really bad mix of effects. If I still have that, I should probably make it an mp3 of the week now that I think about it. It wasn't nearly as good as what I used in the final mix. Which was actually ripped from Ep1. When Anakin starts up his pod that's what I grabbed. I had a thought of reversing it. So I took segements of it..reversed each section and then mixed them together. If I would have fully reversed it in one piece it would have sound like backmasking. But the whole problem in it was just figuring out what to do about it to improve it. And when I realized I could reverse the Ep1 startup effect that helped a great deal.

Then getting outta the pod effect was interesting. In the end, nothing I found in the public domain worked...so I had Luke record some foley and then I put in a lot of bass and filtered the treble out and voila.

But the dialogue was the worst beast. The two worst cases were Elizabeth and Kody's (Anolo) lines. They had so much noise in them (granted Elizabeth's recording quality got better as we went along) that at times when filtering them with Noise Reduction 2.0 the dialogue would begin to sound metallic. So I had to leave some noise in, and boost the effects and music so that it masked the problems. If you listen really close in sections you can probably hear some metallic or slightly noisy dialogue.
And then when Elizabeth's recording structure changed, I had to have her re-record a lot of the dialogue. We kept some of the original stuff because the acting was just too good. I then had to adjust the quality of the original to try and match the quality of the latter. That was no easy task and you can probably see where the seams are so to speak. Xizor has one particular dialogue seam that I had to mask. Some of our crew know exactly where it is because to us, it's so evident. The original acting was just too good to replace, and the new lines just sounded "different" so we once again had to blend the two together. That took a lot of EQ work.

Basically, I did the best with what we had and tried to mask a lot of things without overdoing the levels or making the masking too evident. You have to be able to hear the dialogue too. That's what I was hoping I was successful at...masking the problems. I can still hear the imperfections cause I know exactly where they are. style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/banghead.gif

I was just wondering if anyone else noticed any obvious ones.

Unfortunately, with aSD I will not have access to the digital mixer...so I'll be dealing with computer recorded lines again. So Noise Reduction 2.0 is going to get another workout. And with less effects this go around it's going to be interesting to see how it pans out.

Keith

[keithabbott]

For those interested, part 1 of 2 of the outdoor effects mp3 has been uploaded to RoN. 4 megs.

Keith

[keithabbott]

Part 2 of the outdoor sound effects session is up and ready for download. Hope they are useful to you guys.

Keith

[keithabbott]

Shawn Johnston is working on a new animated project. Check out the press release here:

http://www.riseofnobility.com/pr1.html

Keith

[RogueProductions]

Hi guys. As Keith just mentioned, my company is working on a non-Star Wars animated project. If you're interested, just let me know via email. Thanks.

[keithabbott]

Shawn, and I thought you had dissapeared off the face of the Earth. style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad.gif It's good to see you're back online.

Keith

[keithabbott]

We've added new forums here:

http://www.riseofnobility.com/forum

These are to replace the Yahoo! Group which has gone flakey lately. If any cast and crew members are lurking here, please be sure to register there for the latest and greatest.
Keith

[keithabbott]

An Announcement of sorts:

Riseofnobility.com will undergo changes over the next month. Many of the files included on the site will be removed to make way for new content. A major announcement will be forthcoming at the beginning of the new year. Stay tuned.

So if there are files you want, now is the time to get them!

Keith

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

Finally got a chance to listen to it today. Great job, Keith and Linda (and all
the cast)


Joe Harrison
COTE Audio Productions
freewebs.com/coteaudioproductions (http://www.freewebs.com/coteaudioproductions)

[scribe88]

Hey, thank you!!!

We really appreciate it!

[keithabbott]

I appreciate the feedback Joe. I'm glad you enjoyed it. style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/happydance.gif

Keith