“The Jolly Doll”

Our writer’s group did a writing exercise called "The Jolly Doll". I went with a detective story. In the old film noir movies the detectives often called the women dolls.

I recorded it and posted it here: https://soundcloud.com/dynamiclethargy/the-jolly-doll

I couldn’t come up with an idea for an image to go with it.

After I recorded it, I worried that it would be difficult to tell which character was talking. I have 999 fewer voices than Mel Blanc. I did some research on-line about how to make a man's voice sound like a woman's voice. Some places suggested shifting the pitch, others said that the differences between the two was more complicated than pitch. Some actors can learn to do that.

I used Audacity to adjust the pitch of my voice. The stuff I read suggested that you increase the pitch by 19%. When I tried that, the voice sounded weird. Then I tried 9.5%, but it sounded too much like my voice. Finally, I tried 12% and, while I didn't think it sounded too much like a woman, I decided that it did differentiate the two voices, which was good enough for my purposes.

Later I did a search on-line and there are programs that allow you to do that kind of modification to voices. One claims to alter your voice to sound like some celebrities. That might be a better choice for some of my NAWMAL videos than the artificial voices that I use. Of course, the best solution would be to hire actors. If I wasn’t such a cheapskate, I’d do that.

I’m still interested in recording more of the stories and writing exercises I wrote. If I do, I’ll likely add a page on my website with the links to the recordings.

 

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog