Residential office buildings in Lagos have a special place in my heart. First, you can always tell which room was supposed to be the master bedroom e.t.c. so it’s interesting to see how the space has been repurposed. Also, they remind me so much of the Nigerian hustle.
On January 27, we went to Omole Phase I to record the conversation for the film. Daniel (editor), Oshuwa (voice actor), Kolade (sound) and I were meeting for the first time at the VSonics studio, all of us complete noobs to animation.
After we got introduced, Kolade recommended we spend the first session rehearsing, which was obvious in hindsight. So, Oshuwa spent the hour practicing the voices while Daniel and I wrote improvements to the script.
Kolade was also glad to explain the sound production process for our film—Voice Recording, Dialogue Editing, Backgrounds, Walla, Foley, SFX, Score and Mixing—and he later sent it in as a PDF.
Oshuwa would voice the script line by line, repeating each one until perfect. At the end, the sound engineers would stitch the fragments together, remove unwanted sounds and level the recording. Other sounds to include are of Lagos in motion (Atmos), realistic background conversations (Walla), micro-sounds like footsteps and clothes (Foley), sound effects (SFX) and a musical composition for the film (Score). The final soundtrack is mixed to the specification of the platform we choose to publish on.
Satisfied, we scheduled our next session for February 4.
The day of the second recording started out funny. Daniel and I got stopped by the Police, Oshuwa had a parking incident outside the studio and Chuks (he joined us this time) was delayed for more than an hour. But, in spite of these unfortunate events, it was a good time.
As described, Oshuwa read the lines while Kolade stitched them together. Daniel and Chuks made suggestions and I was mostly in charge of the AC (we had to turn it off when recording to avoid noise).
In the end, we spent three hours of studio time at N64,500 each, Voice Acting cost N150k and Post-Production will cost N559k. Vsonics sent in a prototype of the soundtrack, I’ve roped in LMBSKN for the score and we’ll continue with sound when the animatics are done.
