Monday, February 16, 2009

Nearly There

After a very busy month or two, the Beaulieu Abbey project is nearing completion. Content is still being produced whilst Kim and Paul are 'knitting' all the content together.

Beaulieu Abbey has been a large project needing a wide range of skills, the most recent of which was script writing and editing followed by recording the voice overs for each of the nine characters. This was quite a feat and we feel quite lucky in being able to have someone we know, Alex Hogg, complete 6 (plus additional sub characters) of the 9 voices for us. This took a whole day at New Forest Post Productions' recording studio with Nick's help and supervision. Paul and I returned a few days later to record the last three voices. I must say, it was much easier writing the script than being a voice. I had to do two voices and make them different, very difficult for me as I am not at all good at mimicking accents, let alone for half an hour's reading, so I am full of admiration for Alex who managed so many and all very different.

These scripts are for the Tours(each character can guide you around the Abbey), then there are the story strips and introduction for each character. Nine characters, 3 scripts per character, as you can see, a fair bit of work in just this.


(I have had trouble uploading the sound file but it can be heard on this link - http://www.thetalkingwalls.co.uk/beaulieu_KingJohn_Story.htm)

The tour script is based on the new audio script now available on Beaulieu's abbey website. This was only recently put in place and sounds really good. The delay in putting this in place also caused a slight delay for our pilot as we had to wait for an approved final script before we were able to have a copy. This copy has been adapted to suit each character and the time in which they lived. These 9 adapted scripts, the intros and stories have all needed to be approved by Beaulieu to ensure the detail is correct. The script has been quite fundamental to a large and important part of the application. Fine detail to the abbey model in accordance with the script, animation of the tours, again in accordance with the script, and obviously the voice overs of the adapted character scripts are all now able to be done.

A busy week ahead! It will actually take more than this, probably at least a couple of weeks so the pilot should be ready to install end of March, hopefully in time for the summer season.