Should I alter an actor's voice this way?

[Ryan Elder]

There is an actress who is interested in doing a script I want to produce/direct, and she does a good job, what I have seen, acting wise.

However, even though she is good at acting out in emotion, and playing a character her voice unfortunately, does sound very I guess you could say...Fran Drescher-ish, even more so.

I read how for the movie Haywire, how Gina Carano's voice was altered as she put it, and if you watch the movie, it sounds very convincingly altered.

So I am wondering if I could do the same since good actors can be hard to find, and if it's just one thing you want to change, maybe it's worth it. But how would I go about doing this, like they did for Haywire?

[Josh Bass]

I looked it up. As far as I can tell no one actually says HOW it was done... there’s speculation that it was completely redubbed by a different actress, or that they rerecorded Gina in a studio and dubbed it in and changed pitch or whatever else, but no one seems to KNOW (or be willing to say).

Anyway I dont see how you can get rid of an accent (if thats what you mean by Fran Drescherish) or a nasal quality with filters or whatever youre thinking. If there is a way, and this is for a major role in a feature length project, youre probably be looking at a syllable by syllable operation for every word. That is pretty insane, especially considering in real funded films they have a person or several people who exclusively work on this stuff, and youre probably going to try to do it yourself in addition to your myriad other roles.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay. It's not an accent I meant that's the problem, just a real nasal quality. I tried changing the pitch in her audition recording as a test, but it sounds unnatural though when I do that.

[Josh Bass]

I mean, how much work are you willing to put into this idea? My years of recording and (attempting to) mix my own stuff have taught me there are certain things that are essentially baked into recorded sounds, and IF they can be altered, it's an insane amount of work and the result will sound heavily compromised.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh well in Haywire though, it doesn't sound compromised at all. It sounds completely natural with no problems.

As to how much time to spend it well that totally depends on what they did. But whatever they did, worked it seems though, so I thought I had a shot therefore.

I tried a couple of tests, at different pitch levels just as a start. Do these voice tests sound bad or too unnatural at all?

voice test 2 - YouTube

[Paul R Johnson]

You've told us a few times that audio is not your thing at all, so while it could be possible to do this, it's sheer folly. You don't have access to cheap studio time do you? Think how long it will take and cost, AND you need to make sure none of the dialogue overlaps or cut offs otherwise you need to rerecord the other person too. You want the actress because she looks good? Or cheap? Or available? What attributes does she have you find essential? If her voice is out, that's probably 70% of her whole in acting terms.

I've spent some time trying out ADR recently now my equipment can do it and it's nowhere near as simple to do as it appears to make it believeable. You need to record in a studio with. Dry good acoustics if you want to match every scene you shoot. The audio perspective is critical, and the room sound in mine is nowhere near good enough for a convincing medium to wide shot, mic distance wise. You will have real sound for one actor but need to recreate that for your problem actress.

Do not use her, getting a new one will be far easier and keep e wage bill down. Can you afford and extra actress, let alone hours of studio time at a good sounding studio.

What on earth is happening in that clip? I hope that's not the after version? Sounds like a robot

[Pete Cofrancesco]

Its called Auto-Tune. You should try it.

YouTube (Short URL)

[Ryan Elder]

Originally Posted by Paul R Johnson

You've told us a few times that audio is not your thing at all, so while it could be possible to do this, it's sheer folly. Youndontbhave access to cheap studio time do you? Think how long it will take and cost, AND you need to make sure none of the dialogue overlaps or cut offs otherwise you need to rerecord the other person too. You want the actress because she looks good? Or cheap? Or available? What attributes does she have you find essential? If her voice is out, that's probably 70% of her whole in acting terms.

I've spent some time trying out ADR recently now my equipment can do it and it's nowhere near as simple to do as it appears to make it believeable. You need to record in a studio with. Dry good acoustics if you want to match every scene you shoot. The audio perspective is critical, and the room sound in mine is nowhere near good enough for a convincing medium to wide shot, mic distance wise. You will have real sound for one actor but need to recreate that for your problem actress.

Do not use her, getting a new one will be far easier and keep e wage bill down. Can you afford and extra actress, let alone hours of studio time at a good sounding studio.

What on earth is happening in that clip? I hope that's not the after version? Sounds like a robot

Oh I want the actress cause I felt her acting was good in what I've seen and she is really interested in the script, that is why.

As for what is happening in the clip, I tried changing the pitch in her voice, that's all.

[Paul R Johnson]

So 50% of her acting is great! It's like that old movie where talking movies come along and the silent movie queen's voice is just horrid.

Sometimes unusual vocal timbre can be an asset. In a comedy for instance. In a drama, it's just a diversion. The audience start to look forward to the next line to see how it gets mangled. My local BBC station has a nice girl who has a very strange voice when she reads autocue. If you see her do a live report on location, her voice is nice and normal, but in the studio, she's a nightmare. Reads the wrong words, and has awful intonation - usually at the end of sentences, the last word or syllable goes down, but her's goes up - and every number gets enunciated really oddly and loudly. As in "Every TWENTY minutes, ONE THOUSAND - TWO HUNDRED and SIXTY boxes of chocolates are produced by the TWO factories near Norwich" Just odd. Do not take on an actor with 50% of their artistic output compromised. Is she cheap - cheap enough to pay for the studio time, and the success of course far from guaranteed.

[Rick Reineke]

ADR! .. Of course that generally requires skills by the ADR VO actor and the audio post folks. There are quite a few movies where <i>most</i> of the dialog is ADR. The most infamous probably being Sergio Leone's 'spaghetti westerns' w/ Eastwood.

[Paul R Johnson]

Trouble is in low budget production, the cheapest solution is to choose the best actors, not try to fix their performance in post. Crazy to need to dub every line not because of location noise or technical faults, but just because they have rotten voice! To be honest, if an actor has a terrible voice, they could be in the wrong career.

[Ryan Elder]

Okay thanks. Well maybe im being too hard on her voice then. Do you think it sounds ok enough and i should just use her normal voice then?

[Josh Bass]

How would we know? Is that her voice in your pitch tests?

[Rainer Listing]

Originally Posted by Ryan Elder

Okay thanks. Well maybe im being too hard on her voice then. Do you think it sounds ok enough and i should just use her normal voice then?

Without hearing it, that's still a "yes" from me. To me your pitch altered version sounds like a man trying to sound like a woman. Whether to try ADR might depend on how much dialog you're dealing with.
Edit: you might want to have a look at the automatic ADR panel in Resolve.

[Ryan Elder]

Okay, here's her original voice, in the clip. It's the first voice you hear, the second is altered:

voice test - YouTube

Should I just accept the first voice for what it is then and not change it if I go with her?