The Future of Pony Fan Productions · 6:18am Nov 10th, 2016
Firstly, I'm not usually one to make a fuss about things and go write a blog post about it. (My previous blogs will attest to this). But this is something so new and exciting I felt I just had to share it. Maybe you knew about it already, maybe not. But if this becomes a thing, this will change fan-works forever:
You heard that right. Audio photoshop. And all you need is about twenty-odd minutes of speech for it to build enough of a vocal library to say whatever you want. "But what if I don't care about hearing celebrities fake-say embarrassing things /confessing their undying love to me?" I hear you ask. Well, let me ask this: How many My Little Pony episodes are out there now? That's right, now you're getting it. There's more than enough audio there to build a voice for any (major) character you want, and that's not even considering VA's like Tara Strong and John De Lancie who've voiced so much else as well.
Imagine the possibilities: Given a bit of time, you could have your favorite fanfictions read out in accurate character voices. Need a narrator? Pop "March of the Penguins" into the program and 'boom!' instant virtual Morgan Freeman for all your narration needs. And why stop there? This goes beyond the realm of stories into fanimation as well! Want to make an abridged series (or even just animate a short comic) but can't do impressions? Now you can have show-accurate voices for all your characters! Or mix it up if you like. Imagine Obamalestia instructing Twilight "The Rock" Sparkle to go to Ponyville to learn the magic of friendship from Ash Ketchum-jack, Groucho-shy Marx, and Markiplier Dash? The mind boggles with possbilities.
Welp, that's all of us out of jobs. Time to pack it in, gang, it's been fun.
I assume you're being supremely sarcastic here (rather than the alternative of you deleting past blog posts).
Cool stuff, though obviously some of the charm of abridged series' is the butchering of voices. Can you imagine Yu-gi-oh abridged without Joey's Brooklyn accent? Or the Ganxingba "high-pitched" impression of Katara, or Griffin Lewis' "queenly" impressions of Celestia, DT, or SS?
I mean, I can't do impressions at all. I do agree that the possibility for dramatized readings would be really cool, though.
4347644 Yep, it was sarcasm.
Plus, I wrote this almost immediately after learning about the program, and since then have had plenty of time to roll the idea over in my mind and see all the problems in it. Like tone, and emphasis, and even just timing. A great example I found that illustrates the problem: the phrase "I never said she stole my money". The entire meaning changes based on which word is stressed. I doubt that's something the program could do.
4347658 If you want a surreal experience, I used FB Reader and the talkback option to listen to some stories by OtherUnicorn and the biggest issue wasn't the tonelessness of the voice engine (it actually wasn't that bad) but the talking head syndrome that resulted from everything being read by the same voice with no change in inflection. Obviously this is mitigated if you use different voices, but for me the most interesting thing was the increased awareness I had to have of the story when I wasn't able to see the new line breaks indicating new speakers or expressions of emotion. Of course, some of this may have been exacerbated by the surreal nature of OtherUnicorn's stories (I recommend them very much), but even so I think it provides some insight into your story if you can still keep track of what's going on when read by an emotionless reader who doesn't stop for page breaks.
Kinda not related to using the program for a reading or Abridged series, but very much related to the idea of bringing voice to a story.