Legacy of a Stray Wolf

[Anima Sword]

In a world inhabited by many different races, just recovering from a war that will remembered in legend for centuries to come, Buren Wilkrone is a former warrior who survived the battles, but will never be remember by history.
Now a simple drifer, Buren hopes to spend the rest of his life wandering the world and leaving all his cares and regrets behind, but fate is not kind to him.
Without warning Buren gets dragged into a conflict that will not only force him to fight to stay alive, but also face the dark and twisted past he's been trying to run away from.



Past Episodes

Episode One
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK82ofUme0

Cast
Buren – Brandon Habowski
Luna – Sakura Hughes
Granny – Violetxwing
Aringha - Lightning Bolt
Jareck - Dom Voice
Galen - Seerosphere
Jane - Dom Voice
Krala - Mizetheral
Hue - Jalen K. Casell
Cassie - 43 Minuites
Morris - Jalen K. Casell

Extras

Episode One
Thug 1 – Micheal Skelly
Thug 2 – Dr Kendo
Barkeeper – SventheCrusader
Soldier 1 – Shinigami1300
Soldier 2 – QAN
Cloak 1 – Anima Sword
Cloak 2 – Tezzle
Cloak 3 – Dr Kendo
Cloak 4 – QAN

Episode 2
Bartender - Nuramike

This is my first ever Radio Play so feedback is greatly appreciated.

MP3 Coming Soon

To learn more about this universe and the Great War, click here:
http://www.neoseeker.com/forums/32/t...-very-welcome/

[Kei]

I'm not going to comment too much on the cast, but I'll focus a bit on the mixing for now. I found that the majority of the voices were pretty low, while the music was pretty loud. You did a pretty good job developing the setting through music and sound effects and the crowd effects were nice! Always makes me happy and the story seemed to be pretty well paced. Personally, I would have preferred the episodes a bit shorter. It's hard for me to just sit back and listen to something 30 minutes long.

Guren - You seem to be getting a bit rusty, your annunciation was a bit iffy and your acting came off a bit too 'acted' but it definitely improved as the clip went by.

Luna - I like your voice, your scolding toward Guren for running away was fantastic! A perfect blend of anger and sadness. When you took part in simple conversation, however, it came off like you were just reading from a script.

Granny - The only thing I can really comment on was that she didn't really sound 'old'. She was supposed to be, right?

[Sakura Hughes]

Luna - I like your voice, your scolding toward Guren for running away was fantastic! A perfect blend of anger and sadness. When you took part in simple conversation, however, it came off like you were just reading from a script.

Thanks so much for the feedback~ Will work on that

Will critique this later

[shadowsvoice]

Thanks Kei!

[Anima Sword]

I'm not going to comment too much on the cast, but I'll focus a bit on the mixing for now. I found that the majority of the voices were pretty low, while the music was pretty loud. You did a pretty good job developing the setting through music and sound effects and the crowd effects were nice! Always makes me happy and the story seemed to be pretty well paced. Personally, I would have preferred the episodes a bit shorter. It's hard for me to just sit back and listen to something 30 minutes long.

Thanks for the feedback, I'm still trying to find the right levels in terms of sound so your words will help in the future. As for the episode length, if I split the episode into parts next time would that help?

[Kei]

Maybe, its more of a personal gripe as I find it difficult to pay attention to things after 5 minutes especially without visual.

[Anima Sword]

Alrighty, the first part of Episode Two has now been completed and can be found on the first post of this thread. Enjoy ^_^

[Tablet]

I’ll apologise for this critique in advance, most of it is friendly tips I’ve picked up over the last few years running my own Audio Drama, for the most part this critique is from a technical standpoint. I wrote this critique while listening to episode 1.

I agree with what others have said in that voices are low and the intro music does appear to be overly loud by comparison. Do you mix wearing headphones or using PC speakers? Trust me it makes a difference as to how ‘right’ the background music sounds.

Good music selections though be weary that if a piece of music fits the first 10 seconds of a scene then to be sure that the shifting moods of the piece still fit with the intention of the scene, music can really make a scene punchy or help to add pace, it’s probably not too absurd to think of music as another character in the show that adds emotion to the performances of the actors.

One thing I’ve found over the last few years of mixing is that the human ear is a pain, generally the first thing you hear from a character your ear locks on to and if that is hiss from background noise that’s all you’ll ever hear, one thing I learned early on and it’s doable in less complex mixing programs like Audacity is muting everything before the person starts talking so if say you have half a second and white noise before your character speaks if you highlight that white noise right up to as close to the speech as possible and delete it then the first thing your ear hears is the characters voice thus hiding the background noise for a couple of seconds, fade outs can work quite well for pauses or the end of speech too. I use this technique along with noise reduction to further clean the lines.

Another tip if you don’t already do is to put each character on their own individual line in your mixing program, that way you can alter the levels of each actor individually to ensure that all your characters are at the same volume (gain) level.

A tip I give my actors when recording ‘shouty’ lines is to watch the wave form as you record, if it turns into a thick black line that peaks at the top and bottom of the recording session then chances have it that the audio will come out distorted almost crackly, a definite solution I advise is to move away from the microphone that way you get a cleaner take without all the peaks in the audio.

A definite positive is your writing, apart from the opening narration setting the scene you use conversation to explain something that’s happened i.e. the gauntlet being caught, this could have been narrated but the fact that you worked it into the conversation shows that you’re aware of the limitations of audio drama which isn’t something everyone gets when writing for a visual-less medium. That being said the introduction of Luna could have been more cut down with some of the nitty and gritty details regarding her past worked into a conversation between Luna and her brother, maybe in an anecdote. I do like the emotive pieces you wrote for Luna too, they sound natural like a sister who is saddened yet frustrated by her brother’s actions.

Maybe an echo or some audio tweak to narration parts just differentiate it from normal speech, it’s generally more something you do to taste then any sort of requirement.
I’m currently mid-way through the battle scene at around the 14:40 mark and I’ve found myself getting a little bit lost, one thing you could always try is asking an actor to listen to a rough cut of a scene and ask their opinion, I’ve done this in the past as a second set of ears can open you up to maybe some levelling issues or a line that has some off diction making the follow-up sound effects confusing without the line that explains them or gives them context.

To be honest if you want to make an episode that’s 23….30 or even 100 minutes long then go for it, it’s your vision at the end of the day.
Just had a flick through episode 2 part 1, the mixing is much better though the audio fidelity does seem to have taken a beating in the mixing process. But overall good job! Keep it up!

[Anima Sword]

Thank you for the constructive feedback.
Yeah I'm forced to edit whilst using headphones most of the time, but if I can get a chance to listen to it through the speakers, I will try to do so.
Again, thanks for all of the advice, and I hope you will continue to enjoy the series.