Reels
You'll find in my reels below some of the work I created for Baldur's Gate 3.
Voice-Over Companion Documents
SCENE 1 - Karniss' Voice Design 0:00 - 0:27 AIM - My goal with Karniss' was to represent by means of voice processing the character's emotional range, he's quite volatile and despite his relatively minute role in the game he effectively portrays a strong sense of self that seems to get a reaction from the players. Like with all cases of VO processing, the idea is to emphasize personality and character, to bring out further and concentrate their effect on the player, like a kind of tasteful caricature. STRUCTURE - I started design by sticking to the golden rule for VO, keeping a dry signal in the center to maintain intelligibility. I used Reformer Pro to modulate the volume of assets I designed to feel like the voice of a spider, the modulation was controlled by the signal of the Voice Actor's dry lines. I added some pitch modulation to this in order to enhance the feeling of expressive communication. These assets were given some room in the center but were concentrated mostly in the Left & Right speakers. To move these sounds in a refined manner I used Melda Autopan's 3-band panning, I set it up to move constantly changing frequency bands in different directions at the same time. Allowing the main signal to control the flow of this creates a level of congruence that sounds more natural than standard parameter oscillation, whilst adding an overall sense of dynamism and life to the effects. This was my way of enhancing the character's emotional volatility. Beyond this there was some use of delay in the Left and Right Channels and some bass enhancements in the center. I tend to wrap up these designs by subtraction rather than addition to create the cleanest result. The heart of the character had already been represented with the processing I used above, so I felt that anything else added on top would have been unnecessary filler.
SCENE 2 - Myrkul Voice Design 0:28 - 1:17 AIM - My goal with Myrkul was simple, to make the player feel like they're screwed and they should not have come here. Up until this point in the game, there was no encounter/boss introduction that held this level of gravitas and intensity. It was this feeling that needed to be magnified in order to instill fear and get the adrenaline pumping. STRUCTURE - Myrkul went through several different takes. When I first worked on his VO our entire philosophy for cinematic sound design was different than when we shipped. Previously we were working with 2D audio only. Later on we changed to fully 3D positioned audio. Originally I designed Myrkul's VO in 5.1, Embracing the abstract nature of his being, I wanted to make the player feel physically surrounded, like his voice emanated from everywhere. I used tiny tweaks in delay between the front and rear side speakers to enhance this. The final design was mixed down, so I decided to take a different approach at this point. The anchor for getting this right was simple; pitch shifting the Voice Actor's vocals down slightly, yet still blending them with the dry vocals. Other than that the processing was minimal. I added bass frequency enhancements, reverb and with a subtle touch I finished it with 2 instances of delay.
SCENE 3 - Vlaakith Voice Design 1:18 - 1:44 AIM - Creating the voice for Vlaakith in this scene was one of those rare situations where the solution seemed to me to be achieved by breaking rules. The rule in question is one surrounding the idea of pitching down female vocals, usually in the world of voice design this is taboo, however in this situation I felt it encapsulated the very essence of the story. In somewhat of a nod to The Wizard of Oz, highlighting Vlaakith's need to exaggerate her own presence with the use of an oversized hologram was the story in this scene, even if the player did not know it yet. Pay no attention to that 'God' behind the curtain. STRUCTURE - As per usual the dry signal stayed in the center. What differed here is how it was joined there by three other tracks. 1. featured pitched down vocals. I blended these with the dry vocals similarly to how I did with Myrkul. 2. Pitched 1 Octave down, I added some transient shaping here to blend it with the higher pitched layers in a way that felt smooth, I also enhanced the bass frequencies with RBass. I did this to blend the track with... 3. The third was pitched 2 Octaves down. Being the lowest pitch I of course increased bass presence, I added a dash of OTT here once again to try and blend everything in the center to feel like one voice. This design was topped off with hologram texture processing on L & R tracks. I achieved this with a mixture of Chorus, Delay and EQ. I tested this layer at varying levels over the design period and in the end opted for it to be more subtle.
SCENE 4 - Balthazaar Voice Design 1:45 - 2:46 AIM - Initially, two things stood out to me about Balthazaar. Number one and perhaps most obviously was the flesh engraved symbol on his face. Secondly, the character's role as a powerful necromancer, someone who serves as a manipulator and conduit of unseen realms. These two characteristics allowed me to combine both the practical and abstract to tell his story in a way which wouldn't feel one-dimensional from a voice processing perspective. STRUCTURE - In order to represent the facial engraving, I used two different instances of Reformer Pro, one pushed Left and the other Right. These both played different flesh sounds, the dynamics for which were modulated by the signal of the center dry audio track for the Voice Actors lines. I added a subtle reverb here and went on to name it 'Goo-Verb' for some reason. I wanted the Necromancy layer to feel like he was also speaking with a second voice that came from a place beyond what the player can see. My method of trying to achieve this was twofold. 1. I used three different tracks with different levels of voice pitching. One Left,one right and one in the center. I added bass enhancements on the center track. 2. I sent the entire signal chain built up to this point to an external chain to be used for reverse reverb. This was tightly controlled, the dynamics of the entire track were modulated by the signal of the clean vocal track to preserve intelligibility. I EQ'd this chain in the 400Hz range to keep the design clean and added a plugin by GRM called Evolution for the general sound it created on default settings.