Are we moving to a "virtual studio" model?
“Thanks for getting back to me Juliette, and just one more thing, does the talent prefer to record from their home studio or do we need to book them into a local facility?”
These words are now commonplace in just about every booking email we send to a talent agent. It only ever used to be a handful of experienced voice actors who would politely mention that they had a home studio they could record from “if it was easier”, and even then this would only ever be for corporate gigs.
Now, it’s the complete opposite. When booking voice talent for video games it's just assumed that the actor will be recording remotely and if you want them to travel into a studio, you better highlight that from the start!
With this in mind, it’s important for game producers to take a closer look at the “virtual studio” model because like it or not, it’s here to stay.
What is the virtual studio method?
The virtual recording method is nothing new and we have been working this way for many years. However, like every other industry it has become much more common and much improved since the COVID 19 pandemic forced us all to rethink standard working models. But we’re not here to talk about COVID! Moving on…
A virtual studio approach to a recording project essentially means that the voice actor is working from their home studio while the client and voice director are listening in to the session from their office / home. On top of that, there is usually an audio engineer monitoring and recording a dummy track from a centralized audio facility.
Yes, there are lots of applications that allow you to record remotely over the internet but the audio streamed from all of these applications is actually pretty low quality. You can’t really hear the difference and so it works fine for corporate voices overs, podcasts etc. However, if you’re recording a video game you may well want to manipulate and pitch the audio recordings (for creature voices for example). This is where you will have issues with ‘recorded over the internet audio’. It just won't handle any heavy processing without sounding, well… sh*t!
How Bigmouth Virtual Studio works.
We like to keep it simple. We’ve looked at every option for remote recording and always come back to the same conclusion. We want to use the audio recorded locally by the actor. This is because their audio is full quality, high resolution, crystal clear (or to be exact 48kHz / 24bit).
Our approach is to use Source connect Now to allow clients, voice directors and producers to patch into our virtual studio session from the comfort of their home or office. They can communicate with the actor, the engineer and of course each other. They can also leave written comments, handy for script tweaks etc.
Our engineer will simply ask the voice actor to hit record at the start of the session and leave it running for the duration. This leaves the actor free to concentrate on their performance and direction. Meanwhile our engineer will be recording a dummy track on her end, highlighting the Director’s “select / favorite” takes within their dummy session. This means that when the actor sends us their session audio to edit, we have a quick audio reference ready to go.
The benefits.
We believe there are three main benefits to working via a virtual studio model.
It’s more cost effective.
It’s more efficient & productive
It’s environmentally friendly
Cost: You still need to pay the actors the same fee. You still need to pay the Voice Director the same fee. Casting is still going to cost the same. However, studio fees will be reduced. Yes, we still use a studio and engineer to remotely monitor the sessions but this can be done from a simple audio workstation and it can be done from our UK facility. To add in some context, a typical studio session in Los Angeles will cost us roughly $250 - $275 per hour. Plus there will be upload fees, connection fees, archiving fees, printing fees… you name it! Not only that but there are also setup and tear down fees which usually means another couple of hours per session added on to the bill.
With a virtual studio model, the cost of “studio” time is usually around $100 per hour with no setup or teardown. Add this up over an 80 hour game project and it’s a decent saving!
Efficient: One of the biggest benefits to adopting a virtual studio model is how efficient it is for everyone’s time. Voice talent and Voice Directors don’t need to travel for an hour or two in L.A traffic to get to the studio, and we all want happy actors, right! It also means that producers and clients can simply click a link and jump into the [virtual] studio. Listening in and giving notes from the comfort and convenience of their office. When the session is done, they’re right back to doing what it was they were doing before - no down time.
Talent Pool: Personally, I believe that the biggest advantage by far when it comes to recording virtually, is that it opens up your casting options enormously. I know this will sound fairly obvious but working virtually means you can cast all over the world in all markets. We’ve used this successfully for when we need a specific ethnicity and accent. It also makes authentic casting much more accessible.
Environment: One of the things that we love about a virtual studio session is that it is way more environmentally friendly. Bigmouth Audio has been working on reducing our carbon footprint over the past year or two and this recording model certainly helps us towards that goal. Again, virtual studio sessions eliminate travel which is particularly useful for L.A sessions. Not only that but we discovered that paper scripts, while almost always used during in person sessions, are practically never used in virtual sessions. Instead voice talent prefer to display scripts on an iPad or their computer screens for convenience.
The downside.
This all sounds great, I hear you say! But wait, there are downsides to recording via a virtual studio session. It’s important to know these considerations in advance as it will help you avoid any unwanted issues further down the line - believe me, we have seen it all!
Firstly, you need to make sure that the actors do indeed have a home studio and I mean a proper home studio with a sound booth and isolation. Many actors will claim to have a “home studio” when in fact they have a laptop, USB microphone and perhaps some sort of “reflection filter screen”. This is not a home studio. It does not have sound isolation. It probably doesn’t sound very clean or dry. You should always make sure that you receive a home studio spec list from the talent and carry out a quick line & sound recording test to determine if their home studio is up to the job.
Secondly, it’s not uncommon to run into connection issues during a recording session. Even if you carry out a line test in advance, the talent’s internet connection on the day may just be experiencing issues. Similarly, your internet connection may struggle for some reason. Technology, eh?
Another thing to consider is that recording multiple actors all in different rooms / environments could cause issues further down the line when it comes to mixing. Although, it’s also not uncommon to record in various different commercial studios across a single project these days. Just make sure the sound is dry with no “room tone”.
Lastly, if you are going to adopt a virtual studio approach you need to consider this when casting your actors. It might sound obvious but keep in mind that child actors might not have access to a pro home studio. Do you have any unique casting requirements? Will this effect where and how you record.
Closing.
Why did we feel that it was important to write this post or indeed why did we launch our ‘Bigmouth Virtual Studio’ service? Because we have seen a significant shift in the way voice production, particularly for games, is being carryout.
To give an example, we recently worked on a game project (which at the time of writing is still very hush hush) and the client, producers and casting director all agreed that this project should be cast and recorded in L.A. This was primarily to tap into that particular market’s talent pool as we felt it would best suit the character requirements. So, we reached out to our favourite L.A talent agencies…
Once the casting process was complete, and dozens of auditions had been reviewed, it turned out that the entire cast - except for one actor - were no longer actually based in L.A! And, every single one of them insisted on recording remotely, from their home studio. Not only that but it turned out one of the actors was based in Ireland and one was in Croatia. Amazing!
So even though we had fully prepared to record in L.A, in a studio we already had pencilled, we still ended up having to run these sessions virtually. And do you know what? It turned our brilliantly!
Just remember that benefits and limitations of this approach. I would say it works best for video games as the sessions are all “wild” voice records. Working to picture, in our experience is still quite tricky. It’s ok for the odd pickup or ADR line but certainly not for dubbing a full series, for example.
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