Fembot Central

Following Kiwi Candy's recent recordings I had the idea of creating a two (or more) part audio script.

Each part would be read separately then cut and pasted together and enhanced with sound effects to produce the finished track. There are several talented malfunction and robot girl 'voice artists' out there who do commissions and this method would allow for interaction between, for example, a malfunctioning robot and her technician without the need to bring the readers together physically. For normal drama this would probably result in a really wooden performance but the unnatural interaction might actually improve the sort of theatre we're after here!

My questions are:
1. Has anyone got any experience of doing this sort of thing before, and any advice to offer?
2. Does anyone have a rough cost estimate for about 10 mins of a girl's time to record a series of script sections from mundane through technical to erotic?
3. Are there any girls out there who would be willing to cooperate on a venture like this free* in return for being able to sell the finished product on their site?

I would be quite happy to produce a two part script in dialogue sections, then to edit the results together if there is any interest.

* If affordable I'd probably splash out myself to produce a short proof of concept...

Combining talent sounds like a complication - couldn't a single woman perform both roles, but with one set of clips audio tweaked to sound like a different voice? She could still record each role separately, so as not to have to be constantly swapping voice patterns and identities.

- Dale Coba

BA2 wrote:1. Has anyone got any experience of doing this sort of thing before, and any advice to offer?

Writing for audio isn't very straightforward, and the sound engineering can sometimes be just as important as the performance of the talent - sometimes even more so. Bare minimum: Make sure each voice has a slightly different position in the stereo mix. If two people are speaking, have one off to the left, and another to the right, but not necessarily at the same levels. The voices should be balanced between left and right, but not necessarily perfectly symmetrical. If someone might be physically moving around within the story, you can move their voice while they speak.

You can't take anything for granted: If a character does something, it either has to be explicitly communicated in dialog, or highlighted by distinctive sound effects. You and I tend to put in detailed descriptions of interfaces, where they're located, what plugs in where, that sort of thing. In audio, we can only describe that level of detail if a character specifically says it.

Communicating everything through dialog can quickly sound obtuse and pantomime, although there are ways to cushion the effect: If the characters can't see each other, it makes sense that one would have to describe visual details to the other. Consider your short story Helpline: The human can't see the robot, so he has to walk her through things blindly. Now imagine a different version of the story, in which the human needs her to open up "the unit" to access configuration settings, or output a system log. It would make sense for him to describe physical details, and for her to provide feedback, thus giving you the chance to paint the picture through explicit description.

Alternatively, you can write it as a narrated play, with a narrator describing events directly. There's a company called Graphic Audio which uses this method exclusively (They're responsible for the Nuclear Bombshell audio I found a while back), with varying degrees of success. On one hand, it makes some of the worst stories listenable. On the other hand, it can get in the way of the flow of the story, especially with lengthy descriptions.

2. Does anyone have a rough cost estimate for about 10 mins of a girl's time to record a series of script sections from mundane through technical to erotic?

The wiki links to Night Flirt for phone sex, which is where Kiwi Candy is listed. She charges $1.59/minute for fantasy roleplaying (just under £1). Budget more than the actual length of time, to account for any re-reads or direction. That seems to be a middle-of-the-road price on Night Flirt, but I can't really comment on whether the price in any way correlates to the quality of the performance.

3. Are there any girls out there who would be willing to cooperate on a venture like this free* in return for being able to sell the finished product on their site?

I would be quite happy to produce a two part script in dialogue sections, then to edit the results together if there is any interest.

* If affordable I'd probably splash out myself to produce a short proof of concept...

Probably, but based on the prices on Night Flirt, I'm not sure it would be necessary. I'd be more concerned about covering the cost of decent post production engineering (sound FX, filtering to make it sound less like someone talking into a microphone, ambient music, stereo panning, etc.), since those nuances are as instinctive to listeners as lighting, framing, and camera angles are visual media.

If you're a Doctor Who fan, I'd recommend looking into a company called Big Finish Productions. They've been doing audio drama for more than a decade now, and some of their recordings are great examples of the evolution of sound design in audio drama. In particular, Colditz is a great example of a good story with poor sound design, while Nekromanteia is a good example of an awful story with polished sound design.

That's my per minute on a live call. As far as MP3s go, it's $2.00 per minute with a $7.00 editing fee because of the replay value on mp3s these will always be more than a live call.
Usually for 10 minutes it's $25 - $27.

Kiwi Candy wrote:That's my per minute on a live call. As far as MP3s go, it's $2.00 per minute with a $7.00 editing fee because of the replay value on mp3s these will always be more than a live call.
Usually for 10 minutes it's $25 - $27.

Still quite reasonable. What kind of service does the editing fee entail?

Willo, thanks - that's some great advice; much appreciated.

Candy, that does look reasonable...

I'll give it some thought and hopefully get things under way. I fancy putting the project together myself rather than outsourcing but with source audio from (for example) Candy and Delilah at affordable prices it looks doable...

WilloWisp wrote:

Kiwi Candy wrote:That's my per minute on a live call. As far as MP3s go, it's $2.00 per minute with a $7.00 editing fee because of the replay value on mp3s these will always be more than a live call.
Usually for 10 minutes it's $25 - $27.

Still quite reasonable. What kind of service does the editing fee entail?

Ensuring there is no background noise. Normalizing the file to -3.0db, sound effects if needed, removing a sigh that sounds wrong. Editing a bit that came out wrong. A 10 minute MP3 takes me an hour to do. That is included in the $7.00 editing fee.

Being an audio guy, this project is really interesting and I wouldn't mind contributing a few bucks.

A couple of very talented ladies that could possibly do voice work are Christiana Ellis and Julie Hoverson. I know them from the world of podcasts.

Both are great readers and Julie has quite a bit of expertise working with soundscapes and good audio production in general.

Christiana Ellis doesn't have a problem doing erotic audio as you can hear from this. One of the best erotic stories I've ever heard even though it contains no fembot content.

http://nobilis.libsyn.com/nobilis_eroti ... _chrysalis

Julie makes a brief but memorable appearance in this story as a military bot turned sexbot. The story is really fun so give it a listen.

http://dunesteef.com/2010/09/04/episode ... d-mckeown/

I haven't heard any erotic audio from Julie but you never know until you ask

I decided to give this a shot with a leftover Easter egg from one of my Virus Alert stories. I've got to say, I'm extremely pleased with the results. Kiwi Candy did an excellent job with this, and I hope to send her more scripts in the future. The clip is called Call Monitor, and it's up now on Kiwi Candy's Clips4Sale storefront.

Good man Willo!

I've been busy farting around in RL and failed completely to do anything constructive...