for twilight_angel! from blacksquirrel! Grow in the Openings by Mindabbles

[podmod.livejournal.com]

from blacksquirrel
for twilight_angel

Grow in the Openings by Mindabbles
Harry Potter - Sirius/Remus, Sirius/Charlie, Sirius/OMCs, mentions of Remus/Tonks, Harry/Ginny
cover by radlilim

4:20:30
mp3 209.7 MB
m4b 117.4 MB

author's summary: He'd woken up this morning, thirty-eight years old, and realized he had no idea how to be anything other then a warrior or a prisoner. Sirius came back from the dead, helped defeat the Dark Lord, and now he's faced with his toughest challenge yet; making a life for himself.

Comments

[twilight-angel.livejournal.com]

Eeeeeeeee!!! A brand-new story that I've never read before! I just skimmed the beginning a bit, and I'm so incredibly excited to listen! \o/ Thank you so much, blacksquirrel! This is perfect! And I've got a very long trip next week, too. Thank you! :D :D :D

[blacksquirrel.livejournal.com]

Yay! I'm so glad that it suits you. You left your preferences fairly open, so I had a lot to choose from, and I hope that you enjoy this as much as I did :) It worked out just perfectly that the very first Sirius bigbang posted just as podbang started, so I thought it would be fun to record some new Sirius fic that not many people would have read yet. Enjoy! :)

[twilight-angel.livejournal.com]

I'm sure I will enjoy it, and I really look forward to listening! Thanks again! :D

[twilight-angel.livejournal.com]

I finally finished listening to this, and I just wanted to pop in and tell you that you did a great job! The story and your recording were wonderful. Thank you again!

[blacksquirrel.livejournal.com]

Yay!!! Thank you! I'm so happy you enjoyed it :) And thank you for letting me know

Can I ask you how the vocal differentiation for the characters worked for you? (worked/didn't work/didn't notice?) It was a new thing for me and I'm wondering how I should think of improving in the future.

[twilight-angel.livejournal.com]

I did, actually, notice the vocal changes for the characters. (I've been playing around with "voices" for characters in my podfics, too, lately.) It mostly worked well, although there were a few instances where, for example, I guess you thought it was Remus' line, but it was actually Sirius' because I could hear the change about halfway through the line. There were only a few of those, though, and that's mostly an editing thing. I rather liked Remus having a growling sort of voice, which was rather surprising, actually, since I usually "hear" him as having voice about even with Sirius' or perhaps a touch higher. But the deeper voice really worked here.

Overall, the different voices gave a nice effect to the story and made it easier to differentiate the characters when listening. Unless you think it's too much trouble to do, I'd say why not at least try it for a few more podfics and see if it works for you? With this does, however, come a caveat, to which I've alluded: especially with book-based podfics, people tend to have "voices" of their own for the characters, so, while I enjoyed this difference of Remus' voice, others may be thrown off by it. But the great thing about it? You're the podficcer, so, in the end, it's totally your decision.

My, I seem to have blathered on a bit. :p

[blacksquirrel.livejournal.com]

That was exactly what I wanted to know, thank you!

The ironic thing is that I usually think of Remus as having a higher voice than Sirius, but the story describes his voice as lower - and I found I just could not record it as higher while actually reading out that it's lower. So, a combination between podficcer's decision and author's direction :) I'm glad the voices still worked that way - it would be interesting to do a poll to see how people would describe different characters' voices - individually and in comparison to each other (i.e. Kingsley is pretty universally "resonant," but is his voice lower or the same as Snape's?). It would be interesting to see how varied our internal character voices might be.

I think the inconsistencies you're describing had to do with a problem I found between keeping the voices different and imbuing emotion. Particularly when Sirius' voice had to get lower or Remus's voice had to get softer or higher because of the emotion, it became more and more difficult to keep them separate. Or I could have just screwed up ;) Anyway, something to work on - thanks for letting me know!

[revolutionaryjo.livejournal.com]

*glee* So happy to see this posted! And blacksquirrel, you know my love of Sirius/Remus knows no bounds. :D

[blacksquirrel.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the excellent beta and ego stroking! I was glad to record something that I knew you'd like, in addition to my recipient :) Presents for everyone!

[blacksquirrel.livejournal.com]

Ooooh I get to go first :) Thank you podmod, for making all of this happen!

[rosemar48.livejournal.com]

I just listened to this yesterday and really loved it. You did a great job of the reading, I could easily tell who was talking.

[blacksquirrel.livejournal.com]

Thank you for commenting! And it's great to hear that the vocal differentiation worked for you.