New Project!

[readilygrey]

I have decided to work on a new project ;D I want to put together a youtube channel for audio recordings of scary stories. I have been having a lot of fun listening to them over the past week and believe this would be a fun thing to do with my short stories. There is no money in short stories (unless you are already famous) but there can be the joy of sharing them. More people would have access to them than if they were published in a magazine or anthology.

Let me know if any of you want to participate. We could use the experience to create separate channels for other genres as well. Christian stories would probably be popular (pokes scribbliz) as well as kids' stories. I've seen where some people have done this with novels and then gone on to publish them, but for now I think I want to try traditional publication for that.

To do this I/we would need:

1. Stories! (I have some that could be better edited and some more in the works.) The Craving would be lovely (hint hint)
2. Audio recordings of the stories. I'm game. I've been practicing for a few hours now (such a long time, lol) and will continue to do so. I promise I can keep my southern drawl in check! Anyone else that wants to talk is of course welcome to do so ;D
3. (Legal!) music and sound effects. I have no idea how to do this. Technically this is optional, but it would be so much better with it.
4. Images and pictures. Each story needs at least one image. I can do a lot of these with my camera and paint.net, but I would love it if others contributed as well.

That's it. I think this is totally doable. I am really excited about this! I would love it if this became a collaboration

On a side note, I have discovered that nothing points out errors in a draft like recording a reading of it and playing it back! I highly recommend this as regular revision tool ;D

[scribbliz]

readily, I'm game to read stories too. For music, try to look for songs that are "Public Domain" I'm not sure what the rules for that are in regards to music, but I know a lot of classic literature is public domain...it has to do with how long the author has been dead I'll try to do some research on what music you can use, also do a search for free sound effects? Or a sound effects generator...whatever you use, make sure you list your source in the credits;

spooky pictures might be harder to get??? How long would you want the videos to be?? Hmm...I'll have to see if I can write some Christian short stories The idea in my head right now, SO does not fall under that catagory! (course, I don't think it's a short story either...but we will see)

[readilygrey]

Awesome! I would love help with the sound effects. I know a lot of older music doesn't count as public domain because the people recording it are too new. However if one of us played an older piece and recorded it, that would be legal. Other than that I'm lost. Your searches would be very helpful.

I can do a lot of the pictures. I find it fun. If anyone has concepts/ideas/requests I am happy to make it happen. Feedback is always useful though and I don't mind if other people want to contribute images as well.

Did you want to voice all genres? I am most comfortable with horror, but I would be happy to experiment with the others. I really want to help with everything. I have seen where people even record stories together, each playing different character like a radio drama. That might be too tricky for starting out, but something we might experiment with later.

Just an idea for channels that I am completely fine with changing:

1. We could name each channel after the person in the genre that does the bulk of the voicing. Any other writers, images creators, musicians, etc. are listed in the credits.
2. A general name for the channel, i.e. "____ Story Time" etc. and then all other contributors are listed in credits.

Obviously we would need different pen names for each genre so there isn't a lot of overlap between the fans (not everyone is as open-minded as we are )

I wanted to use the pen name "Alice Drollic" (drollic is an obsolete word meaning "that which pertains to puppets" ) for my horror stories. I have no idea for the Christian and Children's but I can come up with something.

I am so glad you like this idea! Yay! ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

edited to add: I've seen videos from 2-40 minutes long. It depends on the story. 1,500 words seems to take about 7 minutes. They can be recorded in parts and edited together.

[Freedom]

Ooo, like it like it!!!

Recording and listening to your own voice is hard a good excercise. Excellent tip about using that as a revision tool.

My voice is kind of alto-ish, would probably be good for horror ;D adventure, mystery, even comedy....

But eep! to hear it

[readilygrey]

Ha ha! I was actually pleasantly surprised by my voice. I thought it was going to sound much worse. I need to work on speed and evenness though. My voice is low too

It's possible to post things privately to youtube, we could practice sharing with each other before sharing it with the world.

I need to time mine when the kids are at grandmas--I kept picking them up in the back ground!

[Freedom]

Cute kid noises in the background -- kinda breaks the scary mood lol

Ok, so how do we do this? What equipment do we need? (Love that hardware.)

Seriously, though, I don't know, do you just use the mic on your headphones? I have a set of those (somewhere).

[readilygrey]

I've been reading up on it a bit and it all depends on how professional we want to sound

I tried recording stories just with one of those cheap headphones w/ microphone that are used for gaming. The software I used was One Note (because it was already on my computer) and it didn't sound bad. If this is something that I really get into I would want a better mic.

As for the back ground noises...I've considered going to one of those sound proofed rooms at the library ;D Home would probably be fine as long as the kids were somewhere else

I've read it's a good idea to make a pop board www.jakeludington.com/project_studio/20050321_build_your_own_microphone_pop_screen.html

but I don't understand how it works. If the point is just to keep the microphone at a set distance, the headset already does that.

Here are some tips I found:
www.antbearaudio.com/2011/audio-recording-tips/

A lot of the people on youtube aren't that professional and are still quite popular. This guy sounds decent and he doesn't seem to be super professional, he makes several mistakes per that guide and yet he read this book:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oklg39zz4nI&feature=relmfu

And as a result the author raised over $15,000 to have his book printed:



So if we read for each other and make sure we sound decent we should be all right. I hope.

[Freedom]

Aug 20, 2012 21:55:31 GMT -5 readilygrey said:

It's possible to post things privately to youtube, we could practice sharing with each other before sharing it with the world.

Ok. Tell me how to do this, and I'll dig out my headphone/mic and give it a shot. eep.

[readilygrey]

Aug 26, 2012 18:18:19 GMT -5 Freedom said:

Aug 20, 2012 21:55:31 GMT -5 readilygrey said:

It's possible to post things privately to youtube, we could practice sharing with each other before sharing it with the world.

Ok. Tell me how to do this, and I'll dig out my headphone/mic and give it a shot. eep.

Yay!!!! *runs around in a manic circle* I think this is so much fun. I barely even care what the genre is, I just like the multi-media expression of creativity. ;D ;D ;D ;D

How I did it, was I bought a $20 gaming headphone and microphone set from walmart. Then I used Onenote to record the audio. It is part of microsoft office. I had never used it before, but it was really easy.

I barely know how to use this software and actually wasn't even aware that it came with my computer until a week ago, lol. But I know enough to get started.

1. Record story on Onenote in a new "notebook."
2. Right click on the "audio recording" on the page and "save as" (this will export the file out of Onenote) make sure to type ".wav" on the end of the file.
3. Open a new project in Windows Live Movie Maker.
4. Add a picture (this can be changed at any time).
5. Under the "edit" and then "video tools" tabs, increase the duration of the photo to 30 seconds. Then copy and past that picture until it is a little longer than your recording.
6. "Add music" to add your recording.
7. To edit the recording, segments of the recording can be moved or deleted under the "edit" and then "music tools" tabs. You select a point in the recording and then choose "split" to separate segments.
8. Save it in high quality using the "save movie" button.
9. Upload to youtube.

This is the only software I am at all familiar with, and I believe it is fairly common on Windows computers. If you have different software I'm sure an online guide exists. But if you do have the same software I do, I would be happy to help in any way I can

[PaperGrace]

You're so cute.
Alright, I may have to dig out my gaming headphones and poke around on ole' Lappy, frankenstien's monster that it is.

[Freedom]

Holy crap.

K, so I don't have OneNote. Tried plain old Sound Recorder, and results were poor. Found a free download, Audacity. Results much better, more stuff to mess with also.

But my voice -- I sound like I'm smothering. I have a naturally fairly loud voice, and have spent so much time controlling it that I guess I've totally discouraged it.

This was wearing, but I'll keep on...

[readilygrey]

PaperGrace: It's contagious, woot! ;D

Freedom: I forgot about Audacity. I used to use it all the time for making custom ringtones. It's great. If you have any issues exporting your files later, I vaguely remember having to download another free thing called "lame" that helped with that.

My voice was very uneven at first and I hissed my "s' sounds. I didn't even realize I did that It really does get less painful to listen to and work with your voice.