Guide:Voice Acting Scope

GUIDE: Voice Acting Scope

This is a guide for determining how to implement voice acting in your project given the limited time and budget constraints of an indie visual novel developer. The goal of this guide is to have as many details finalized as possible to streamline the recording process after the voice talent is hired.

ACT I: GENERAL BUSINESS

Step 1: Budget

Will the voice actors be paid, or are they doing the work on a volunteer basis? Paid voiceover jobs tend to attract many more actors than unpaid jobs, and they're generally able to commit more work to the project.

Step 2: Communication

How will you communicate with the actors? Generally Discord is used as a communication platform, although if the actor is hired outside of Discord then sometimes other methods will be utilized (such as through their email, or the Direct Message function of a voiceover forum like Casting Call Club).

Step 3: File processing

What creates the best workflow for your audio engineer to edit the recordings?

When the voice actors record, are they sending all dialogue in one long file, or exporting each take of each line individually, or something else?

If recording in one long file, are the actors recording their dialogue line-by-line, scene-by-scene, or some other method?

How much editing should they do on their own before sending it to you/your engineer? The current best practice for one long recording is for the actor to simply cut dead air between takes. Any other edits need to be consistent across all actors/recordings (de-click/de-ess/reverb/etc.) and you/the engineer, having access to all recordings, are going to do a better job of that than the actors are individually.

In that same vein, all actors must send their files in a lossless format such as .WAV. or .flac. This ensures the highest possible quality for the engineer and any compression (into mp3/ogg/etc.) will be consistent across all actors.

Step 4: File transfer

Where are the actors sending their completed recordings? Generally, lengthy voice recordings will be too large to send through typical message systems such as email or discord, and storage/transfer services like dropbox and google drive are often employed.

Step 5: Other business considerations

Will you be offering the SAG-AFTRA Game Jam Waiver or the NAVA Voice Rider to assure the actor you won't utilize their voice files for generative AI? Creating a non-consensual digital replica of an actor harms their ability to find future work. These documents are a promise to the actor that you are interested in their long-term success as a voice actor, and in the profession of voice acting itself. Such assurances will increase your casting pool and also significantly increase your legal liability if you decide to digitally clone their voice.

ACT II: THE GAME ITSELF

Step 1: Script integrity

Any scene that could potentially be voiced needs to have a final version, with no further edits made. Editing the script will, obviously, require the voice actor to record it again, so make sure what they're handed isn't something that's liable to change later.

Step 2: Determine what and how much gets voiced

Please refer to the Voice Acting article for the differences between Full and Partial Voice acting. If doing Full Voice acting, your script is essentially complete (you're voicing all of it) and just needs to be formatted (Skip to Step 5). For Partial Voice Acting, there's more work to be done:

(Partial VA) Step 3: Determine which scenes and characters are being voiced

It's good to focus on climactic moments, such as a love interest confessing to the main character, or a hammy villain monologue. You can also voice certain individual lines if the scene would be time-intensive but a voiced instance of "I love you" or "I'll kill you!" or "It's simple, right?" would add significant punch to a scene.

Additionally, it may not be necessary to voice side characters at all, either giving them barks or keeping them silent entirely.

(Partial VA) Step 4: Writing Bark Lines

For any scene not fully voiced, you may wish to employ bark lines. Please refer to the Voice Acting article for an explanation of barks.

Step 5: Formatting the Script

How will the voice actors view the script? You can use a free template such as https://forsythiaproductions.itch.io/of-sense-and-soul/devlog/524259/ingthings-remote-va-script-template which was designed from the ground-up for visual novels (and also works in other contexts). You can also make several versions of the script if, for example, you want actors to only have access to scenes in which their character is present. In that case, you'd make a version of the script for each actor containing only their scenes.

Step 6: Determine final word/line count

Knowing the expected workload helps you plan your voiceover project, and helps attract talent (both acting and editing) because they have an idea of what they're signing up for.

With all of that in place, you're finally ready to get the voice actors involved. And that means you get to start casting them!

https://vndev.wiki/Guide:Choosing_a_voice_actor_casting_platform