Audio editing -- making human voice sound alien

[Cracker Funk]

Help me, Indietalk, you're my only hope.

My team drew sci-fi as our genre for the 48 Hour Film Project. Our story involves alien invasion, in the style of Coneheads.

In addition to my actors speaking a gibberish alien language, I also want to do something in post to make their voices sound alien, even when they're speaking English.

But the audience still needs to understand what they're saying, so the effect needs to be subtle. The effects I'll be working with are the basic effects available in Premiere Pro:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/545/img3376y.jpg/

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/268/img3375yx.jpg/

I have no idea what "phaser" is, but that sounds alien! Maybe I should try fooling around with that?

Anyway, I won't be messing with this until late-night Saturday, or even Sunday morning. Of course I'm still in pre-production at the moment.

Any ideas?

Oh, and a hint of things to come.

[JoshL]

phaser, pitch shifter and flanger of that lot can warp the voice in subtle to extreme ways. I'd run it through a vocoder too, but that's because I'm a sucker for vocoder. But that you might not have that handy. Oh, a chorus on spoken voice can make for weird effects too!

[Alcove Audio]

Idea A) If you can pitch shift up or down that will help; in fact, have your "aliens" speak in as high a pitch/tone as they can and then pitch it way down in audio post. Or the reverse, they speak as low a pitch/tone as they can and then pitch it way up in audio post.)

Idea B) Dub in animal sounds, and pitch and/or phase/flange them for the alien dialog a lá Chewbacca.

Idea C) I know that editing time is precious, but just reverse the dialog word by word.

Idea D) Combine all three previous ideas.

[Cracker Funk]

Excellent! I'm glad I asked this question in pre-production, because I believe I do have pitch-shift, so I'm going to do some test dialog and see what it sounds like, and then I'll play with the effects you guys mentioned.

Thanks a bunch!

[MetalRenard]

Use a ring modulator to sound like the Daleks!

[JoshL]

EXTERMINATE!!!

[Cracker Funk]

Well, I feel bad for asking this question because...






...I couldn't follow through on it. I did some test-audio on Friday night. I really liked the sound created by tweaking pitch. Alas, with the nature of the 48 Hour Film Fest, when production began, this idea fell by the wayside (as did a number of other good ideas).

Anyway, just wanted to say thanks. And I'm keeping this idea in my arsenal for any future projects.

[Scoopicman]

Also, if you have any programs (Sonar) or gear (Roland V-Synths, VS recorders) with Variphrase technology, you can play with voice Formant and Pitch settings to come up with interesting sounds.

Editing "Clicks" and other percussive noises are kind of cool, too. (As heard in SIGNS.)

[LasVegasIRA]

Subtitles?

[Cracker Funk]

Originally Posted by LasVegasIRA

Subtitles?

Yeah, that was the plan all along. I just thought that it'd be cool to also make their voices sound non-human. Ah, well. As a whole I'm rather happy with what we put together. It is the 48, after all.

It was fun to see the differences in the way that each actor improvised their fake language, taking influences from different places. The actor in this clip is a bit of a Star Wars nerd.

https://vimeo.com/45942823

[Mannie Bothans]

Oh, that would have been CRAZY with a (1980's) V-miniseries style pitch-shift!