User:Highwind888/Making of Love Hina script

Below is the script for Making of Love Hina from DVD release volume 4 of Love Hina (Madman/Australian version). This bonus feature details the process of dubbing the series, and in between several of these lines are short snippets of the recording process. May the bit of my soul that died compiling this rest in peace...

• Wendee Lee (Director/Writer/Actor):

I am Wendee Lee, and I'm playing about four or five different voice characters.

My feature character is Kaolla Su, and I also play Tama the turtle

• Ron Myrick (Producer):

I'm an animation producer. I try to stay in the shadows just to make sure everything is running properly.

My job is to bring the right principle talent to the table. The first person I was in touch with was Wendee. I contracted her as the director.

• Wendee Lee:

In addition to my voice roles, I do directing and writing on the show.

We record three episodes at a time, so I prep three scripts and get them ready to go, and then we hit the studio.

• Del Casher (Coordinating Producer):

We capture the picture onto computers, so now we're actually doing the diologue to a picture that moves very quickly; we can move to any frame we want to, and we're recording on a digital format.

• John Brady (Sound Recorder/Mixer):

We use the Yamaha O2R, which is a programmable digital console.

Hi, I'm John Brady; I'm the recordist and mixer on the Love Hina series.

When we want to record a particular line of dialogue, or as they call it, a loop, I ask the director to give me the time code location of the beginning of the line.

• Wendee Lee:

We have some time code here on the screen, you can see this window up here, and that's how the equipment speaks to the image, and it locks the image to the audio.

I take a look at the loop of dialogue, read it, and determine in my mind if it's something that we can go ahead and record right away without the actor seeing it, or if it looks complicated enough that the actor should preview it, take a look at it first, hear the Japanese.

We honour the Japanese in every way possible, it's, you know, we're very clear about what our step in the process is, and that is to honour the work that we are translating into English.

• Ron Myrick:

There is room for creativity in the process, but being faithful to the translation is also very important.

• Maki Terashima (Operations Manager):

My name is Maki Terashima, I am an international operations manager at Production IG.

My role there is just to make sure that the translated lines are similar or the same as the original Japanese line.

• Wendee Lee:

The very first frame that the mouth opens is the beginning code or the "In" code, and that's the address track that you send to the computer, and then that's how you set up the shot. Then we set up the beeps.

• John Brady:

I programmed the unit to put the tail of the beeps at the beginning of the line.

• Wendee Lee:

You're going to hear a succession of three beeps.

• John Brady:

And on the imaginary fourth beep, that is when the actor begins to speak.

• Wendee Lee:

We'll shoot it, and if we hit it, then we do a playback.

I want that sync as tight as possible, I want it to be married to the image.

• John Brady:

Recording sound in this matter is much like writing a document. You can cut and paste and move sound much like you do sentences in a letter on a word processor.

• Wendee Lee:

I can shift it back or forward, left or right so to speak, in the system and then play it back again until we have the sync absolutely matching.

And then once we've got one nailed, we move onto the next.

Between the director and the actors, you come up with the voices. I always start with just visual reference, as much as I can get from the visuals.

With most characters, you find them in the first few episodes.

Su is a foreign exchange student. When we started out, the request from the producers was to give Su a southern accent.

They came back and said, "well you know, if she's a foreign exchange student, she wouldn't have a southern accent."

But she's a darker-skinned, exotic character, so I suggested something that kind of Indian, Middle-Eastern sounding.

Having a completed script recorded is a really beautiful thing.

• Ron Myrick:

We have the machine running pretty smoothly, everything's going well.

• Del Casher:

[? Can't hear it properly...] ...has become a very tight-knit family.

• Wendee Lee:

I really like it. I like the environment of the studio.

• John Brady:

Sometimes a job comes along, where you know why you got into the business. This is one of those jobs.

• Maki Terashima:

It's almost like a dream come true.

• Wendee Lee:

It's such an honour to be a part of this.

• Ron Myrick:

And this series has been fun, and I think it will be enjoyable for the audience to watch as well.