What we learnt from the Pilot

The Pilot Episode of AELAS took a long time to come out, through a combination of my own procrastination, work and issues in my personal life the creation process was a lot longer than I would have liked. But that was Episode 1. Now that is episode is out, I wanted to just do a post about what I learnt from making the first episode and how I can take that to make sure that the second improves on the first.

One of the most time consuming parts, which takes up nearly all of the production time is making the scripted lines I've written to the actual scene in the anime on which they are based. Namely; lip syncing. Before I began this abridging project I spoke with one of the people who inspired me to give it a go, xthedarkone (co-creator of Yugioh GX the Abridged Series) and he warned me that 90% of time would be spent lip-syncing lines to the anime. And he wasn't wrong. I didn't bare this in mind when scripting the first episode, rather writing the episode with approximations of what character speaks and when. It was almost as though the scripting and actual creation of the episode were two totally separate projects, which could be in part due to the fact that there was such a large time between when the script was written, when it was voice acted and then when it was all edited together. I have a rough script for the second episode, however this will undergo a heavy editing process to have more fluidity when putting voice acting to clips from the anime.

I've also learnt that voice acting when you have a cold is not the best idea in the world! I was very self-critical of my own voice acting, however Mina assured me it was fine. Her voice acting on the other hand was fantastic. I couldn't have asked for better. When I approached Mina to voice act in this project, I was very open about what the voices should sound like. The voices she came up with were all on her own, and I couldn't be happier with them. The only issue I had with her voice acting was not anything to do with her, but the dynamic between when one of her characters spoke and when one of mine did. This was due to the differences in our microphones. This is something I should be able to fix in the editing process for the next episode, just to make the scenes feel a little more natural.

Other than those things my own issue is a personal one. I am a huge procrastinator. Like. George R.R. Martin zorbing instead of writing the next book in his series procrastinating. But this is a project that is very close to my heart, Elfen Lied being one of the first animes I watched and the one that made me feel the most. As an update on the progress of episode 2, I have drafted a script and am In the process of going back, re-writing parts, cutting and adding, and making sure the lines sync well with the anime.

Thank you as always for your support and patience in this project, and I hope you enjoy the episodes we put out!

P.s

I also have a few fun little side projects to do with AELAS planned, but watch this space!