Zitat
I've got our Celceta voice script open right now, actually, so I'll answer in some detail. It's an Excel spreadsheet, and here's the basic rundown of what's in each column:
- Type (in the case of this voice script, it's either "Battle/System" or "Event/Story")
- Serial number (technical code identifying when the line is played)
- Definition (not sure what this is; I assume it's for Falcom's internal use)
- Voice file name
- Character name (Japanese)
- Character name (English)
- Japanese transcription of line
- English translation of line
- "Alternate" English translation (in case the voice actor has trouble with the first reading or it winds up being too long -- this is usually blank, but we add an alternate when we think there's a chance one might be needed)
- Situational note (Japanese) -- stage directions, basically. This is hugely important, since under normal circumstances, voice-acting is recorded separately per character, so we need to be able to "read them in" if their lines are part of a conversation, and/or play the lines leading up to and/or following the ones being recorded.
- Situational note (English)
- Cross-reference (if the line is also written on-screen during gameplay, this column identifies what file that's in and what line # so we can make sure the voiced and written lines match)
- Effect (if there's an effect used, like echo or voice distortion)
The reason we include this much information is because it allows us to sort the spreadsheet on the fly however we want, making it easy to show only the information we need at any given point in time. We don't print up books, either -- rather, the voice studio has monitors in the booth, and we show all the relevant cells from the Excel file to the actor. It's a really efficient way to handle voice-recording, and makes it extremely easy to keep track of exactly what we've done and exactly what we still need to do.
-Tom
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