Creating Animal, Supernatural, and Human Audio Characters
HarperCollins taps Roberto to direct Wicked sequel by Author Gregory Maguire (above)
"My phone rang. It was Rick Harris, Executive Producer of HarperCollins Audio, calling from New York." says Producer/Director Roberto Mighty. "He wondered if I would be interested in directing (again) Gregory Maguire, the man who wrote the book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of The West, which became the Tony-Award winning Broadway musical, “Wicked”."
Roberto had directed Maguire a year earlier in Harpers’ audio version of his Leaping Beauty: And Other Animal Fairy Tales. Now, Harper had a much bigger project in mind, and wanted Roberto to helm it. "Rick Harris explained that Maguire had written a massive sequel to Wicked, called Son Of A Witch. explains Mighty. "At 765 pages, the manuscript has the heft of a telephone book. We were to do all of the recording in one week, prior to Maguire leaving on a long trip. There would probably be no time for re-recording prior to mastering.
To make it more challenging, Maguire had written over 20 distinctive and unique animal, human and supernatural characters into the book. Some characters appear in one place, and then reappear many, many pages later." Naturally I said "sure, I'll be glad to do it," laughs Mighty.
Roberto has been involved in writing, directing or vocalizing hundreds of character voices over the years--first in countless radio commercials near the beginning of his career, later in his criticallyacclaimed "Banquo's Wagon™" children's video series, and recently in various blockbuster audiobooks, such as House Of Sand and Fog, by Andre Dubus III (HarperCollins Audio, read by Andre Dubus III and Fontaine Dollas Dubus) and La Casa En Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros (Random House Audio, read in Spanish by Liliana Valenzuela; Executive Producer Jacob Bronstein).
"Based on previous experience, I knew that each of Maguire's characters would have to be established and set vocally within a few seconds, and then standardized over the length of the recording in order to hold up to the random-access capability that people have with CD-ROM and mp3 players." Recounts Roberto. "Luckily, Gregory Maguire is an experienced stage reader as well as a writer. Also, Gregory has a wild imagination, a take-no-prisoners work ethic, a wide vocal range and a playful delight in creating offbeat characters on the page and in the studio."
ROBERTO’S CHARACTER MAP
Roberto, working with SoundScape recording studio engineer Rebecca Loebe, created a 'character map'. "I asked Becca to create a list of Gregory’s character voice samples using Pro Tools software," recalls Mighty. "Every time we came to a previously established voice characterization (which might have been a day or two earlier in recording studio time), I would pause recording and play back a few seconds of that characters' voice sample for Gregory, so he could refresh his memory about what he’d created for that character. Here and there I might make a suggestion or two about a characters' tonality, timbre, intensity, dramatic interpretation, breathiness, raspiness vs. clarity, age, voice positioning, etc. But for the most part, Gregory didn't need much direction. Since he wrote the book, he'd been living with these characters for a long time. He knew what he wanted, and he had the chops to get it across in the studio."
FALL RELEASE DATE
Son Of A Witch, CD directed by Roberto Mighty, read by author Gregory Maguire,
and published by Harper Audio, is scheduled for release in September, 2005.
