Chapter 166: Voice Acting
Translator: Dragon Boat Translation Editor: Dragon Boat Translation
“Is that okay? Give me a minute.”
Su Qing Cen hung up and sent Meng Fan a video call request.
After accepting, Meng Fan could tell she was in her hotel and had just finished her work. She was dressed very professionally, and her make-up was elaborate as well.
Su Qing Cen saw the blacked-out sky and speckles of light in Meng Fan’s background and asked curiously, “Huh? You’re outside?”
“Mhmm, I was about to go home.” Meng Fan smiled. “Then should I follow procedure and chat for a bit or start laughing now?”
Su Qing Cen heard this and smiled. “No no no, don’t. You don’t have to be so literal. I already feel a bit happier just talking to you. Or are you trying to be toxic right now?”
“You saying that is making me nervous. Why don’t I just start laughing now?”
Meng Fan hailed a cab. At first, he was a bit nervous, but he managed to calm down quickly. Probably because he had a famous sister at home, so he did not place the celebrities he idolized on a pedestal. He couldn’t reach them if they were too far away, but when they were close, he could calm his emotions.
“Oh right, you said you’re working? Is it a concert? Isn’t the second round of your tour in Hangzhou? You should be rehearsing now, right?”
“We already began rehearsing. I was at a publicity job for a variety show today.”
“What show? And when will it air?”
Meng Fan talked with Su Qing Cen naturally. She did not speak of what had put her in a bad mood, so Meng Fan did not ask. It was like a fan casually interviewing their idol.
After talking for a while, Su Qing Cen deflected the topic and asked Meng Fan about himself. She was very curious about what happened with the world record.
The two left the video chat on, talking about the concert, reality shows, breaking the world record, or Meng Fan’s manga. The taxi driver heard and had his jaw dropped several times and was on the brink of turning around. ‘Can you guys stop bullsh*tting. I’m feeling awkward for you two!’
After driving for less than ten minutes, Meng Fan departed the car and entered the community.
Su Qing Cen was not surprised at Meng Fan’s home outside of school, and seeing that he was almost home, she thought about it and said, “Thanks, I feel a lot better now. You should rest soon.”
“Okay, good night.”
“Night.”
After hanging up the receiver, he returned home. Of course he wasn’t going to bed early. He was not sleepy at all; he was feeling excited instead. It wasn’t because he just video called his idol; it was because of his vocal appeal!
He hurriedly took a shower. He put on his pajamas and burrowed in the study, opening his laptop.
When he was studying how to become a voice actor before, he had downloaded several related software. The programs contained some clips that he enjoyed and wanted to test out.
He found an original soundtrack and familiarize himself with it before beginning to practice.
It couldn’t really be called practicing since he was just familiarizing himself with the changes brought about by the attributes to his voice.
With this test, he also discovered that his vocal range, tone, and sound quality had undergone great changes.
These changes would allow him to adapt to different kinds of roles.
Slowly, he found he was able to control his voice better, at least four or five times better than before!
Meng Fan was not impervious to these changes and knew that they were better because of his increased singing skills. After all, vocal range, sound quality, tone, volume, pitch, biting, resonance, breath, vocalization, etc were the basic skills required to be a singer. If his singing skills were enhanced, these base skills were naturally enhanced. This came as an unexpected surprise for Meng Fan.
“So the singing task still needs to be completed and could be finished with a more advanced procedure.”
After he gained better control of his voice, his sound mimicry abilities also improved.
Meng Fan’s original tone was on the lower end, and after training hard, the specialty he managed to grasp was maintaining a deep and solid sound. Now he tried again with a medium tone. It had to be thick, full, vigorous, and consists of the characteristics of a low tone, like dullness, heaviness, sadness, softness, hoa.r.s.eness, darkness, dryness, integrated level, and emptiness. He could perform all of these traits to a certain standard, but he had to practice to grasp them accurately.
As for the bright, crisp, and sharp features of an alto voice, they were much harder to grasp. After all, his current vocal range was not universal even after the enhancement.
But overall, Meng Fan’s tone changes were much stronger than before, which made his ability to interpret characters better.
Zoro from One piece had always been Meng Fan’s favorite role to voice. Of course, he had only done it for fun and posted some videos on 8station at most. Well, he was the only one who thought it was interesting. His videos didn’t have much views.
Meng Fan found a fragment from the “Terrorist Sangui Sailing” chapter, where he used a meatball to pop off all of Luffy’s injuries from battling k.u.ma.
The clip wasn’t long and began when k.u.ma injured Zoro at the beginning and ended with “nothing happened.” It was actually just this sentence and a few screams of respite.
Meng Fan particularly liked this paragraph, but if he wanted to depict the tragic and stubborn will power from this single line within a scream or a gasp several times, it would be very difficult. He attempted it several times and was nowhere near the quality of the original soundtrack.
After carefully thinking about the characters, he decided to do it again.
Then, Meng Fan excitedly tested other roles.
These were all roles Meng Fan liked and was suitable to his tenor. Doing these roles was naturally much easier, and if Meng Fan wanted to imitate the original CV, he could at least get 70% of it right. Sometimes he could even reach 90% similarity, almost indifferent from the original.
Meng Fan could say the lines in j.a.panese for most of these anime clips.
Voice dubbing was Meng Fan’s dream, and now that he suddenly had the ability to realize his dreams, he was happier than a two hundred pound child. He couldn’t even calm down until 4:00 am and only slept after trying all kinds of characters. When he was about to sleep, he would laugh from time to time; he was unable to conceal his happiness.
After sleeping for about two hours, he dragged himself out of bed and went downstairs. As he walked, he sent Wu Tong a Wechat message. “It’s a bit cold this morning. You shouldn’t come today.”
“Okay.” Wu Tong responded quickly.
“Then… Should I bring you breakfast after my run?”
“Okay.”
Meng Fan went to grab breakfast after his run and happened to run into a girl from his cla.s.s, so he asked her to bring it to Wu Tong, so she didn’t have to come down.
His cla.s.smate heard it was for Wu Tong and gave him a big thumbs up. “b.a.l.l.sy, you’re at this stage already! Add oil!”
When everyone first found out Meng Fan liked Wu Tong, everyone thought he was a toad trying to eat a swan’s meat. Slowly though, people began to forget about this “metaphor” and no longer a.s.sumed Meng Fan was being too aspirational. To be fair, there was nothing wrong with him pursuing Wu Tong, and some people even felt they were quite compatible.
Part of his physical appeal was from slimming down, but his internal appeal had began to surround him in a glowing aura as well.
After grabbing breakfast for himself, Meng Fan showered. He ate and then tirelessly began playing around with dubbing again.