In addition to doing a little writing (less than usual, I’ll admit), I thought I’d try a little experiment.
I recorded a little audio related to my Portal review while I had the room to myself this past Friday. I brought that audio into a program called Melodyne which, I understand, is the same software used by Valve for voice editing. Someone on YouTube had already played around with it to do the sort of editing required to make Ellen McLain sound like GLaDOS. Following those instructions yielded some interesting results.
Unwilling to post just another snippet of audio, and also wanting to make another attempt at doing something with AfterEffects, I started dropping in the results of Google Image searches for things like ‘Portal gun,’ ‘Chell’ and ‘Testchamber’. A few areas of text here, some interesting other images there, and suddenly I had a video presentation slightly more interesting than your typical corporate PowerPoint offering.
I added a little bit of Portal’s music as a last touch, but my hard-drive space failed me due to a bunch of old crap floating around the data section. So, while getting some Monday morning mundanity out of the way, I rendered the video from AfterEffects and then compressed it via Premiere.
Here’s the result. Let me know what you think.
As of 12:40, YouTube says it’s still rendering, so we’ll see how it looks once that process is complete.
EDIT: If it won’t play for you, click this handy dandy source link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMuIPsSw6zY
May 3, 2010 at 12:46 pm
Nice job. REcently discovered this game…beat it and am going through the challenge maps. I think you did a great job with the voice. But we need to get someone to kick you in the balls to get the pitch right. ;P
Anyhow…I find it amusing that this game, now about 3 years old, is timeless. It’s of course a great game with an original concept (for once)…but it also leads me to question why there aren’t more original games out there.
May 4, 2010 at 7:12 pm
Nice software. Though I think your video goes on much too long. Considering the minimalistic simplicity of the game’s presentation, the review should have taken not much more than a minute. Especially considering how fast Glados talks.