NAMCO BANDAI Games America approached Bang Zoom!
Entertainment to work on game series after hearing of the studio's work on
hundreds of well-known anime titles. The publisher asked that Bang Zoom!
develop, record and mix a new English soundtrack for the .hack//G.U. series, which contain more than 6,500 lines of
dialogue. Further adding to the challenge was the timeframe for completion -
just six weeks.
The .hack//G.U.
series of games are based on the premise of the animated series and are set
amidst a fictional online role playing game. The series' protagonist, Haseo,
and his friends look to escape from what has become a digital trap filled with
dungeons and monsters.
NAMCO BANDAI Games America producer Masahiro Knittel flew to
Los Angeles from Northern California to advise the Bang Zoom! team throughout
the recording and mixing process, working closely with ADR director, Tony
Oliver. To start, Japanese dialogue was delivered, checked for quality and
organized into a cohesive format.
"A huge part included putting all the Japanese files into
Pro Tools for easy reference," explains sound engineer Jeff Prosser. "We would
refer to these files regularly for comparison in order to get the correct
emotions or intensity from the English voice actors. It became a roadmap for
the entire project."
Corresponding video elements were delivered as QuickTime and
Matroska (Kodak) files, which were then transferred into a Final Cut Pro
editing suite as a single continuous video file with streaming timecode for use
with script timing.
The new English dialogue had to sync with each character's
mouth without changing the meaning or context of the original Japanese. Voice
actor Yuri Lowenthal was brought in to voice the role of Haseo. All of the
recording was done sequentially, according to how the actual game unfolds.
Avalon 737SP pre-mics and Neumann U87 microphones were used for dialogue
recording.
Bang Zoom! chief engineer Patrick Rodman began mixing
completed tracks as ADR sessions continued. All three of the studio's mix/ADR
rooms were used simultaneously for the project. Rodman level matched each of
the newly-recorded files by ear and then began processing the dialogue, which
included matching the new dub with the same effects and vocal treatments
present in the original.
Mixing was done entirely in Pro Tools using a Digidesign
Control|24 console. Rodman also balanced and matched EQ, reverbs and pitching
using various Pro Tools and Wave plug-ins.