The Rise of Skywalker: Ascendant (Released) — Page 656

Jar Jar Bricks said:

For Leia’s saber line, my thinking was that “Rey, never be afraid of who you are” speaks only to the idea that there is an inner darkness in her that she should have the courage to face. Whereas with the added line, it gains a second meaning in that Leia is telling her that she’s a Jedi and she should never doubt that about herself. Which ties in with her modified one-liner to Palpatine: “I am a Jedi”. She’s repeating what Leia directly told her.

That does make sense. I always felt it would’ve been nice to have had Rey say earlier, “I will earn your family’s saber. One day.” And then, at this point, Leia could say, “You are family.” It’d be a sweet way to set up Rey taking the Skywalker name at the end of the film.

Are you still using Carrie’s audiobooks as a source for the AI clone?

Is it just the voice that is bothering people, or is it the way the voices are mixed in?

Yes that is my source audio.

It’s worth noting that 11 labs released professional voice cloning like 4 weeks ago at an increased cost but they claim its suitable for voiceover work.

Then again, it’s a little late now.

Which one is that? The $22/mo subscription? Or one of the pricier subscriptions?

Yes its 22 a month. But I’ve yet to hear how much it has been improved beyond being able to speak in multiple languages.

Jar Jar Bricks said:

For Kylo’s AI line, I reduced its pitch by a decent amount before giving it to Hal. I wonder if it might have helped to pitch up the line present in the original film to help bring them in line with each other?

For Leia’s saber line, my thinking was that “Rey, never be afraid of who you are” speaks only to the idea that there is an inner darkness in her that she should have the courage to face. Whereas with the added line, it gains a second meaning in that Leia is telling her that she’s a Jedi and she should never doubt that about herself. Which ties in with her modified one-liner to Palpatine: “I am a Jedi”. She’s repeating what Leia directly told her.

That could’ve worked. The problem is primarily that the AI line sounds right as in it sounds like Adam Driver as Kylo and matches his speaking style but it doesn’t sound like it came from the movie and thus my attention is turned to how the line is clearly added. I think if the audio clip was edited to maybe match how Kylo’s voice sounds in this scene? It would’ve turned out better.

As for the Leia line? That’s a real good explanation and I definitely get where it’s coming from. It also in a way turns Luke’s line later on when he catches the saber into a nice little callback. It’s just in execution, it feels tacked on. As in I don’t think the movie gives enough to make the exchange work and instead I feel it takes more away than when it’s silent. Maybe if the line “Never be afraid of who you are.” was altered it’d be better but as it is? You kind of have an instance where it feels the scene’s being undercut a tad.

RogueLeader said:

Is it just the voice that is bothering people, or is it the way the voices are mixed in?

Speaking for myself? It varies. In the case of Poe’s briefing, it’s the voice itself since it sounds distractingly monotone and robotic for a briefing that’s informing everyone about the fact that the galaxy’s greatest threat has returned with a plan to go full scorched galaxy but for the others? It’s mainly the mixing. For instance, it’s hard to explain but Kylo’s voice has almost a bassy, booming quality to it in the film. The AI voice clip on the other hand doesn’t have that and as a result, it gives off this “Dude forgot to apply the vocal effect.” quality.

I’ve been wanting to experiment with some techniques for voice cloning, so I played around with some new versions of the lines under discussion. I haven’t watched V3 so I can’t recall how they compare to the current ones, but I tried to get it to match as close as possible to the surrounding dialogue.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/15GjpiX28aV-o9IX9cEWnyjWi008w7dFQ

This link includes Leia’s lines and some alternatives, Poe’s monologue, and some experimenting with alternatives for light speed ramming. Since “ramming” doesn’t totally line up with Rey’s mouth movements, I played around with words that rhymed more with slipped. I tried out clipped and slipped. I was thinking, instead of describing what Poe did as just smashing into the ice wall, maybe he clipped through the wall, sort of like how you can clip through video game walls with glitches. So basically, a ship can use hyperspace to clip through objects in real space. I think slipping gives off a similar idea, like slipping through objects in real space. But if your timing isn’t perfect it can damage both your ship and whatever object your passing through. I didn’t replace the full “You can’t light speed skip the Falcon”, just the word, so that is why I have a few different versions. So my tests of that line definitely are not final.

Also, I don’t know if Poe says, “He’s been hiding something for years” in this version, but I honestly think it would be fine to stay as “building something”. The stockpile line makes it clear these are old ships, but his followers are still “building” onto them with the new cannons.

“Lightspeed clipped” sounds pretty good actually. Imagine a galaxy where people are entering and exiting lightspeed all the time and there’s always a chance of some little thing showing up in front of them to cause massive damage. It’s definitely a costly error.

I’m not sure what method you are using for the Poe lines but they sound pretty incredible.

Also, where would Leia’s “you are family” go exactly? It’s clever to replace “brother’s saber” with “family’s saber” but as I recall there isn’t a place to put Leia’s response to that in the scene. I think it would be best to place it where “A Jedi needs her weapon” currently sits.

Yeah but it’s also got 2 syllables as “blasted” compared to to the single syllable in “clipped” or “skipped”.

Jar Jar Bricks said:

I’m not sure what method you are using for the Poe lines but they sound pretty incredible.

Here is my method for anyone else who is cranking these out:

1. I go straight to the movies for actor lines. I pull dialogue from the center channel.
2. I specifically pull dialogue that matches the tone I want for the new dialogue. For the Poe line, for example, I used his dialogue from that scene, plus later on in the film when he gives his speech to the Resistance.
3. I try to get at least 30 seconds of sample dialogue. It might not seem like a lot, but I think quality or tone of the sample is more important than the quantity. In the case of Rey, I actually made two different clones for two different types of line delivery.
4. I run the sample through a vocal isolation software to get it as clean as possible for Eleven Labs.
5. I don’t really have sweet spot for Eleven’s settings. Just play with it until you get something that sounds right.

Also, where would Leia’s “you are family” go exactly? It’s clever to replace “brother’s saber” with “family’s saber” but as I recall there isn’t a place to put Leia’s response to that in the scene. I think it would be best to place it where “A Jedi needs her weapon” currently sits.

Yes, that is where I was thinking as well.

EddieDean said:

‘Blast’ has a similar mouth shape to ‘slipped’.

Whipped and ripped were two other options I considered, but didn’t test.

What vocal isolation software do you use? I can get to work on a Kylo Ren mask-less only using his lines from the movies.

I use moises.ai
It is subscription based but there are a lot of similar programs out there.

Speaking of which, I actually had a go at the Kylo lines and added them to that same google drive link (as well as a video clip for the light speed clip test).

The Kylo lines are a good example of what I was talking about regarding the tone. The way Kylo’s lines are delivered on Exegol are different than the rest of the film, so I ended up using some of his lines from the Force bonds in TLJ rather than sourcing anything else from TROS. I felt it sounded closer to what we were looking for.

But give the Kylo lines a go because you might could get it to sound better than my samples. I also think some more effects could be added to them to give it that little extra deepness and punch the original lines have.

I’ll see what I can do tonight. But all of this has helped me realize that we could try to replicate Luke again using his lines from just TROS. One thing one of my audience members immediately pointed out was that it was kinda dumb that Leia just stopped being a Jedi because of a feeling.

Also, we could reintegrate Leia having known about the dark side calling out to Rey (not necessarily that she was a Palpatine) but still chose to train her regardless.

Nah, it’s more like a v3.1 because I was too stubborn and lazy to actually use lines from the movies as source audio files for the voice clones.

Granted, I don’t have access to voice isolation except through audacity so it wasn’t entirely unwarranted.

Honestly you still did a good job. For a concept that sparked my concern, at the very least the lines didn’t have that AI jank they normally have (Tinny audio for certain words, pronunciations on the level of text-to-speech for certain words etc.). It’s a good basis for what could be done later.

RogueLeader said:

I’ve been wanting to experiment with some techniques for voice cloning, so I played around with some new versions of the lines under discussion. I haven’t watched V3 so I can’t recall how they compare to the current ones, but I tried to get it to match as close as possible to the surrounding dialogue.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/15GjpiX28aV-o9IX9cEWnyjWi008w7dFQ

This link includes Leia’s lines and some alternatives, Poe’s monologue, and some experimenting with alternatives for light speed ramming. Since “ramming” doesn’t totally line up with Rey’s mouth movements, I played around with words that rhymed more with slipped. I tried out clipped and slipped. I was thinking, instead of describing what Poe did as just smashing into the ice wall, maybe he clipped through the wall, sort of like how you can clip through video game walls with glitches. So basically, a ship can use hyperspace to clip through objects in real space. I think slipping gives off a similar idea, like slipping through objects in real space. But if your timing isn’t perfect it can damage both your ship and whatever object your passing through. I didn’t replace the full “You can’t light speed skip the Falcon”, just the word, so that is why I have a few different versions. So my tests of that line definitely are not final.

Also, I don’t know if Poe says, “He’s been hiding something for years” in this version, but I honestly think it would be fine to stay as “building something”. The stockpile line makes it clear these are old ships, but his followers are still “building” onto them with the new cannons.

The Kylo line here is definitely far more in line with his tone and audio from the movie. That final delivery in fact almost sounds like it was directly pulled from one of the movies.

The two lines about family are beautiful and also very well done, especially Rey’s where I legit can’t tell it’s an AI. Also the “You are family.” line and the idea of it going where the “A Jedi needs her weapon.” line sits is perfect. I liked what the original was trying to go for but I love how this plays with the elements of the scene and movie more. It’s a perfect response to Rey treating herself as an outsider, it makes Leia’s later line of not being afraid of who she is feel just the slightest bit more impactful and in a way, it adds a new layer to her declaring she’s a Skywalker.

Lightspeed clipping is an interesting bit of phrasing and I like the idea of it being like clipping in a video game. That being said, I do think the ramming line also worked with the lip=sync issues being fairly minor and plus, I kind of like that it in some way highlights that there’s a reason why you can’t do this stuff all the time without just dumping on TLJ’s Holdo maneuver. However honestly both lines still work well.

AspiringCreator said:

The Kylo line here is definitely far more in line with his tone and audio from the movie. That final delivery in fact almost sounds like it was directly pulled from one of the movies.

Wish I could take credit for it but the last delivery is from the movie! I just isolated the audio and threw it in at the end for comparison.

The two lines about family are beautiful and also very well done, especially Rey’s where I legit can’t tell it’s an AI. Also the “You are family.” line and the idea of it going where the “A Jedi needs her weapon.” line sits is perfect. I liked what the original was trying to go for but I love how this plays with the elements of the scene and movie more. It’s a perfect response to Rey treating herself as an outsider, it makes Leia’s later line of not being afraid of who she is feel just the slightest bit more impactful and in a way, it adds a new layer to her declaring she’s a Skywalker.

You said my exact feelings! I also was surprised by how good the Rey line sounds.

Lightspeed clipping is an interesting bit of phrasing and I like the idea of it being like clipping in a video game. That being said, I do think the ramming line also worked with the lip=sync issues being fairly minor and plus, I kind of like that it in some way highlights that there’s a reason why you can’t do this stuff all the time without just dumping on TLJ’s Holdo maneuver. However honestly both lines still work well.

I added two more versions to the link. The first is “light speed slipped”. I think this one sounds ambiguous enough that it could refer to the same thing the Holdo maneuver is, or it could be some different technique. It is the most seamless change from “skipped”, plus, light speed slipping sounds like an actual term that would have its own Wookiepedia article and everything.

The second one is “light speed whipped”. Kind of conjures that hot rod vibe that could imply using hyperspace to pull crazy maneuvers. The mouth synch isn’t 100%, but personally I think it is funny to hear Rey yell, “You can’t lightspeed whip the Falcon!” I feel like it fits the humor of the entire scene the best, but “slip” might for totally unnoticed to most people, which I think is the goal.