Breaking Stereotypes: Women's Voice of World of Tanks

    Good day.

    I work for a company that voices computer games. I want to continue my story about creating author's voice acting for the game World of Tanks. To make it clearer what it is about, and where it comes from, I first recommend that you familiarize yourself with my previous post on this topic.

    world_of_tanks_1

    Overcoming the wax rollers , that is, having recorded an alternative scoring for World of Tanks, which began to quickly gain popularity among players, I began to think to do something else like that.

    By the way.

    The official reaction

    I am constantly asked about the same question.

    question

    Indeed, a lot of work has been done, and for many people it seems somewhat unusual that developers, say, are depriving them of such a popular mod. In addition, another question arises - why do all of us, the creators of voice acting, need all this?

    I reason like that. I really love war games and I'm sure I know how to create a cool sound for them. I like working with actors, I like to write text for them. At the same time, despite the fact that our studio does not suffer from a lack of orders, interesting projects come across not as often as we would like. Interesting projects that give you carte blanche when working on are less common.

    World of Tanks, of course, is a super-interesting project, at least for me. But based on my practice, I can say that working with large companies (such as Wargaming.net) often has its own specifics, associated, say, with excessive formalization of processes and a large number of all kinds of approvals at different levels. Often, employees of large companies tend to share responsibility with colleagues, instead of deciding for themselves.

    The notorious collective mind. A familiar situation, huh?
    opinions2
    Thus, I am aware that if we entered into an agreement with Wargaming.net and began to work officially, then most likely, my ideas would have left horns and legs, well, or at least wings would have broken them and feathers pulled out of them. Even to publish this post, it would be necessary to coordinate it ten times, to reconcile that I hate to endure.

    And now, judge for yourself what the situation is: you are working on an interesting project, gaining experience, doing everything you want, shooting cool videos that gain more than one and a half million views on youtube, and you get a huge amount of positive feedback. I think it's great.

    So ...

    That's even better.

    medvedev

    Now back to the topic of the post.

    In general, since the World of Tanks device allows anyone to create their own modifications, then it's time to realize the most secret desires of yourself and the players, namely to put a woman in a tank, well, that is, a beautiful girl, of course.

    Instead of the sounds that brutal men make, we will listen to the sonorous command girlish voice.

    We study the issue.

    When I start working on the next project, I try to find out as much information as possible, how to study the issue. Firstly, personally this gives me additional inspiration, secondly, it makes the product itself more interesting and multifaceted, and thirdly, it’s just good for the brain. As one Russian writer said: "There is no superfluous knowledge."

    Have women fought in tanks in reality?

    Женщина на войне — явление не особо редкое. Регулировщицы, санитары, связистки, расчеты ПВО, снайперы, даже летчицы — о них написано много интересной литературы и снято фильмов.

    А вот историй про девушек танкистов — единицы. Я думаю, потому что быть танкистом — это очень и очень тяжелый физический труд, чего только стоит только постоянное рытье капониров, или окопов для танка.

    boiko

    Вот тут можно прочитать про экипаж тяжелого танка ИС-2, которым командовала Александра Бойко, а механиком-водителем служил ее муж. А здесь еще несколько рассказов про девушек-танкистов, среди которых Александра Рощупкина — механик-водитель среднего танка Т-34. История примечательна тем, что ей почти до самого конца войны удавалось выдавать себя за парня.

    In a word, everything is okay with historical certainty. Move on.

    Perception of the female voice

    We are going to listen to the female voice in battle, that is, in an extreme situation. So you need to work through this issue before you start work. To do this, for a second we get out of the tank and climb into the plane.

    On military and civilian aircraft there is a device that generates and issues voice instructions for pilots or reports the necessary information about flight parameters. This device is called a voice informant and often it speaks in a female voice.

    rita

    Why female?

    Because, the female voice is more discriminating than the male one against the background of various interferences or noise in the cabin (engine noise, in particular) due to its higher tone frequency. In addition, it is believed that the female voice is subjectively better perceived by the pilots simply because pilots are usually men.

    By the way, our pilots call the aunt-informant Rita (from Speech Informant), and the western - Betty , or rather Bitching Betty , something like Bitch Betty , apparently for her constant annoying messages.

    This is how these two girls sound - our Rita and their Betty.



    I would say - they sound, to put it mildly, so-so. Acting is lame on both sides of the ocean, but Betty still wins a few points from Rita due to a more collected voice.

    In fairness, it is worth noting that over time, more female dispatchers began to work in aviation, female pilots began to appear, and the uniqueness of the female voice was somewhat blurred. Therefore, there are opinions that a male voice may be more authoritative for pilots.

    Therefore, uncle informants "work" on parts of the aircraft.



    In a word, we did a good preparatory work - it's time to get into the tank again and finally take up the voice acting.

    Katyusha

    In the game, you do not need to dig trenches for a tank, you do not need to carry heavy canisters with fuel, all you need to do is have fun and have fun. Therefore, we will have fun to the fullest.

    I decided that the commander of our tank would be a girl, senior lieutenant Ekaterina Tamantseva. There we will immediately kill four birds with one stone - and unusual, and nice, and aesthetically pleasing, and fun.

    But first you need to choose this very voice.

    There is no doubt, of course, Ekaterina Monastyrskaya is a clever, beautiful woman with a wonderful rich velvety timbre.



    Now choose a name. It is quite possible that the mod will become popular and then a well-chosen name will come in handy.

    I didn’t have to think here either, the name appeared almost immediately. Firstly, my wife’s name is Katya, secondly, the actress’s name is Katya, and thirdly, Katyusha is perhaps the most feminine name associated with the war.

    Unlike the previous voice acting, where all crew members speak, in this one only Katyusha communicates with the player, she also addresses the crew. For example: “It seems that the radio operator was hurt by a fragment!”, Or “He put the Charger on the armor!”.

    Therefore, to make it a little more atmospheric, I came up with the names of the other crew members. Rather, I borrowed them from the wonderful front-line story "In War as in War" written by Viktor Kurochkin.

    n_v_k_n_v

    The driver became Grishka Shcherbak, the gunner - Mikhail Domeshek, the loader - Osip Byankin, only the radio operator remained the radio operator. Maybe then we will also call him somehow.

    Now Katya could address them by name, and not just by position, for example: "Scherbak, unhook the levers and heal the tank while it's safe!".

    Next, it was necessary to adapt the text for Katyusha, because it was originally written for the male crew. It took a day or two, because the table with the phrases is gigantic, and it takes time to complete it all.

    spread_sheet

    It is clear that the main changes in the text concerned endings, because our language is strongly tied to childbirth. The gender of the object changes - the whole sentence changes. If there was English, I wouldn’t have to change anything at all - this language is completely unisex.

    spread_sheet_for_kate

    When everything was ready, it's time to get into the studio and record it all.

    Nothing could be more interesting than working with an actor on a text that he himself invented. Your verbal finds, jokes become real right before your eyes. It’s much more boring to write down the text already created by someone.

    DSC06692

    Our chief senior sound designer Andrey Burmistrov with a steadic was noted in the photo. Sometimes you have to combine several specialties.

    I always try to shoot interesting recordings on several cameras. With a certain approach, the seemingly ordinary process of recording voice on a microphone can look quite interesting, the main thing is not to delay the timing of the video.

    Katyusha

    Now it's time to see how all this was in motion.

    This video instantly became very popular and quickly spread throughout most of themed sites and groups on social networks. The image of the girl commander of the tank that we created turned out to be in demand among the players.



    Returning from the studio, we processed the recorded material with the previously selected radio effect, selected successful doubles and posted a new dubbing at the official World of Tanks forum. To date, there have already accumulated more than forty pages, mostly positive comments from fans of tank battles.

    Thank you for your attention, to the new posts!

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