FAQs
Hey there! Wanting to know more about Anime Natives that the intro page might not have told you? Then you’ve hopefully come to the right place, but of course if you still can’t find what you’re looking for then contact us personally and we might be able to help you out ^_^
1. Who are the Anime Natives?
2 .When we first start producing?
3. How we finally chose the name.
4. How do you mix?
5. How do you set stuff up?
6. What kind of productions do you do?
1. Who are the Anime Natives?
Anime Natives was a project that started out in 1998 doing AMVs under the name of Anime Creations, some of who’s work can be found here. Soon after in 2000, it began to branch out into Voice Acting with fandubbing of various anime that were popular at the time. It also tried out a few Audio Dramas based on a manga, and in 2001 it took on the name Anime Natives! Most of that happened when it’s creator was in High School.
It was all because of this group of people (the anime club) who used to sit in the hallway (which, by the way, wasn’t a very wide hall XD) on the third floor of their school building. One day the school paper did a funny story about the group, which called them the “Anime Natives”. So that name became part of their group (the original members anyway) and stuck with them since then.
2. When did we first start producing?
One day in the Cafeteria at school during our free period, out of pure boredom and because all our conversations at the time were about Anime, we had started talking about how Sailor Moon Sailor Stars was never dubbed. It was then that James (Sukisho) told us how he had the equipment so we could make the anime in English ourselves, since he had been experimenting with it already. That was pretty much how it all started.
3. How we chose “Anime Natives”.
One day the two in charge, James and Sandra, were sitting in the recording studio/room and they realized the dubbing group had no name! So when they were making the web site for the group. as a joke Sandy said “How about Anime Natives. Since that is the nickname for us.” She said with a laugh, James thought about it and liked the idea, of course Sandy had been joking but hey, things work out in funny ways. So here we are still making fun of ourselves. After that James kept it to remember the time that was spent with his friends doing something that they all once loved.
4. How do you Mix?
Many of our early projects done back in 1999-2004, were completed using a program called MPStudio 10 which came with James’ old capture device. It was a real simple program which only allowed audio 2 tracks for mixing everything. The later projects done from 2005-2007 had the power of multitrack-mixing brought to you by Adobe Premiere 6. Then in 2008 and beyond Sony Vegas took its place when Premiere experienced an error that could not seem to be fixed. The few song dubs you may see us do however are mixed using Cool Edit/Adobe Audition. We also use Cool Edit to clean up lines, improve overall sound quality and such for all of our projects.
5. What order do you do things?
This covers our Visual Project Set-up
Step 1: Ideas/Gathering resources
The first step of course is to have an idea of what we want to dub. Next we either capture the footage from VHS/DVD using Dazzle Digital Media Creator or cut a clip out from a downloaded video using Virtual dub.
Step 2: Scripting/Translation
We are here to bring you the best possible English language version that we can. The translations we use in all of our productions are kept close to the Original dialogue while still making sense in English. We will alter the way of certain things when necessary, though not to the point that it may be like the things you see on TV and not retain the original feeling of the series. All of the lines are usually scripted from subs on the original version, or translated with the help of our great friends, when there are none . They are then adjusted to fit the lip movements.
Step 4: Voice Casting
Once there is a Scripting is done we are ready to go into the casting stage! Casting comes up once we get all of auditions ready, or sometimes we decide to scout. Anime Natives spends as long as we can until all parts fit the way we want. If we loss a member or other voices are still needed after the main cast is complete, then more casting will occur till the project is complete.
Step 5: Music & Sound Effects
This is most of the time the funner and yet long part of the dubbing process. First we begin by laying down the video track and the original Japanese track (usually converted to MP3 so it plays correctly in premiere). We do this so we can find the music that is needed, if the OST is out. If the same music can’t be located it will be replaced with something pretty similar. After the music is in place, we then start to play around with a large collection of Sound Effects that we have gathered from all sorts of places, until we find the ones needed to complete the track.
Step 6: Adjusting volumes
This is were we listen to the newly formed dub track so that we can make sound changes. We do this while mixing most of the time, but do go back over it after everything has been laid down so that we can make sure it all sounds good before saving the final track.
Step 7: Finishing it up
Once we finish the audio adjusting, we then export a mixed down audio track from premiere and take it over to Virtual Dub. Placing the Audio in Virtual Dub, we then can use the audio and visual compression features it has and make a final clip that has a much more compressed size. We compress it to where the file size is small but while still keeping a good image quality to the project.
7. What kind of productions do you do?
Most of the productions that Anime Natives gets involved with are Fandubs. Being fan done English dubs (we also do other languages (usually if dubbing over something American) of Anime and/or live action movies and series from Japan or other parts of the world. We enjoy doing this cause it’s challenging to make a good and actuate English production that not only makes sense in English but sounds good and seems real as well. Sometimes we will work on Audio Drama’s of Manga that we enjoy or our own Fanfiction/Original stories. Also, we do a lot of work with other amateur producers, who we are usually close friends with. Those people include but are not limited to: Misty Wings Pro (topleka), StandBy Productions (Chinomi), Midnight Hana Pro (Maria Vu), Super Jiggly Pro (Cristina Vee) and Kitsune Studios (Yami no Kitsune).
