Think the enemy voices in Black sound authentic? Well, that's because they are!

Sound designer Ben Minto explains how a perilous trip to Russia to record voice resulted not only in an excellent session, but also an introduction to Russian military slang, a partial script re-write by a cautious former Spetsnaz Colonel, a dislike of salty fish, and an understanding that "flinching" is for sissies.

BLACK IN THE USSR

Ben: September 2004. We'd just shipped Burnout Revenge for the PS2 and Xbox, and BLACK was entering its final phase of production. I'd been asked by Black's Audio Director, Stephen Root, to join the audio team and own two key areas - namely, the overall dynamic mix and the speech for the game, as well as some more general technical and creative sound design duties.

The dynamic mixing is a well-known quantity within Criterion, and whilst it's involved, time consuming and requires literally thousands of iterations, the actual process needed to arrive at a triple A mix is relatively straightforward. However, other than Burnout's "3,2,1, Go!" and Burnout 3's DJ Stryker, Criterion hadn't had a speech-heavy game since Airblade. With BLACK, we had our work cut out for us.

The speech design required three systems, the first of these being the cut scene system. Here, speech lines from the script are track laid into a session combining music, speech and spot sound effects - and are streamed alongside the relevant video at run time.

The second speech pipeline generated the in-game speech for Kellar and his teammates. Here, variables such as the player's position, progress through the levels, enemy density and type, and elapsed time trigger individual lines. Then, these groups of lines are concatenated to create conversations.

The third system (in my opinion, the most fun to work with) is mostly driven by the AI code with calls being received to describe the different states, e.g. "flanking the player to their left", "attacking head-on", "retreating from grenade". From these calls we play a suitable line from a bank of relevant files.

Whereas the first two systems are fairly linear and are only partially reactive to how you play the game, the final system has the goal of achieving a realistic and interactive indication of how teammates and the approaching enemy are behaving.

SCHNELL WEITER

When designing the enemy speech for Black, we approached it from a few perspectives. First, we had to consider how the AI reacts in the game, define all the possible enemy actions, and from here classify these into behaviours.

Then we looked at it from the audio design point of view - what do we want to hear? What would be cool to hear in the middle of a fire-fight? How do we give a personality to the enemy that you are facing?

And finally we liaised with the designers, Craig Sullivan and Alex Ward, to ensure that the system included features that matched their aspirations and expressed all the states as required by the design.

A sound man doing sound stuff

For my part it meant collating and encapsulating all the requirements from all the departments involved and then iterating this to arrive at a final solution.

Then we needed a placeholder script, which was initially challenging to write. But once we hit upon the idea of spending 5 days watching all the great Hollywood action films and taking lines from those, we ended up with a HUGE script. Once trimmed down, this formed the basis of our working script.

After watching so many films one of our key observations was that enemies either talk in English, Engrish (a grammatically incorrect variation of English) or in their Native Tongue.

So to continue development we initially recorded a placeholder version of the script in English using Black team members as the talent. Then, to test out the idea of using a native language, we looked around the team.

We had a few German speakers readily available, and the fact that we had more than a few Medal of Honor fans amongst our team, it was decided that German enemy voices were an appropriate and familiar choice for our FPS.

Zsolt Marx and Lukasz Ziolkowski, two programmers on the Black Team, were persuaded to take on the roles of the enemy and delivered the lines, in German, perfectly. Both were literally speechless after the session as we were encouraging them to deliver the lines in an aggressive a manner as possible, which involved a lot of shouting and resulted in sore throats!

Once we swapped out the placeholder English lines for these German lines, the enemies took on a more menacing persona. Many familiar lines jumped out, for example, "Vorsicht, Granate", "Achtung", "Schnell Weiter" (this line sounded a bit like "snailbiter!") - some less familiar lines, and as a non-German speaker, some lines I couldn't understand in the least.

One major question we were trying to address with this exercise was, with repeated playing would you come to understand an unfamiliar language? Whilst testing the new German version it became clear that within a few hours, although you don't necessarily understand its exact meaning, you do quickly familiarise a given line with a given action.

BLACK RUSSIANS

Black was set in an "Eastern European" setting. Therefore, we initially discussed the possibility of using a variety of languages from Eastern Europe, with either all lines being in one language or having a mix of different languages.

The Sound of Violence

After commissioning a series of line tests in different languages, we quickly found that Russian was the most versatile with regards to dialect and accent, and had the right amount of passion and menace that was needed for Black.

The majority of line tests we had were from Russian speakers based in the UK or in America, and as their accent had become diluted, some sounded like they were trying to "act in Russian" (Red Heat anyone?). The line tests from Russia, though, shone through as the perfect fit for our title.

So with 3 months to go till the project ended, we needed a script translating into Russian, the skills of a Russian military advisor to check on slang terms and phrases, six suitable Russian voices (we didn't want voice actors; we wanted to find people with naturally menacing voices), a studio, engineer and producer based in Russia - and we needed all of this completed within 4 weeks!

DESTINATION Москва́

Fortunately a friend of mine, Alexey Menshikov, who is based in Kiev and works on a freelance basis on videogame audio, was available and excited about the possibility of working on the project. Within 3 days of working with Alexey, we had numerous genuine Russian line tests, a first pass translation of the script into Russian and leads on studio facilities and personnel that were available to hire in Moscow.

Visa card

A week later we had six voice talents pencilled in, a studio and an engineer, an ex-Spetsnaz military advisor, a near final script and a date in mind to complete the recording - which was only 6 days away!

Now the real fun started! Internal paperwork like contracts, budget approval and NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) are all a walk in the park compared to obtaining a Russian Visa quickly. First off, you need a letter of invitation, which fortunately you can obtain from the hotel you plan on staying in, and then you need to go to the Russian Embassy and queue...and queue...and queue...and finally,

"Yes!"

"Hi, can I have a Visa to visit Russia please, I need the fast 1 day Visa."

"When are you going?"

"In 2 days."

"You have a flight booked?"

"Yes."

"You have an invitation?"

"Yup, here you go..."

"How long are you going for?"

"4 days."

"Why are you going?"

"To record Russian voices."

This turned out to not be the most politically sensitive thing to say. It seems the week before, some British agents had supposedly been caught spying and exchanging data via a fake rock. (See story as reported by the BBC). Not very Black (being more covert than overt) and not very good for me, as it turned out.

"Record voices?"

"Yes, I need to capture some Russian voices for a project I am working on."

"One moment."

Fortunately, this time I only had to wait 5 minutes. Unfortunately, it now seemed that I had to have a special interview. I was now talking to someone who looked very serious and important.

"You are going to capture Russians?"

"No, I'm a sound designer, I have a script and I need to record these lines in Russian, using genuine Russian talent."

"And what are you using it for?"

"It's for a video game I'm working on."

(I should have probably stuck to the line, "a project I'm working on.")

"A video game? Can I see the script?"

"Sure"

...

"This is a game in which you kill Russians?"

"Erm... well, they're sort of generic Eastern European."

"You are killing people who speak Russian?"

"Er... yes, but we are also killing Americans too."

"Ah... ok."

Within five minutes I had all my papers and visa in order and I was out of there, and it wasn't a lie as such - you might end up killing thousands of Russian speaking enemies, but aren't you ultimately after William Lennox (an American)?

Everything was now pretty much sorted; I would fly out on the Friday and have a meeting Friday evening with the military advisor to check through the script. We'd record Saturday and Sunday and then I'd be on the plane home Monday afternoon. It would take one week to edit the files and then another to balance them in game and replace the temporary assets with the finished processed assets.

YOU DON'T KNOW HOW LUCKY YOU ARE

Alexey had done a great job - he organised everything to perfection. When I arrived at Moscow airport I was met by Pavel, a friend of Alexey's, and also the assistant engineer for the recording session, who drove me to my hotel. From here on in, being in Russia was an amazing and very Black experience.

For a start my hotel had camouflaged carpet and my room looked out onto a monument to Yuri Gagarin (VDNkh Space Obelisk), situated on top of a museum with a Sputnik replica.

Look closely and you can see a soldier laying in perfect camouflage on

The VDNkh Space Obelisk

To the left was the Ostankino tower, which partially burnt down in 2000 and was rumoured to be linked to a political assassination attempt. And to the right was VVC (All-Russia Exhibiton Centre), which I managed to get into one morning before recording to get a closer look at this rocket. I was a bit wary of using the flash and, well, I don't think I should have been there in the first place!

A non pocket sized rocket

When I got to my room I had about an hour until my first meeting. Within 2 minutes I'd found a tourist brochure detailing two "attractions" that caught my eye—one for the former KGB headquarters and associated holding area (erm, prison!), the Lubyanka and another for Matrosskaya Tishina, an infamous prison based in Moscow. I booked for both as I could fit these in on Monday morning before my return flight.

Everything around me seemed as though it had been specifically placed here as the ultimate source of reference material for Black. And now I was getting ready to have a meeting with Colonel Fridrich Heider, a former member of the Russian Spetsnaz Special Forces.

Colonel Fridrich Heider.

The meeting did have the feeling of "being in a spy movie.", Colonel Fridrich could only speak in Russian and so we had to talk via a translator. Strangely we also had to change tables within the hotel lobby three times during the hour that we spoke, at the Colonel's request. The reason was never translated and I never asked.

Even with the language barrier, though, we managed to work through the script and altered around 20% of the lines to give them a more genuine Russian military feel and correct some translation mistakes - I acted out most of the lines to make sure we had the correct meaning.

The final part of the meeting was asking the Colonel if there was any specific military slang we had omitted - the example I gave was of the WW2 slang used for a grenade, "PINEAPPLE!", due to the grooves cut into the surface of the grenade.

"Лимонка!" said the Colonel, smiling.

"Limonka!" said the interpreter.

"Lemon?" I asked.

Yes, it turns out the slang for grenade is lemon - why? Well it looks a bit like a lemon and it has one hell of a bitter taste.

RECORDING DAY 1

Saturday morning came round very quickly and for some reason my body clock went the wrong way, so by 6:15 I'd eaten breakfast and was out exploring - it was at this point I found an open gate into the VVC and had a closer look at the rocket.

Never before or since has "Lemon" been shouted with such passion.

Alexey turned up around 8 and we made our way via the (absolutely gorgeous art-deco) metro to the Muza-Game studios. At the studio I met up with its owner and recording producer, Oleg Bazayev, and the studio engineer, Artem Kolpakov, along with the recording engineer we hired for the project, Vladimir Grezneff. The first challenge was the language barrier, although fortunately Alexey acted as a translator for the most part, and by working closely with Vladimir, who spoke no English, we developed a form of sign language and a strange English/Russian concoction of phrases that worked out perfectly.

The first voice talent was bang on time, but unfortunately the studio was having some hitches that took two hours to resolve. As a result, we were already behind on a tight schedule and only had an hour left with the actor. In this situation it's best not to rush through the script and end up with nothing of value, and instead to work through the script making sure every line is delivered and recorded correctly. That hour went so fast, the next actor had turned up and we had only managed to get halfway through the script with no pickups.

To the best of our knowledge this guy has no plumbing skills.

Not really the best of starts. And then a thought occurred to me about a quarter of the way through the script. There are three people monitoring the session - Vladimir checking that the levels are correct and we are obtaining the best recording we can, Alexey checking that the correct lines are being said, and me checking that the lines are delivered with the correct emotion, volume and intensity. In 2 days time, though, I'm going to back to the UK and have to be part of a team responsible for editing the recordings and giving them the correct filenames. But they are all in Russian and none of us speak or can read Russian - this is going to be a nightmare!

Then we got to a part of the script we hadn't managed to cover with the first artist - requiring flinching (as in ducking from incoming fire). The voice talent was an ex-Russian army soldier, only spoke Russian and didn't understand flinching. In fact, I was the only person in the room that understood it - I tried my best to describe it, but to no avail, so in the end I had to go into the vocal booth and demonstrate line by line what was required.

Stopski! Or I shootski!!!

Eventually the penny dropped. I'm not exactly sure how, but, speaking amongst themselves in Russian, the talent and the studio staff depicted non-Russian soldiers crying and cringing like small girls when they came under enemy fire, whilst a Russian soldier would just stand there and swat the bullets away like flies - very funny, but perhaps you had to be there!

The rest of the first day then passed without a hitch - the third voice artist was so enthusiastic that I actually had to calm him down quite a bit - he gave a fantastic performance and was completely speechless by the end of the session.

So the first day had gone quite well, 2 out of the 3 sessions were fully completed with excellent results and the studio was fully set up for the next day. Time to call it a day and go experience some Russian nightlife. I think this bit is best told by a few choice photos...

We offer all kinds of entertaining for you

Whats a nice gill like you doing in a plaice like this?

The night actually ended quite early as we wanted to be back in the studio early the next day, at least an hour before the first talent arrived - Artem (Artiom) had a plan.

RECORDING DAY 2

Artiom alphabet

I was still worried about editing the Russian speech once I was back in England, and due to the sheer volume it looked like we would need to have some additional help - how on earth were we going to figure out which take was which line?

Artem then took a sheet of paper and wrote out the Cyrillic alphabet along with the phonetic pronunciation of each character. At first this didn't make it any easier, but once you started to use the system it became extremely straightforward and an absolute lifesaver.

Over on the right is a scan of the original "Artiom alphabet," which is framed and on my wall - genius and priceless!

HEAR IT IN ACTION

Russian (Cyrillic)	Лимонка
Russian (Phonetic)	Limonka
English Translation	Grenade
Note: This was one of the slang phrases as described by our Spetsnaz Advisor and became one of the signature lines heard in the game!
Russian (Cyrillic)	Снайпер!
Russian (Phonetic)	Snaipyer!
English Translation	Sniper!
Note: An example of "Engrish", where a line isn't translated from the English.
Russian (Cyrillic)	Враг приближается
Russian (Phonetic)	Vrag Priplizhayetcya
English Translation	Incoming (Weapons Fire)
Note: A full-on Russian phrase.

The second day of recording flew by, as the familiarity of working together combined with the previous day's experience. We completed the final session and had another 3 superb sessions in the bag. The voice actors that day were a great mix of regional dialects, timbres and ages - the more variety the better!

Method acting Russian style

Здравствуйте!

As we finished a bit earlier than expected, we had a chance to sit and discuss the sessions over a mug or two of green tea.

I was happy with how everything had gone, but was miffed that we didn't have a complete session from the first voice actor. As luck would have it, though, he was back in the studio Monday morning to work on another project - so after a bit of bargaining we came up with a solution.

GOING HOME? (RECORDING DAY 3)

My original plan was to spend Monday morning gathering Black resources from the Lubyanka and Matrosskaya Tishina, but I cancelled these. I'd managed to persuade the studio to let me record the extra lines that we missed from the first voice artist.

In exchange, I agreed to proofread an English script they had to work on (this took about 4 hours on Sunday night) and then be a voice actor for them on another project. For this I had to do three voices/scripts - tough yankee cop, geeky scientist type and rookie soldier. (I still have to find out which game these were for!)

So with that last session I had everything I came to Russia for and practically ran out of the studio, into a cab to the airport, and then made it just in time for the plane home.

It all went so quickly, but everyone I met and worked with were absolute professionals and the quality of the results speak for themselves - big thanks once again...

From Russia with Love