phoenix-the-editor

[phoenix-the-editor]

Chapter 5 Release Notes

"A law of nature lies in that lava rock..."

Not going to lie, this one gave me a bit of anxiety. My old project had plans set for most of chapter 4 (music choices, storyboarding, etc.) so I was only working with unfinished scripts when I started chapter 5. Not only that, this chapter marked the first of the second volume and we saw a huge jump in subscribers after the volume 1 compilation was released. Nonetheless, creating a new chapter from relative scratch was a challenge welcomed.

A previous question in our retrospective asked if we would have characters speak in accents and our short answer is no. Rather than have a characters speak an accent that is implied by their appearance, we actually have the characters (both background and main ones) speak in their native tongues every now and then. This has been a mainstay since Chapter 2 but you get to hear it a bit more in this chapter with Paco and Rohan. Matheus is Brazilian and many of us speak Spanish to a degree to allow Paco to speak both Spanish and Portuguese when the situation calls for it. Rohan speaks a bit of Japanese here and there, specifically the actual Japanese text used in The JOJOLands, and a couple of us also speak Japanese to help out on this too. Some of our other actors speak languages like Korean, Vietnamese, Italian, etc. and those have been heard in the background too. In the future, we may have characters speak more languages besides just our main cast.

Both lines that Paco say in Spanish and Portuguese are known by Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese speakers. The first is "porque no tiene derecho con ésa cara de caballo de Dió", which came from a lengthy monologue in The Viviana Canosa Show by Carmen Borrego. I thought about using "¡para un poco, loca!" instead but decided to use it for another time when the perfect opportunity strikes. The second is "pega ele, frita ele, faz purê", which is from the Brazilian Portuguese dub of Barbie's adaptation of Rapunzel that has become a meme of sorts for Brazilians online. We actually debated on having the lines in just one language or have them done in English but the final cut incorporated both. Meanwhile, because the line is so iconic, we had to put in the famous "だが断る", which is actually said again in the original text when Rohan freaks out about Jodio destroying the lava rock. What Rohan said in Japanese during that all came from the original text. The song "Semari kurukiki" was the same one used in Diamond is Unbreakable for the infamous scene as well.

You may have noticed another voice as the 9-1-1 Operator done by Robo. I wanted to have that voice somewhat muffled to show that Rohan is talking to someone on the phone and Robo did a great job at it. I had to make it a Five Nights at Freddy's reference, especially after Mike recorded himself humming "March of the Toreadors" for the chapter. The scene itself seemed a bit strange given how operators in the US are trained to always pick up the phone and never hang up until emergency services arrive or the call is deemed unnecessary; even so, they are trained to stay on the line to get as much information as possible and ask the caller to not hang up until things are resolved. In Japan, apparently operators will hang up if they deem the call is a non emergency and it's common etiquette for the caller to hang up first rather than the latter. With how Rohan was ordered to stay on the line but then Jodio told Rohan to call him back, I came up with an idea on how to interpret the scene:

The call never hung up and the operator could only hear what they think are muffled sounds in the background from when Rohan tried to tie Dragona up to Jodio picking up the phone. Only Jodio noticed the call is still going on and pretends it was already hung up by openly asking Rohan to call back; Rohan sees this ruse but the rest of the team don't. Jodio then pretends to be tapping the phone on his head in front of his team as if he was thinking about it but in reality hangs up the phone so the operator doesn't hear the rest of the conversation. The operator does try to call back a bit later but Jodio smashes Rohan's phone mid ring.

In a way, this explains what Rohan says about finding Jodio interesting later on; Jodio wasn't just coercing Rohan to hand him the rock but also showing how detail-oriented he is, how quick on his feet he can be to adapt any situation to be in his favor, and overall gutsy he was to get his point across. Someone who wouldn't want further trouble or avoid further agitation from Rohan wouldn't add more or risk it all by doing any outlandish action like Jodio, but he wanted to show that he doesn't care and is confident of succeeding in his plans. What matters more is that he gets the rock, something that seems so important and secretive that Rohan would be hesitant to talk about to others, and he's able to point out that it's an extremely valuable bargaining chip; not to mention he really studied how Rohan works, possibly to the point of feeling a parasocial relationship with him, and uses that against his idol. It's an interesting power move that works in Jodio's favor in the end and that's how we interpreted the scene.

That's mostly all for this chapter. Although... as we mentioned in the retrospective, there is a hidden Stand cry that's been hinted since Chapter 3. You might hear it most evidently at the very end. Can you guess what that Stand is and who it might belong to?

~ Phoenix

[phoenix-the-editor]

Chapter 3 & 4 Release Notes

"If you pick up that diamond, you'll be in danger."

We took a break to get ourselves readjusted and also worked on a silly project for the Christmas season. This was also when we saw a lot of growth in terms of the production side, since we were joined by two new editors: Koby and Robo!

Because of how long the series is expected to be, I brought up the idea that we were going to combine chapters to allow the fandub to catch up better with the release dates of the series. I proposed we combine all the ones that have numbers attached to the chapters but Pettrull wanted two chapters max combined. Chapters 3 and 4 will be the first of the combination bunch and you can expect each volume to have one combination.

Shortly after Chapter 2 was released, we received an email from Koby asking to join as an editor and voice actor and we decided to let him join to provide some assistance with sound design. It was Koby that came up with the design for Wild Cat Size and created a lot of noises that we weren't able to get from online. With Wild Cat Size, he incorporated things like fishing wire and zip ties and edited their noises to make the Stand have that unique sound you hear now. I had a lot of fun going back and forth with him on how we wanted the strings to sound. The cat noises were actually made by Mike with no change, and we kept that rather than use premade cat sounds to give a vibe of something off with the cats. While I remained the primary audio person for the project, Koby worked on adding additional sounds and making things into a final draft version of what you hear now. During the production of the Christmas album, he helped with mixing a couple of songs and even debuted as the voice of Mauka.

Originally, we had Dr. O as the voice of Rohan Kishibe. However, Dr. O was going through personal things that resulted in him being unavailable to perform as Rohan for Chapter 3 and 4. At around the same time before Dr. O went M.I.A, Riverdude actually messaged us asking if the role of Rohan Kishibe or Acca Howler was available. For those who don't know, Riverdude is a known figure in the JoJo community for his voice acting abilities, song covers, and parodies of various songs related to JoJo. Initially, we turned him down because Dr. O was still available and we already had an actor for Acca Howler. However, Riverdude ended up becoming our actor for Rohan and performed his role beautifully, and it made this little animation made a while ago where he voiced him rather silly too. You can tell how similar Rohan sounds to Jodio, which was something Mike and I noticed when Mike was first figuring out how to do his voice. When Riverdude sent in his lines, he did two version: one that sounded similar to the English dub actor Landon McDonald and another that was more of what Riverdude interpreted Rohan to be. Given that Rohan is introduced as an antagonist against the team, I went with Riverdude's interpretation to present Rohan has a much more serious and intimidating character. There were some things Riverdude improvised that inspired the chapter trailer too.

While we were starting on visual edits, I met Robo on a server during a video call. We actually were playing chess when I mentioned my project and he asked if he could be a part of it as an editor. After talking to Pettrull and showing his own YouTube channel as his work, he was brought in and helped with the ending scenes of Chapter 3 and 4. Compared to me, Robo had more editing skills and was able to animate the panels in ways I didn't know how and I think it's a really great thing to making our fandub better and better. Both Koby Robo really added a lot to the project, and Robo really helped with establishing the visual style we have for editing. I especially like how he timed zooming in the speech bubbles with Dragona's breaths.

Although you may have heard it in Chapter 1, The Hustle's Stand design is prominent in this one as well as Smooth Operators. I'll just talk about The Hustle for this note. The Hustle has no known Stand cry but I had the idea of using "muki" because it is the Japanese onomatopoeia for muscle bulging and flexing. However, in English, the word sounds childish and cutesy rather than intimidating, so I was wondering how to incorporate that onomatopoeia without running the terrifying nature of The Hustle. I was rewatching a scene from Villeneuve's Dune where the Sardaukar were introduced. For some info regarding the Sardukar: they are an elite military force known for their ruthlessness and complete devotion to the emperor in addition to their fighting abilities, so it seemed fitting to have that influence for someone like Paco. The way they talk and chanted in the movie adaptation gave me the idea of having "muki" sound similar and terrifying. I asked Matheus to send in lines of him saying the onomatopoeia deep and slow, and Pettrull edited it to turn it into the deep rumbling you hear when The Hustle is used; that is then layered with sounds of rope tightening to mimic muscle flexing and straining.

With that, Volume 1 is complete. I had the idea of combining all the chapters within the same volume into one compilation and it surprisingly got a lot more traffic to the channel. Honestly, I never thought we would make it this far given that we were the first ones to go beyond chapter 2. Hopefully, we can continue to do this for as long as we can.

~ Phoenix

[phoenix-the-editor]

Chapter 2 Release Notes

"Can I become happy?"

I think I breathed a little easier once we finished Chapter 1 and saw how people responded to it. Nonetheless, this chapter's production was more about learning how to adapt to new ideas than encountering new challenges.

The goal for the project is to complete a chapter within 2 months every time, but we were able to get this one in 1 month instead. Like I mentioned before, a lot of old assets and designs from my old project were reused in this project and that included a full visual edit of Chapter 2. In the last project, I worked with my buddy Seth and he was more than happy to have his work reused. Seth is one of the Discord moderators on a JOJOLands discord server I am a part of before the first chapter published and editing was mostly us retiming the visuals or replacing a few scenes to fit the audio better. So, a lot of the time spent was on collecting new recordings and audio editing in comparison to the first chapter. Pettrull also learned how to do visual editing in time for this chapter and did a great job on the Usagi's Stand introduction scene.

I like to call Chapter 2 our "special guests" episode. In addition to Seth, we had two more people featured for the cameo as a little thank you to the JoJo fandom. Ky, who is an online mutual of mine known for his cosplays in Jojolion, played the role of the DEA agent. A few people knew me as the voice of the DEA agent in my last project and Ky has mentioned how he is a real-life version of Dragona (both are trans, from New Jersey, and Black to name a few of their shared traits), so this was a cheeky little nod seeing how the roles have switched. Another person we had as a special guest was Jonah, the current director and owner of the SBR & Jojolion Fandub Project. Many know that TJJL Fandub Project started because of the SBR & Jojolion Fandub Project; we are forever grateful for them helping us jumpstart our work and we asked Jonah if he would be interested in playing one of the background characters. He played one of the cops during the drug bust and I made it a little joke to have him voice the cop that was arresting Paco. Matheus is actually one of the mods for Jonah's Discord server for that project and the voice of various characters such as Steven Steel. We might have a few cameos here and there in the future but it may be a while given the next time we have new characters besides Rohan and Wild Cat Size is in Chapter 8. Even so, we've had other actors join our team for future character roles and may try to fill in with them first before branching out to other characters.

Like I mentioned in the last note, a lot of what was used in the project came from a previous one. Many items were planned and slightly altered, but there were also some that changed significantly and went unexpectedly during production. The most obvious is the whole flashback Jodio has that I call "The Psychopath Monologue". In the past project, I had the idea of making the fandub almost like an old video tape of a family vacation and the idea was to make all flashbacks look like these VHS videos to also differentiate between a scene for a flashback and a scene for the present. This also involved putting the sound and voices through a filter so it sounds like it's an old recording. I kept this approach for the new project but the concept of using a tape is less about being a part of an aesthetic and more of representing Jodio as a person. Our main Joestar desires knowing everything and cameras in today's age are commonly used to find hidden details of events initially missed but recorded to be seen again. In a way, Jodio sees his past as less of a memory to bond over with others and more of a means to recall and understand the world around him. How different characters recall memories may differ based on their personalities but we'll figure out what that means when we get to it.

I wasn't sure how the actors were going to take the scene but I told them how I wanted Barbara Ann to argue with the psychotherapist as something to improvise while Jodio talks. The idea was that it's done muffled in the background so the attention is all on Jodio and him talking. Noelle really channeled the mom energy, improvising the scene further to show how Barbara Ann is extremely protective and willing to speak for her children, and I had many other lines she improvised that unfortunately didn't make the cut. Seeing how both she and Alalium (the actor for the school psychotherapist) made the scene more chaotic than expected made me take the scene in a different direction. In this new version, Jodio is basically drowned out by the voices instead and you can't really hear what he says in the moment to the adults in the room clearly. Mike interpreted Jodio as a soft-spoken kid who whispers when he talks, so that and the filter over his voice makes it very difficult for us to hear him to talk over his mom and the school psychotherapist. In a way, it makes it seem like the world doesn't care, continuing to go on while leaving Jodio with his thoughts and as if no one wants to listen to him. The next idea I had in mind was for the filtered voice and the actual voice to blend together and the scene has a smooth transition from flashback to present day as the music continued. Funny enough, while trying to implement the idea, I was trying to set it up and accidentally cut off the music and deleted the filtered voice when Jodio says "happy". I ended up with this dead silence that made me notice Mike shift the tone from the usual apathetic voice Jodio often speaks in to something extremely vulnerable and scared. I felt the silence was now necessary and I had to keep that in before drowning him out again with the voices of the DEA agent and two cops. It was an extremely rare sight that could easily be missed and I hope we get more opportunities to showcase that. That scene really went against what I had planned on editing overall and I'm really glad it did.

You might have noticed some Stand sound designs in chapter 1 but I'm going to start by explaining THE MATTEKUDASAI first. I took the sound effect for King Crimson in the anime adaptation of Golden Wind and simply reversed and slowed it down to make THE MATTEKUDASAI's summoning sound. Taking the bird elements of the Stand design, I layered in some flapping wing sounds and used a squish noise to indicate when it's transforming. I have this idea that the Stand noises are made by the Stand User's voice actor unless intentionally otherwise, so THE MATTEKUDASAI's sound is made by Usagi's voice actor. Reee made the noises with a filter over his voice and, though not intentional, mimicked the seagull-esque guitar riff made by Adrian Belew in the song of the same name. I find these noises rather adorable and quite fitting, and Reee used a filter that would make his voice sound birdlike yet metallic. Based on how the characters had their appearances changed and the text color changed, the other actors would speak in different voices and we had fun coming up with different ways to say the lines. Throughout the times the Stand uses this camera trick, we may play around with this feature more.

I hope you enjoy these notes for chapter 2.

~ Phoenix.

[phoenix-the-editor]

Chapter 1 Release Notes

"This is the story of Jodio Joestar."

Fun fact: We had an editor planned for this but said person went M.I.A. two days after I joined TJJL Fandub Project. For someone who vowed to never edit again after the previous project went awry, who would have thought that I would end up going back on my word? Second time's the charm.

A lot of assets and procedures(?) from the old JOJOLands fandub project that I made were brought back and improved upon for this one, which made production a bit faster than had everything needed to be from scratch. It was a massive change for me to be able to sit down with others and talk out how things should be planned out with people willing to be in the room and help out. As a result, there were some changes made from the original concepts I had in terms of the direction of how scenes should go and how tasks were to be delegated. It was super fun because it not only made planning things easier but also let me really enjoy myself rather than feel burned out and stressed. It also helped me warm up to the team a lot more.

To this day it boggles me how cohesive we all are despite us never working on any projects together prior. All of us save for two (Pettrull & Reee) never met in person or knew each other prior to joining this project but we've spent the first month getting to know each other, doing small dubs to see how we work together, and helping each other on how we do our lines. Admittedly, I got whiplash with how different the voice actors for this project have interacted with me compared to the last project's, but I welcome the change nonetheless. As Mike has put it, the ability to just come together and make what we made has been "serendipitous". Maybe it's due to our astrological signs being very compatible (4/5 of us are air signs with the 1/5 being a water sign), or maybe we're just really lucky to find each other in this lifetime. I managed to bring some people from the old project back into the fold, as many of them were waiting on opportunities to voice act but never got the chance when the old project was shut down. Most are friends/online mutuals I've known way before the project and you can hear their voices in the background or as minor characters.

Chapter 1 took the longest due to how long the chapter was (69 pages????) and how many characters we had to assign voices to but there was another additional issue at hand: hurricane season. The majority of the team is based on the East Coast of the US, which resulted in lost Internet connections and less people to be able to work on the post-production side of things; some people also got sick too. As the only West Coast person at the time unaffected and with little time to train other people to help make the work go faster, everything ended up falling to me and I honestly feared it was going to be my old project dynamic again. Luckily, as I found in the next production of chapters, it wasn't.

The way the chapter was edited was rather out of order due to me editing scenes based on availability of lines and what I felt compelled to do at the moment. The first fully edited scene (sound and visual) was actually the interaction between Dragona and Paco at Iko Iko. At the time, it was Matheus and I who had our lines fully done and Matheus had the idea of combining our parts to see how we sound together. I think that started to let me warm up to the team a bit more and sparked the inspiration I thought I lost before, because I started to edit Matheus' concept audio and even showed visually how the scene may go. Mike managed to wrap up on his lines by the time I sent in the first draft of that small clip and had the idea of making Jodio mimic Paco's speech pattern. I realized the cast didn't just want to perform but they wanted to really make the characters their own, and I really like how this added a personal touch to our project. The fandub became less of an ongoing work and more of a passionate creation we all collaborated on. I really hope whoever watches our fandub sees this and enjoys how we present the characters too.

The last scene that was edited was the beginning sequence right before the story begins. I deliberately kept that last to ensure that first scene must give a sense of what sort of fandub we wanted to be, how we wanted to present ourselves, and what we think the series is about; it would be impossible to do that unless everything else was done first. I actually tried to look at other JOJOLands fandubs to see how they interpreted the beginning and see whether I should follow whatever consistent trend seemed to pop up among what is available. It wasn't until I reread the pages and even rewatched the beginning of the anime adaptation of Stardust Crusaders that I realized we are being reintroduced to Stands in a different way for The JOJOLands. The first time Stands were introduced-- there was this sense of Stands (particularly of the main protagonist and antagonists) being extremely powerful entities that are almost terrifying and out-of-this-world. But, the beginning of Part 9 seemed to rewrite Stands as everyday events and situations that may seem ordinary but can be extraordinary and potentially powerful if looked in a different way. As the "certain mangaka" puts it, one cannot see how something ordinary can be extraordinary (a Stand ability) unless they are seeking it. I interpreted statement as "there is beauty, greatness, potential in everything regardless of how it seems at first but you must look for it and potentially accept changing your perspective to see it"; I like this new message Araki is giving honestly. Fitting enough, the song "Sekkin" used for that introduction was the same song used when Jotaro shoots himself just to prove the existence of Stands and using the song would homage to the scene where Stands are introduced for the first time in JoJo. So, rather than the initial idea of making the scene ominous and dark, we open with wonder and excitement. For an inevitably dark and tragic story The JOJOLands will become, we should at least make it a bit happy before we head down that path, no?

We actually did a call to show the chapter to everyone else on the team before it was released on YouTube the day before and I honestly shed a few tears realizing what we envisioned for several weeks became a reality in front of us. I was glad we succeeded in making the first chapter but there was a sense of bittersweet nostalgia felt while I cried. I'm still grateful for my old project because it did help me provide a foundation I used for TJJL Fandub Project, I met so many people because of it, and I wouldn't be where I'm at without everyone involved (good, bad, and ugly). But, obviously, there were things about that old project I really didn't like and regret not changing or fighting against. Not only that, it took a while for me to get into the groove of things. I actually considered leaving the JoJo fandom altogether, especially The JOJOLands, because of how badly the past project affected me and my love for the part. Hell, even after joining the team, I was hesitant to stay or really let myself be comfortable with people on the team. I didn't think I would be able to contribute much given the sheer talent and passion I got as a first impression of the project and I wasn't confident in both my skills as an editor and actor. Let's just say I'm so glad I got over all that and I really appreciate the cast and crew for allowing me to do what I loved so much and thought I could never do again.

I don't want to get any more sentimental in these notes but I'll end these notes with one final word:

There's this belief in my culture that people will become the names they are given or give themselves. Many people in my culture would choose names that would bring them or their children good things or believe certain names shouldn't be used in fear of future calamity that it would entail. I was desperate to move on from my past that I wanted a new name from the one many people know me as when I joined TJJL Fandub Project. Sort of on a whim, I chose Phoenix because I wanted something more gender-neutral yet somewhat related to my actual name (my middle name translated but spelled slightly different). I wanted something to symbolize the rebirth of the love for a niche I loved dearly. Little did I know I was going to experience my own rebirth too.

~ Phoenix.

[phoenix-the-editor]

Links Regarding The Project

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[phoenix-the-editor]

Introduction Post

Aloha! This is @incorrect-jojolands-quotes. Many of you probably know that I am the editor, writer, and voice actor of Dragona Joestar for TJJL Fandub Project.

I will be using this blog specifically to post updates regarding the project as well as release some notes for each chapter produced. I'll try my best to be consistent but I wanted to make this so I can stop cluttering my incorrect JOJOLands quotes blog (focus more on actually posting quotes on there hehe) and dedicate a blog just for this project.

It would be nice if you give a follow, as I will be using this as my main form of interactions in addition to Twitter for things related to the fandub. In the meantime, let me know what sort of content you might want to see me post on here in addition to general commentary on how production went.