Audiofivers

[Nate the Great]

Erm, which audiofiver test? There was no "complete" audiofiver in any form, ever, at least as far as I remember. I have a sound test file for myself and one for Hejira. That's it, right?

I agree that a simple beep would be fine, maybe a quick audio cue to indicate whether we're onboard ship or on a planet.

As for the length of the fivers, why not five the fivers? With the correct editing I'm sure a handful of scenes would be fine. We all know the plots, so basically we'd be doing what Monty Python did to turn their sketches into a movie.

Hey, a flash movie (videofiver) is fine, too, but would it be the "powerpoint presentation" format or the "mystery science theater 3000" format? I mean, snapshots or actual motion?

It's just that if writing a fiver is a one, and audiofivers are five, videofivers are like thirty. A lot more work, a lot more time, a lot more bandwidth, and way better odds that people will give up when Real Life rears it's ugly head. I think we really do need to tiptoe into this.

"We're not voice actors?" Hey, we may not be professionally trained, but we have moxie, spunk, and enough cheesy geekitude to choke a cat!

[Chancellor Valium]

I can do a mean Palpatine impression, if that helps...

re: beeps. Beeps are annoying. Pauses aren't. Catch my drift?

As for fiving fivers, why? The term is a relative one. Most certainly don't take five minutes to read...

[Nate the Great]

Sorry, I didn't mean fiving the published fivers. Those take "five" minutes to read. Zeke was insinuating (at least I think he was) that putting on what is essentially a radio show of a five minute read will take more than five minutes to listen to and will take a LONG time to download. Okay, let's use THE EXAMPLE FIVER OF SCIENCE! (Go Bill Nye!)

Here's a sample "fiver" paragraph. How long does it take you to read (at the normal rate):

Picard: Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship--
Data: Uh, sir, it's time for the plot.
Picard: And what's our plot this week?
Data: We get to rescue a race of sentient Marshmallow Peeps from an unholy alliance consisting of the Frumious Bandersnatch and The Great and Everlasting Know-It-All.
Picard: I quit.

Okay, to be kind let's say ten seconds. Now read it aloud, at a reasonable dramatic and humorous pace.

"SPACE! The final ... frontier! These ARE the voyages of the starship...," etc. Okay, I got ... twenty seconds. Multiply that by twenty scenes in an ordinary fiver and that's over six minutes. Erm, I'm sure there was a point in there somewhere...

Uh, backup anyone?

[Chancellor Valium]

^Only! IF....youuse! Kirkspeak!

[Nate the Great]

Use Kirkspeak for what? Saying the fiver so that it takes longer? Is that the point? Expand the fiver so you have to cut out more so that it doesn't take more time to download. Reminds me of Eschers impossible continuous waterwheel.

[Chancellor Valium]

No, I was just saying that if you speak normally you should be able to get through it in five minutes fairly easily...

[Nate the Great]

Okay, here's the kicker. Which of the following should be the priority that determines audiofiver length:

1. Takes five minutes to listen to.
2. Takes a reasonable amount of time to download.
3. Contains all of the fiver that can be tranlated into an audio format.

This is really an important point that needs to be consistent.

As of right now, the consensus seems to be for uniform voice casts. I'm not going to open the kettle of worms of "auditions," "saving," and so on, mainly because:

1. Zeke has yet to authorize the creation or posting of audiofivers on this site, nor has he authorized anyone else to post copyrighted 5M.net material on another site. A very important first step.
2. No one has volunteered to take over the jobs of editting, directing, and creating sound effects for them. I can't do any of these things.
3. A system must be established for deciding in what order they would be created. Probably some sort of poll thread, or even the order that the original fivers were posted, although I'm fond of the notion of having the movies or the animated series being first, if only to finish them and hosting completed zip files.