Created by adding artificial intelligence voices for the ‘actors’ to background sound captured live in a pub, this spy drama is intriguing but ultimately a bit of a slog at 80 minutes.
The AI experiment can probably stretch to 30 minutes, but the issue of listening to a couple of voices that have little or no emotional inflexion is a little tiring.
The script has colloquialisms, which sound comical in their delivery. It feels like a radio play created in another language, then read phonetically.
I found I was slipping in and out of the story and not really getting the characters. Michael’s voice, in particular, is a constant one-note, robotic, and just ‘off’.
If you came to this without knowing it was an AI production, what might you make of it? Most of the female voices are fairly convincing, but you could feel this is over an hour of terrible voice acting.
As an experiment, this is worth a listen, but if you are a devotee of radio plays, you will definitely notice the difference. It’s about skill, about the quality of the voice and the understanding of the words.
While we listen, there are some images that seem unconnected with what is going on. I found them more interesting that the words we were hearing.
Fly Me To The Loon is available now on Scenesaver with free registration. It was created by video producer Jo Brind and written by Frank Gauntlett. Read about how it was created here.