I’m gonna steal it

Today, I decided to give everyone yet another reason to laugh at Nicholas Cage by doing the Chipmunk Style assignment.  I took one of the most pivotal scenes in National Treasure, where Benjamin Gates is talking about stealing the Declaration of Independence, and I tweaked it a little by making Ben and Riley sound like chipmunks.  The process was significantly simpler than I thought it would be.

The first thing I did was download the scene from YouTube onto my computer using a free downloading website called SaveFromNet.  I then opened iMovie and imported the clip.  Once the clip was opened in iMovie, I exported the clip as a file and saved only the audio.  I took the audio from the scene and imported it into Audacity.

There, I was able to manipulate the pitch of the audio.  I chose to increase it by about 40%.  The scene’s score is quite loud and there is a good amount of background noise (others talking and walking) which meant that if I went any higher in the pitch, it would have sounded extremely distorted, and not in a fun, chipmunk kind of way.

When I was satisfied with how the audio turned out, I exported it as an MP3 and inserted it in my original clip in iMovie.  To ensure there was no overlap, I just turned the volume of the original clip all the way down.  Lastly, I added a title and uploaded the video to my YouTube channel.

I am really happy with the final product.  For some reason, having such a high pitch in the dialogue of the characters makes their mannerisms 10x funnier, especially Nick Cage.

Hope you enjoy!