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!