Project Name: The World of Pepe Rubianes

Client: 3Cat – Catalan Corporation of Audiovisual Media

Company: Lavinia Audiovisual

Starting Point:

The World of Pepe Rubianes is a documentary series about the travels around the world that the artist undertook and documented in various formats over the years. The project was based on an unpublished archive—the video tapes, cassettes, and notebooks narrated by Pepe himself in a travel diary format—and posed a huge challenge: how to translate these writings to the screen and have Rubianes narrate his own story?

We considered several options, such as inviting narrators close to the artist to read his words, but none of them were conceptually strong enough: only Pepe Rubianes should read his own diaries. In search of this conceptual solidity, we found the best ally: Artificial Intelligence.

Development:

Using the AI tool ElevenLabs, we developed various synthetic voice models that replicated Rubianes’ way of speaking. To achieve the desired result, we created a model for each of Pepe’s usual tones; narrator, ironic, angry, euphoric… This way, for each sentence Rubianes read, we combined the different models to achieve the best result.

To create these synthetic voice models, we used the many recordings Rubianes left in different tones; both the public and well-known monologues that established his career, as well as radio and television interviews.

The only condition we set when applying the solution was that Rubianes only read text handwritten by himself and without altering any words. This way, we ensured that Pepe could be the narrator of his own travel documentary series.

Results:

The docuseries combines various sound recordings; video tapes, cassettes, and the synthetic voice. To ensure the AI voice matched the texture of the other sources, we needed to add noise to make it less clear and more realistic. The result is a tone almost indistinguishable from the real Pepe Rubianes, as noted by several specialized reviews.

Available on https://www.ccma.cat/3cat/el-mon-de-pepe-rubianes/

Articles Links:

https://www.elnacional.cat/ca/cultura/pepe-rubianes-fi-ia-portat-cosa-bona_1218339_102.html

Crítica TV – “Pepe Rubianes en estat pur” Mónica Planas Callol