Making noise and making the news
An occasional diary of events at 5A Studios
July-August 2008
Plumbing parrots, piano-playing pigs, and camels with Rod Stewart haircuts: all in a single night's viewing on Animal Planet's Animal Crackers (http://www.discoverychannel.co.uk/web/animalplanet/animal-crackers).
This is the show that makes animals look as daft as humans. The only sensible - and reliably sceptical - voice around is that of narrator, Emma Kennedy. She comes to our studio, we record, she goes home. We also do the final mix for each show.
Studio Manager's note: no animal was harmed during the recording or mixing of each episode.
May-June 2008
Maria McErlane is the fruity and slightly tongue-in-cheek voice behind numerous commercials. She's also the teasingly enthusiastic narrator of Nuts TV's Sextastic, "a witty and eye-opening romp through the wonderful world of sex".
We're far too busy for that sort of thing. We comfort ourselves instead with the thought that our recording of Maria's voice and our mixing of the shows provides so much pleasure to others.
April 2008
Hammer Horror is back after two decades of slumbering in the vault. Beyond the Rave is an online serial (http://www.beyondtherave.net) that mixes old-style vampires with the darker side of club-life. It takes the Hammer brand - and our Foley recording - straight to the jugular of a new generation of thrill-seekers.
To stop us sinking our teeth into a project like this, you'd have to drive a stake through our hearts.
February-March 2008
Smita Bhide's debut feature film takes British Indian cinema in a new direction. In The Blue Tower, the award-winning writer and director confronts the reality of Southall's Asian community: arranged marriage, overbearing relatives, the lure of a multicultural relationship.
Catch the premiere of this taut thriller at the 2008 Raindance Festival.
We're proud to have played a part in Smita's film: post-production sound supervision, track-laying, additional Foley, dialogue and Foley editing, additional sound effects, plus the final mix for DVD and cinema release.
January 2008
We're starting to get a name for ourselves in the field of live-action police footage. Police Patrol, which goes out on ITV4, contains clips from video cameras inside US police cars. The voice-over that accompanies these shoot-outs, 100mph chases, and violent crashes was recorded at commercial documentary speed (but thankfully not at gunpoint) in West London.
December 2007
Cops Uncut is the TV documentary series that shows the darker side of high-speed police chases. These are the chases and arrests that end in roadside carnage. This Bullseye TV series went out in the UK on Bravo TV with Quentin Wilson's narration.
Could there be a spin-off series called Quentin Uncut? Sadly not. Quentin is a real professional who was a dream to record here at 5A Studios.
November 2007
Another edge-of-your-seat series coming to Virgin 1 in February is Death Defying Rescues. This 20-episode series from Darlow Smithson Productions looks at the way ordinary people have risked their lives to save others. Death Descent is typical of the series. It tells how a skydiver attempted a mid-air rescue of a friend who became unconscious when his parachute wrapped around his neck.
No such drama at 5A: we recorded the series voice-over in our usual atmosphere of ordered calm.
See http://www.virginmediatv.co.uk/news.php?articleID=118 for series details.
October 2007
What makes an extraordinary person? Virgin 1 viewers will find out next February, when the channel airs the first of four prime-time documentaries called Inside Extraordinary Humans. The series uses animation to show the internal mechanisms of dwarfism, gigantism, obesity, and conjoined twins. The narrator of the documentaries is the extraordinarily talented Lucy Briers, and she recorded her voice-over at 5A Studios.
The programmes were made by independent TV company, Off the Fence. To learn more, visit http://www.offthefence.com/content/programme.php?ID=439.
September 2007
No language revision needed at multilingual 5A. We dive straight into the BBC's GCSE Bitesize project with Spanish and French student podcasts. We record the voices and encode the podcasts.
August 2007
You may not be able to sing your way out of debt but, as BBC Three's Spendaholics proved, singing is a great way to channel your misspent energy.
TV viewers saw the high-spending Miriam Isherwood (series 4, episode 5) rediscover her creativity by recording a song within the calm and constructive atmosphere of 5A Studios.
www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/programmes/spendaholics/series4.shtml#sectionEp5
July 2007
Can a Jehovah's Witness find salvation for a broken family? Instead of the usual polite excuses, the mother and daughter in Alain Kramer's latest film invite the neatly dressed visitor into their tormented home. With UK Film Council cash behind it, this quirky short is on its way to premieres at the Edinburgh and London film festivals.
Mac Million invited 5A Studios into this project. Our contribution: dialogue editing, Foley, sound design, and stereo mix.
June 2007
Summer's here (well, sort of) and the BBC's gardening team are back at the RHS Hampton Court Flower Show. Keen gardeners who couldn't quite make it to Hampton Court can see (and hear about) the show gardens at:
www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/flower_shows/hampton_court_2007/
Sounds good? The website voice-overs were recorded, edited, and mastered at 5A Studios in leafy W10.
May 2007
Ian David Diaz's Bad Day hurtles through 24 hours in the life of a renegade cop (Claire Goose, Waking the Dead) who takes revenge on south London mobsters. We like to think that our work on the audio post production (dialogue edit, ADR, Foley, sound design, and stereo mix) adds to the tension and edge-of-your-seat suspense.
For more info, visit www.baddaythemovie.co.uk.
April 2007
Serial girlfriend-dumper Ben (Christopher Pizzey, The Shrine, The Basil Brush Show) gets more than he bargains for when he tries to wave goodbye to Girl 23 (Lisa Taylor-Roberts, Blood Brothers, Wizard of Oz). This off-beat, 12-minute romantic comedy from Elise Keusch premiered at the Cannes Short Film Corner. All post-production sound work (dialogue edit, ADR, Foley, sound design, stereo mix) took place at 5A.
For more info, visit www.tumble-weed.tv/Girl23.htm.