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In this month's TVG newsletter we're featuring a blog from one of our earlier newsletters, it's just so good we had to share it again! We've also got our voice profiles and a little insight into an interesting project we've been working on.
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Can a professional recording studio be THAT much better than a home studio? Our Senior Audio Engineer, Chris Power, gives his verdict...
So... why bother coming to a professional recording studio? Why bother paying for something that seems completely accessible at home?
I record voice-overs every working day of my life and most of the time my job is relatively simple – given a perfect voice, with perfect direction. I record, make it sound nice and send it off. Dead straightforward. I think I’m employed though, not for what I do, but for what I know. There’s an endless amount of issues that can occur with recording. Voices can sound sibilant, or ‘essy,’ which needs to be fixed. It’s a relatively easy fix, but only if you have the know-how. Shaping sound is a dark art that studio engineers spend years learning, only to make it look like a ten-second task when they’re sitting in a session with you. Pro Tools is the leading industry software and has an entire studio built into it – desk, recorder, effects, everything. To learn it properly, we all had to learn how to use a real studio first.
A small booth at home can sound ok, but the chances of it sounding as good as our architect designed, quadruple glazed, acoustically neutral studio is very unlikely. A small set of monitors can sound nice and easy to work, but you won’t hear what you can hear on our Bryston amp/ Dynaudio monitors set up. It is also extremely beneficial having a recording studio that can accommodate five to six clients comfortably, where they relax, direct and enjoy the experience.
Still, none of these are the most important thing. The most important things are consistency and neutrality. Every job you do has to sound perfect. If at some point you need to return to a session to record more, it has to sound the same. Often recordings have to match audio from other professional studios with acoustically neutral rooms. If five different voices record, they have to sound like they were recorded in the same space, and the only way to get this is with a sound engineer in a decent room with decent ears and decent experience.
Having said that, there are voice-overs with beautiful setups at home, with silent isolation chambers in their spare rooms, connecting over ISDN to studios all over the world, sending off consistent and very well edited audio. That could rival the quality that myself and other TVG engineers in London can produce. But, are you ever likely to see their studio set up? They could be just using a fifty-pound mic with a duvet over their head. In my experience, peace of mind and experience goes a long way.
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Meet Ruben. Ruben has a rich and resonant voice that is naturally engaging and easy on the ear.
Ruben received training in voiceover and radio whilst studying at LAMDA, making a bee-line for voiceover work when he graduated. Throughout his voice career he’s worked for brands such as Virgin, Samsung and Shell, and further off the beaten track, has done ADR for foreign films, computer games and a range of TV dramas.
Listen to Ruben’s reels here.
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Meet Denver. Denver is a Zimbabwe-British actor, speaking Shona and English with a versatile accent range that can cover East to West Africa as well as an Urban London.
Denver has been acting since childhood, regularly attending London’s Chicken Shed Theatre after emigrating to England. He’s recently appeared in NBC’s ‘A.D. The Bible Continues’ (currently available on Netflix!) and in the voiceover world has worked for brands such as Fox, BBC and Adidas
Listen to Denver’s English reels here.
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Did you know?
It’s obvious we provide voiceover, it’s right there in our name! But there’s much more to us than that…
A big part of what makes us who we are, are our full-service audio studios in Manchester and London. We’re prepped for all kinds of audio production, including post-production techniques such as mixing, sound design and laying back to picture. With a growing number of in-territory partner studios and ISDN & source connect capabilities, we’re also ideally placed to help with all your localisation requirements. We've recently gained Source-Connect Certification across all of our studios, meaning you can be assured of a quality connection with us.
Our Manchester studio comes with a patio, just in case you want to top up your tan mid-recording. Although, Manchester and sun don’t really go hand in hand do they…
Call the office on 0161 881 8844 or 020 7987 0951 to book our studios.
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A new language for us at TVG
We’ve had an interesting job recently at TVG towers in collaboration with a global production house and some well-known characters…
The idea was to encourage hygiene in areas of Africa by re-versioning 18 videos, starting with Kinyarwanda, one of the native languages in Rwanda. The project required 5 voice talents to cover narration as well as adult, children and puppet voices, and for our UK studio to deliver the final mix and rough layback for each video.
However, there aren’t many Kinyarwanda voices sitting around in the UK waiting for the phone to ring! So it was with the help of one of our in-territory partner studios, that we sourced and recorded the audio quickly and cost-effectively before whizzing the audio back to our own studios to finish the post-production.
Kinyarwanda is a rare language we haven’t worked with before in our 15-year history, but it just goes to prove there isn’t a language we can’t source! Test our skills and send us your localisation queries...
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15th August. NABS Summer Social. NABs is all about looking after the health and wellbeing of those working in the creative industry, so having a summer social in Manchester is just what the doctor ordered, and our entire Manchester bookings team will be there!
21st - 23rd August. Edinburgh TV Festival. The Edinburgh TV Festival is the biggest media event in the UK. Bringing together all parts of the television and digital world to debate the major issues facing the industry.
3rd September. MPA Social. Manchester Publicity Association is hosting a Summer social for all the creative folk of Manchester to get together. Roddy and Judith, our Localisation Manager and English agency manager will be there showing off their dance moves...
19th - 20th September. ATC Language Industry Summit. Hosted by the Association of Translation Companies, the ATC Language summit is the event for discussion and seminars relating to all aspects of the language industry.
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