AudioMedia - November 2008 - (Page 24)

Studio Snapshot A Fluid Business The Fresh New Outlook For Aquarium Studios Less ‘goldfish bowl’, and more ‘Sealife Centre’, Aquarium shows PAUL MAC around its new and spacious premises. S tar ting life 11 years ago, Aquarium's more established base is a building in Wardour Street, in Soho, London – though this has recently been augmented with an additional location in St. Anne’s Court. That location is part of what was Worldwide Studios, a purpose built facility that started life in the late 1970s. Aquarium has refurbished and re-equipped the rooms, though has kept in some of the existing technology such as a 35/16mm projector and mag-tracks facilities. The refur bishment adds t wo main rooms – one of which is a Dolby accredited mix room with AMS Neve DFC, and one of which is the new ADR/Foley space. As well as that, large rooms that would have housed ver y big, and now dated, machines can be turned over to track-lay duties and so on. I visited the studios and met up with Peter Joly (Managing Director) and Pam Thompson (Facilit y Manager and Bookings) for the tour. One thing that stood out was how little work needed to be done to bring these rooms up to scratch. The infrastructure was there – including floated rooms, and after a gear re-fit, some paint, and a few internal acoustic treatments, it was ready to go – the rooms were working within six weeks of the deal being done. that round-table productions can be accommodated easily. “Then everybody started getting familiar with the rooms,” explained Joly. “We’d already used the space for our own voice recording – prior to the switch-over of equipment we’d been in there shooting ADR, since the end of last year.” A Few G o o d R e a s o n s There are a few good reasons for the expansion of Aquarium to happen this way; and indeed, happen at all. First is keeping loyal clients – many of whom have been using Aquarium since its inception 11 years ago. Rather than see them opt for bigger studios somewhere else as their needs evolve, it was decided to provide them with that progression ‘in-house’. Of course, new rooms also have the potential to bring new clients as well. The current spread of work at Aquarium, according to Thompson is “Around 60 percent broadcast – sports, drama, high-end drama, docus, TV entertainment, reality; all that kind of stuff. I’d say a good 20 percent is corporate work – we’ve always done a lot of that. Then computer games, feature films, and multi-media is the remaining slice.” Peter Joly, Aquarium MD. There’s a lot of space in the new rooms – which translates into ‘multi-purpose’ for those with a eye to keeping the facility agile in markets that these days need watching very carefully. Additional Foley is feasible (and already tried and tested), while enough room for more than the usual two or three bodies means R e to u c h Game sound has evolved now to the point where previously linear post houses are looking to get a slice of the action – and the experience that film/TV facilities can offer in terms of surround mixing, large project logistics, and audio quality is something that some games companies are starting to use. “Working in the games industry is great,” explained Thompson. It’s fun, it’s entertaining. There’s a lot of management to it Of course there’s the sound design aspect, and with the two industries kind of merging, you get more theatrical, more dramatic games It’s inherently the same – you’ve got to know what to do with a microphone and how to get the best audio from someone – but there are aspects that make it slightly different to broadcast.” “I think it’s the management and delivery,” continued Joly. “That’s the crucial thing. The rest are the same skills we’d use on anything; but there’s file naming and editing in a particular way. It’s a very definitive way of doing something.” Thompson: Yes, you’ve a very small part of a big game, and you’ve got a certain amount of media size that you’ve got to adhere to. Audio only has a certain slice of the computer I n Th e G a m e > AUDIO MEDIA NOVEMBER 2005

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of AudioMedia - November 2008

AudioMedia - November 2008 Contents Recording News Post News Broadcast News Geofocus: Italy What's Up UK AES Review For the Record Studio Snapshot: Aquarium Abbey Road Plug-ins Brilliance Pack Neumann TLM67 Mercenary Audio KM-69 IZ Technology ADA Final Cut Special: Bond TC Powercore 6000 EP Productions Nagra VI Product Sampler: Location Tools Video Guide AMSR News Shure KSM9 Big Beach Boutique 4

AudioMedia - November 2008

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