28
William’s audio suites The right mix for the farm group’s William Ultra modern audio suites Stunning sounding 5.1 rooms
The audio post capabilities of The Farm Group’s plush new facility William are expansive, having been kitted out with seven audio suites all completed to the same high-end finish using kit supplied by Scrub.
The Farm’s striking new facility, in what was William Blake’s birthplace on 8 Marshall Street, is an ultra contemporary space that’s been exquisitely finished. The facility is The Farm Group’s fifth central London site and houses 20 Avid cutting suites, seven audio studios, 10 finishing suites and two grading suites, costing £5m to set up.
The Farm Group has spent many years honing its top-end audio studios to precisely meet its needs, so rather than tinkering with them, it decided to copy the same setup for William.
“Our setup is highly scalable. What we did early on was come up with a design for how studios should be wired up and we just copy that every time we add a new studio,” explains Nick Fry, senior dubbing mixer, The Farm Group. “Our suites can’t differ from each other or have their own little quirks – the audio rooms at William are deliberately identical to the rooms we have in all our other facilities.”
“The idea is to ensure any audio session can be opened in any studio within the group, across all our different London offices as well as our base in LA,” says Fry. “The rooms all have identically spec’d Mac Avid Pro Tools setups and Icon D- Command mixing desks, and the same Genelec speakers. The only difference from one suite to the next from a technical point of view is our larger rooms have larger projectors.”
Fry adds that, while the kit is the same, the look and feel of the group’s audio suites depends on which of The Farm’s buildings you’re working in. “Each of our facilities has its own feel, so visually the audio suites in William look a little different to, say, the audio rooms in Uncle or Soho Square. As a facility, William feels different and the colours of the desks and rooms reflects this; but they are the same mixing desks throughout.”
hhb.co.uk
The Farm Group is one of the largest post production providers in the country yet refuses to conform to what could be viewed as industry expectations to immediately upgrade to the latest version of anything as soon as it becomes available. The Farm underwent a group-wide overhaul of its audio rooms to Pro Tools|HDX last year, but this was the first time it had made such a move in over five years. William’s rooms have been created as a duplicate of these upgraded rooms.
“We’ve always bought what we need rather than what the industry may want us to buy. Most audio guys like to sit in front of a huge mixing desk, but we’ve chosen desks that suit us size-wise rather than going for something enormous just for the sake of it,” says Fry. “You really don’t need that many faders no matter how many tracks you’re mixing; it’s far more important to have a desk that feels right for the room.”
Another thing that separates The Farm Group from much of its competition is it posts many different genres of TV, which has an impact on the skillset of the personnel it employs.
“When it comes to audio, we’re unusual in that we need staff to work across all these different genres,” says Fry. “All our staff are capable of doing everything, which is very useful as you may be doing a doc and need a line of dialogue to sound like it was recorded on location – if you’re practiced at dubbing ADR for drama you can then bring that experience to other genres. Ultimately, it’s all about telling stories.”
The supply of hardware and software for all of William’s audio suites was handled by HHB’s audio post production specialist division Scrub. The choice of Scrub was an easy one for The Farm Group, having formed a close relationship with the company over many years.
“Scrub supplied all the Pro Tools hardware and software and other bits and pieces for the audio rooms at William,” explains Adam Peat, chief engineer, The Farm Group. “We’ve a long-standing relationship with the company. Scrub have the expertise, and their support and ability to react to any problems is second to none; they’ve never let us down.”
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36