Roary Scoops RTS Gong!

Chapman Entertainment’s Roary the Racing Car walked away with the prize for the Best Children’s Programme at the recent Royal Television Society North West Awards.

The Hellie’s A Winner episode was competing against Chapman stable mate, Fifi and the Flowertots, plus Citizenship & Surveillance for the BBC Learning Zone in the category.

Chapman MD and executive producer, Greg Lynn, and Roary the Racing Car director, Tim Harper, accepted the award.

“We pride ourselves on making first class shows for pre-schoolers and winning Best Children’s Programme for Roary is a great honour - especially as he is in such excellent company,” said Lynn. “This award is a reflection of the combined talents of a dedicated team of specialists working in the field of children’s animation, and I’d particularly like to thank both the production team in London and at the studio, Tim Harper, our director, and Phil Chalk, our senior producer, on a job well done.”

Animation stars flock to The Voice And Music Company for Peter Kay and BBC Children in Need!

- Nearly 100 characters’ voices recorded for new charity single and video -

The Voice And Music Company, Soho’s state-of-the-art audio production and post-production facility, is delighted to announce that it has recorded and edited the audio track for the 2009 BBC Children in Need charity single and video. The project, produced by Chapman Entertainment, is the brainchild of the inimitable Peter Kay and features generations of beloved animation characters from Muffin the Mule to Bob the Builder all singing along. It debuted on BBC Children In Need on Friday 20 November 2009.

The Voice And Music Company had worked with Peter Kay and Chapman Entertainment previously on the successful children’s animation series Roary the Racing Car, as well as Chapman’s Fifi and the Flowertots, so the facility was the obvious choice to handle the audio on this prestigious project. Nearly 100 artistes, including Ringo Starr, Jane Horrocks, Neil Morrissey and Bernard Cribbins took part in the project. The majority of voices were recorded in the space of a month in The Voice And Music Company’s large recording suites – which helped to accommodate the sheer scale of the production - while some were recorded at Hullabaloo Studios in Manchester, and Scooby Doo sent his contribution via ISDN from the US!

Emily Whinnett, Chapman Entertainment’s Director of Production and Producer of the single, said, “The Voice And Music Company was the obvious choice for us. The quality and attention to detail they deliver is second to none and there was never a doubt they would be the number one choice to fulfil the brief of recording, pitching, tuning and producing all the character voices for the BBC Children in Need track. Not an easy task to achieve, but achieve it they did! They worked around the clock, giving up a lot of love, time, hard work and commitment.”

Stewart Barnes, Sound Engineer, used a Digidesign Pro Tools|HD system to record the voices, edit the project and create a rough mix with in excess of 100 vocal tracks for the animation team. The biggest task was keeping track of the number of voices and what people had recorded; in the early stages many of the song lines were not assigned to any particular character, so most of the artistes recorded the whole song. With up to 70 voices on the track at any one time, the editing task of matching each line with individual characters was immense.

Kim Goody, Co-Founder, The Voice And Music Company, said, “It has been such a privilege to work on this extraordinary production. Having worked with both Peter Kay and Chapman in the past, we know that they demand phenomenally high standards and I’m so proud that they had the level of trust in our studio and team to deliver on this important project.“

In 2008, the BBC Children in Need Appeal received £38 million through donations, which went to organisations working with disadvantaged children and young people in the UK. With the help of Peter Kay’s single, the charity hopes to beat last year’s total through the generosity of its supporters in Britain.

Congratulations to Novel Entertainment for their Childrens BAFTA nomination.  The Voice And Music Company have just completed the audio post production on the second series of the show and are very proud to have been involved on such a great project.

Horrid Henry is up for Best Animation on 29th November, best of luck, we’ll be keeping everything crossed!

This week we are celebrating our 2 year anniversary at our Soho Square facility!

Voice & Music Throw Head Engineer Chris The Ultimate Pre-Wedding Send Off! 

Our Head Engineer Chris Morris recently married the lovely Sarah at a beautiful, country ceremony in Chris’s home town in sunny Suffolk. Congratulations to them both!  

This was a perfect excuse for a good-ol’ knees up and to get Chris into the party mood, Voice and Music took him out for a pre-wedding, fun-packed evening of adventure on London’s Southbank which included an exhilarating, white-knuckle speedboat trip on the Thames followed by a Champagne party in a private pod on The London Eye (Chris has a fear of heights, so you can only imagine the fun we had with this one!)  We rounded off the evening with some good old fashioned pub grub.  

It was a spectacular send-off, and here we all are…..

Lunch In The Square?

Did you know that 10th-16th August is National Picnic Week?  This month we will be supporting one of England’s most enjoyable summer traditions and invite you to join us!  We’ve invested in some fabulous picnic blankets so that you may enjoy your lunch alfresco on Soho Square.  What better way to get out of the studio and stretch your legs?  We’ll even deliver your lunch to you in the square.  

We at Voice And Music love this idea so much that we’re thinking of making it a permanent fixture! Happy picnicking!