We were delighted to welcome old chum Mel Giedroyc back to CKUK last month to complete post-production on Series 3 of her hit Channel 4 woodworking show Handmade. The level of talent on display is incredible and all credit is due to Plimsoll Productions for developing such a winning format (not to mention the gorgeous location in the South Wales countryside).
We were delighted to provide post-production services on Channel 4’s hit new comedy series One Night In, featuring The Last Leg pals Josh Widdecombe and Alex Booker joined by comedian friends as they all spend a night alone at some of Britain’s best-known tourist attractions, including The Natural History Museum, London Zoo, Alton Towers and Legoland. The four part series runs on Fri nights at 10pm on Channel 4 from 16th December, with narration by the one and only Mel Giedroyc recorded here at CKUK.
CKUK was delighted to record Mel Giedroyc’s linking narrations for all episodes of Channel’s 4’s new hit series Handmade: Britain's Best Woodworkers, in which talented, good-with-wood craftspeople compete to be crowned Britain's best woodworker by award-winning architect Alex de Rijke and queen of furniture making Helen Welch. As always with Mel, the recording sessions were a scream and the show a genuine pleasure to work on. Don’t miss it at 8pm every Thursday evening from Oct 21st on Channel 4.
And finally… after the aborted trailer campaigns for No Time to Die in March and November 2020 it was third time lucky with the movie finally opening to rave reviews last week. CKUK director Christopher Kent was the trailer voice through all three iteration of the campaign, recording all sessions in our studio here. This is one of our favourite radio spots this time round, featuring the haunting theme song by Billie Eilish.
Great to welcome old chum Mel Giedroyc to the studio this week to record the audio version of her forthcoming debut novel The Best Things. As you’d expect for such a consummate comic actor it’s drop dead hilarious and full of great gags and great characters. It’s due for publication in April 2021 and we’re confidently predicting it should be one of the year’s publishing sensations.
One of the challenges of lockdown was keeping recording when many people couldn’t physically travel. Fortunately, CKUK has been perfecting the art of remote recording since the very early days of ISDN and now has a veritable battery of connection options plus contacts with talent agencies and individual artists in many countries around the world, which enabled us to tread a careful path round some of the more hastily thrown together home studio options on offer. Among many other lockdown projects we were pleased to record a TVC campaign for H&M Spring Fashion in eight languages, sourcing some stellar talent along the way.
CKUK director Chris Kent was just busy voicing the trailer campaign for new Bond movie “No Time to Die” in the studio when its April launch was postponed till November, due to the worldwide Coronavirus epidemic. For Daniel Craig’s final outing as 007 director Cary Joji Fukunaga has produced a pulsatingly contemporary action movie, with standout guest performances from Léa Seydoux, Rami Malek and Lashana Lynch, and a sharply witty script, no doubt partly due to the involvement of the amazing Phoebe Waller-Bridge. To whet the appetite, here is one of the prototype audio trailers we had produced so far…
CKUK was pleased to project manage the audio recording process for the 2019 Hello Fresh campaign. We cast, recorded and produced voiceovers across 15 national markets. Here’s the UK version voiced by top voice actor Jacky Davies.
Well, if you ever need to be on fire as an actor (literally rather than figuratively, that is) this is the man to ask for. Nice to welcome Game of Thrones stunt co-ordinator Rowley Irlam to the studio for a radio interview with CBC in Canada today. Such stories...
Great to work with actor Roger Allam last week who was at the studio to record an Introduction to Buddhism, no less. Here he is with CKUK director Chris Kent. We actually had a lot of fun so no-one know why they both look so serious (probably a touch of beard envy). Roger is between series of ITV’s Endeavour and about to appear at the National Theatre in Rutherford and Sons (hence the luxuriant facial fur).
Very nice to welcome the wonderful Dame Harriet Walter to CKUK recently to dub herself into French, if you please, for the rather extraordinary H&M film directed by Baz Luhrmann, no less. No pesky budgetary constraints on this film set: https://youtu.be/PEANC3ipyws
Wonderful to welcome the incomparable Brian Blessed back to CKUK for ADR on some invision commercials he had recorded in New Zealand for ABB Bank. The problem? The location audio team had struggled to deal with the extremities of Brian’s dynamic range, which was also our challenge, especially every time he let rip with his catchphrase “Gordon’s alive” every few minutes. That and the problem of dealing with the gales of laughter following each of the great man’s anecdotes, of which there are many! We got there in the end, but what a blast we had along the way
A truly intercontinental session at the studio this week, when DDB New Zealand hooked up via Source Connect to record über-talented US voice actor Bob Turtin for their new McDonalds campaign. They had cast Bob in LA after extensive auditions but when they came to record he was already on his way to Europe to join Tim Robbins' Actors Gang for festival performances of the company's acclaimed A Midsummer Night's Dream in France and Italy. As luck would have it, Bob had planned a stop-over in London and we were able to get him in to the studio for a quick-fire recording session. The beauties of the interconnected world...
A busy morning at the studio when the good folks from Confused.com came in for some syndicated interviews down the line to around fifteen different radio stations. In the booth was former traffic policeman Roger Reynolds, who initiated the very first speed camera programme on Britain's roads over 20 years ago. He had some interesting things to say about the use of speed cameras now, backed up by research on driver behaviour from Confused.com. We were able to hook up a succession of ISDN and phone patch feeds in quick succession and everyone went home happy.
A busy week of down-the-line recording on an insurance theme here at the studio, with talented young British actor Thomas Nelstrop dropping by to continue his series of ads for AA Insurance in New Zealand. Synchronising time zones is always the main challenge with sessions down under, but an early start for us and a late night for the guys at Special Group in Auckland, NZ was all it took to get our Source Connect session up and running sweet as a nut. Here's one of the earlier spots from the series featuring Thomas's voice.
We were pleased to welcome former BBC correspondent and erstwhile Strictly Come Dancing star John Sergeant to the studio to record material for his forthcoming BBC2 spoof documentary "John Sergeant Meets Rab C Nesbitt", in which he travels to Govan to interrogate the man behind the string vest, supported by clips of Rab's finest and funniest moments. It's a long time since Gregor Fisher's magnificently down-at-heel Scotsman graced our screens, and judging by the sections of script we recorded it should be an absolute scream. Due for broadcast on BBC2 on 10th November, 2011.
A fun couple of sessions at the studio when the wonderful Dame Judi Dench dropped by to record a bunch of commercials via Source Connect with New Zealand for ASB Bank. She is always one of the nicest people on the planet to work with - completely natural, self-deprecating and very funny. She was just about to start filming the new Bond movie. "Any nice locations this time?" we asked. "Oh, probably just the usual shed at Pinewood..." she replied.
Legendary psychic and cutlery-manipulator extraordinaire Uri Geller dropped by to record some promos for his syndicated show "The Successor" aka "The Next Uri Geller", which is currently broadcast in 18 countries. Not that we would ever have asked, but while he was here he spontaneously offered to do a little spoon-bending and did indeed cause one of our teaspoons to droop before our very eyes. Never a dull moment...
A busy start to 2011 in the studio with continuing projects for Cisco, Diageo and SKF. This week's main job was working with talented Aussie actress Casey Hill on a new IVR recording project for the Tesco International Calling Card.
Meanwhile, we were delighted to welcome top UK ventriloquist Paul Zerdin to the studio to work via Source Connect with South Africa on commercials for Dial Direct. You might wonder, as we did, quite how ventriloquism works in a voice-over context, but actually the session was part of ongoing work to establish character voices for a later onscreen campaign. And no, sadly Paul didn't bring his puppets with him!
A busy multilingual week in the studio. We linked up with partner studio Speakeasy in Singapore to record Korean actress Sang Hwa for an ongoing corporate project for Cisco and our continuing work for Pepsico this week involved Arabic. Meanwhile our quarterly news program for Swedish engineering giant SKF was delivered with subtitled versions in English, Swedish, French, Spanish and Italian and dubbed versions in Chinese, German and Brazilian Portuguese. We slept well this weekend...
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