On the 24th June about 20 members and guests gathered in this flagship complex at Wembley, North London, for an interesting tour led by their enthusiastic managing director, Adrian Kerridge, whom we are also glad to have as one our Members. The relatively modern building, totally dissimilar from its heavy neighbours built for the Great Empire Exhibition of 1924, was built under the direction of Dave Siddle, opening in 1971 as the De Lane Lea Music Centre and amalgamating with CTS who had to leave their Bayswater home in 1972. In 1987, the facility was acquired by Lansdowne Studios who until then had only one studio (run by Adrian) which is part of the same group, and continues to this day with its smaller sized facilities in London's Holland Park area.
Most of our feature film post-production members will have had business dealings at some time with Studio 1, one of the biggest scoring stages in Britain, being able to accommodate up to 130 players. All the Bond films except two have been scored at CTS (including at their original premises in Kensington Garden Square) and they're current doing much work for Paramount Pictures. The warm visual ambience is created by the liberal use of wood, giving a basic reverberation period of 1.8 secs, but of course the flexibility afforded by separation screens can reduce that for chosen groups of musicians. During our visit senior engineer Dick Lewzey was setting up for the next day with the usual profusion of favourite mics for individuals plus an overhead boom carrying matched wide cardioids for L, C, R: the standard format they supply for film dubbing being L, C, R, and surround, via a Neve VRP console in the first floor control room. We also visited the film projection room, Adrian claimed it to be the only one left since all their competitors changed over to working with video tape only.
Studio 2 is equipped with an AMS Neve Capricorn digital console; it was installed over two years ago and was about to be upgraded by AMS Neve to handle the requirements of 5.1 digital audio channels for surround work. Liberal use of oak here also gives a warm feeling in the studio, which can take about 35 players, including a few in a gallery area if greater separation was needed.
Studio 3 was referred to as their 'classic rock 'n' roll room' with its vivid coloured Hessian panels on the walls untouched for many years. Studio 3 control room however has been remodelled recently and is equipped with an automated DDA AMR24 console.
Studio 4 is the smallest room and the only one remaining of the Eastlake design period. It tends to be used for voice-over and synth programming plus overdubs where the sound of it's console, the original classic Neve 26- input desk bought from CTS Kensington (for which they've been offered "lots of money") is much in demand.
On for a glimpse of three post production rooms equipped respectively with SADiE and Sonic Solutions digital editing gear, and a Neumann helium-cooled lathe for cutting masters for vinyl discs - still in demand for 'house' music - nothing beats a DJ scrubbing a turntable with one digit!
Amongst the fascinating snippets of information Adrian dispensed was that they had three ISDN lines available to any of the studios for long distance use. Recently they'd had an 80-piece orchestra online to New York for five hours so that executives could be 'present' at the sessions without the expense of travel and hotels. Another observation that rings bitterly true with some of us is that picture editing on tape has encouraged some Directors to think it's normal to recut the night before dubbing or scoring, sometimes without warning the composer; they'd recently had a big orchestra in that hadn't played a note for the whole session because the score no longer fitted anything! "Not a British movies of course - they can't afford to do that".
A different line of comment concerned the trouble caused by there having been no standard for Exabyte until very recently; they'd sent off CD masters for processing and found the recipient complaining of differing results.... Was it ever thus!
Our final call was to the servicing workshop. After all the tidy hi-tech we'd seen earlier I was amused to notice that humble humanoids still exist: a grid chart on the wall had down the left margin 'PETE, TRIS, JAMES, TOBY' etc and along the top MILK, CREAM, SUGAR, CUP, MUG..."
A most fascinating tour of a deservedly prosperous facility. Many thanks Adrian.
PETER MUSGRAVE