 Aquarium Studios have decided to leave their home of 22 years in Wardour Street and enter into a Services Agreement with the Clear Cut Group to facilitate a planned expansion of their business. In response to increasing critical acclaim, Aquarium have decided that in order to meet the growing demands of their Film and TV Drama clients, while maintaining their often long-standing relationships with their numerous Documentary, Video Game and Corporate clients, they needed to find a partner who could provide scale and support to enable them to accelerate this growth. The Clear Cut Group will provide this support. Aquarium will continue in their own right operating from within Clear Cut’s subsidiary The Edit Store at their Bayley Street site, as well as maintaining Aquarium’s very successful facilities in Brussels.
In addition to offering Aquarium a new location, the move more importantly will bring the administration and technical side of the two companies closer together. It will provide more facilities for the Aquarium team and additional creative support to deliver the voice-over, ADR and documentary TV work that has outgrown Aquarium’s existing premises in Wardour Street. Aquarium MD Sean O’Shea says “with so much negative news about, this is a really positive step. We started speaking to the Clear Cut team about this over a year ago and it seemed to make perfect sense. It was one of those rare occasions where the benefits of working with each other were clear to both sides. When Covid came along the arrangement seemed to make even more sense, and I could see that it would enable us to maximise growth in the knowledge that all our clients, be they Feature Film, TV, Corporate or Video Games, who are all equally important to us, will be better served” Rowan Bray, MD of the Clear Cut Group says ‘Delivering services to clients, tailored to their needs, has always been at the heart of what we do. This is a logical extension of that approach, giving us a chance to collaborate with a sound specialist that we believe is going places. Our businesses are symbiotic and our facilities offer Aquarium eleven suites where they now have four. With our technical and administrative infrastructure the creative team at Aquarium can focus on their award-winning skills while we support their growth plans. We are looking forward to an exciting few years ahead’ For more information please contact Rowan Bray, MD, Clear Cut Group e: rowan@clearcut.cc 020 7605 1755 Sean O’Shea, MD, Aquarium Studios e: sean@aquariumstudios.co.uk 0208 187 2348 More Information about Aquarium and The Clear Cut Group: Aquarium Studios Aquarium Studios have been offering audio post services to the Film, TV, corporate and video games industry since it was founded by Sound Designer Ben Baird in 1997. Awards to date include 3 BAFTAs from 7 nominations, 3 RTS Awards and an Emmy Nomination. While maintaining video games projects such as Electronic Arts’ FIFA alongside corporate work and voice-overs, in recent years Aquarium have increasingly been in demand within the Feature Film side of the industry and have provided Sound Design and Post on films such as Sebastian Lelio’s Disobedience (starring Rachel Weisz/Rachel McAdams), Will Oldroyd’s Lady Macbeth (Florence Pugh), Phylidda Lloyd’s Herself and Jessica Swale’s Summerland (Gemma Arterton), and most recently the critically acclaimed Limbo, directed by Ben Sharrock, which has enjoyed success at both Toronto and Cannes this year. The Clear Cut Group Clear Cut Group comprises four companies: Clear Cut Pictures, The Edit Store (acquired by Clear Cut Pictures in January 2019), Clear Cut Nations & Regions (providing post production outside the M25), and ClearMotion (for VFX). Established in 1993, the business is renowned for providing highly creative post-production to a wide range of broadcasters and production companies. Offering full end-to-end post-production across four sites in London and across the regions, with location services as needed, Clear Cut offers 4K, HDR and SDR capabilities with bespoke solutions to deliver content to screen. The Group offers over 120 suites across their locations, as well as remote services, most recently exceeding 400 remote users of their edit suites since lockdown. The companies’ focus is on documentary and factual entertainment programming with recent credits including Freddie Flintoff: Living with Bulimia (South Shore for BBC1); VJ Day (BBC Studios Events for BBC1); Inside the World’s Toughest Prisons (Emporium Productions for Netflix); Piers Morgan’s Life Stories (Multistory for ITV1) and Council House Britain (The Garden Productions for C4)
5 Comments
  27/04/18
After 13 years as an ADR Mixer for Warner Bros De Lane Lea London, Nick Kray has worked with some of the most well know production companies, actors, directors, and been part of creating some of the biggest movies in the world. This experience has allowed Nick to now offer his skills and talent within the audio post production world to a much wider clientele. We are excited to announce the collaboration between KrADR and multi-award winning Aquarium Studios, offering ADR services at the highest level of audio post production. Based at 122 Wardour Street, Nick now offers a light & airy open plan ADR studio, complete with Source Connect capabilities. For all bookings and enquiries please call Annabel on 020 7734 1611, email Annabel@aquariumstudios.co.uk or use the contact us page on this web site. Nick Kray IMDB https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2390390/
Excellent appreciation of Ben's Sound Design at 3'00'' - excellent review...excellent film!
 In its darkest moments, Lady Macbeth owes a clear stylistic debt to the deadpan provocations of Michael Haneke, particularly when cinematographer Ari Wegner’s widescreen frame captures an unspeakable act in a single, static long shot, the elegant symmetry accentuating the horror. Elsewhere, handheld close-ups lend an urgent intimacy to Katherine’s emotional and physical travails. This may be a low-budget affair (reportedly less than £500,000), but it’s as richly textured as any more expensive period piece. Much of that texture comes from the expressionist sound designs, which juxtapose the clatter of window shutters and crockery inside the house with the more sensual throbs of wind, rain and thunder that sweep through the exterior scenes. Music cues are kept to a minimum; I counted only three, each one a brooding ambient hum in the nightmarish aftermath of a mortal sin. Plaudits to Ben Baird and Dan Jones for their joint work conjuring this superb aural landscape. While Pugh’s Katherine dominates the screen, she is fascinatingly mirrored by Naomi Ackie’s Anna, the maid who loses her voice as Katherine finds hers. Anna is subservient and humiliated, Katherine demonised and vilified, yet both are products of a society that imprisons women, whether within servants’ uniforms or cage-like crinolines. In one particularly alarming scene, Katherine looks on while Boris forces Anna to crawl on her knees “like an animal”, just one of a number of feral transmutations that find characters likened to tethered dogs, hung up like sows, sleeping in barns or brushed and tressed like horses. Other terrific supporting turns include established talent Golda Rosheuvel and young newcomer Anton Palmer, whose appearance derails Katherine’s plans to turn the world upside down. Worth noting, too, that the film’s unblinkered approach to ethnicity (diverse, but never overtly mentioned) not only enriches the drama by challenging the whitewashed facade of much period fare, but also ensures that every role is filled by the best possible player. Amid such an accomplished ensemble cast, Pugh is an electrifying presence, imposingly framed by the blue, gold and black hues of Holly Waddington’s costumes. Identified as a future star by my Observer colleague Guy Lodge back in 2014, this fearless performer seems hellbent on greatness. Appropriately, with a raft of forthcoming roles including a portrayal of British wrestler Paige in Fighting With My Family, Pugh’s in-demand status has ensured that this mesmerising Lady Macbeth shall sleep no more. |