Tandem Studios » tandem

Who will be the 2010 RounDUp renegades?

kineta — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 05:00:57 +0000

Wanted: Canterbury’s next biggest musical vigilantes, a new brand of outlaw who shred from the hip; who will be the 2010 RounDUp renegades? This showdown is open to all brave enough to face their fears and join the ranks of past RounDUp outlaws – including The Klap, The Tiger Tones, Bang! Bang! Eche!, Slipstream and The Undercurrents, Shapeshifter, The O’Lovelies, The Deceivers, The Insurgents, Heavy Jones Trio, P Bass Expressway and 2009 overall winner; Sleepy Age.

The Christchurch live music scene is thriving, with over 500 bands currently listed on the CHART website. The Dux de Lux RounDUp 2010 is a tangible example of RDU’s commitment to developing locally produced, original music and sharing it with the wider New Zealand music industry. RDU 98.5FM is stoked to be collaborating with Christchurch’s key music industry partners to provide the winning band with the opportunity to get their career as a band rolling.

Bands that reach the final will automatically receive:
- A mastered live recording of their performance with us at Tandem Studios and MAINZ, and vouchers thanks to Real Groovy
- The grand final winner will receive $1500 credit thanks to the Rockshop, a live mastered recording of their performance from us at Tandem and MAINZ, a studio recording thanks to The Sitting Room, a music video from this recording produced thanks to Gorilla Pictures, a promo photo session with Dean Mackenzie photography, management membership and mentoring thanks to Music Managers Forum, a live to air over the b.net from Auckland’s Red Bull studios and finally promotional support and mentoring thanks to CHART!

Further announcements to follow – all details will be posted on www.rdu.org.nz

Entry forms must be received by 6th September.

For more information, contact RDU on (03) 364 2983 or email: roundup@rdu.org.nz

Tandem’s studio gets makeover

kineta — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 23:11:33 +0000

We’ve started some renovations to our studio to not only give a better quality of sound to our recordings but to give a better flow to our building.

As it’s set up at the moment, when the recording studio is in use we can’t access the facilities as they’re in the same area as the recording studio and the area where the producer and client sits. So, the solution was to bump the voice booth into the main studio and move the engineer into the now-vacant voice booth.

So, the old studio will soon be a meeting and social room – with excellent access to the kitchen and bathroom – an excellent solution!

Our sound engineer, Toby Ricketts, says using the bigger studio as a voicebooth will be more acoustically controlled. He says the multi-purpose space will give better sound and expects an improvement in voice-over recording quality.

Here’s what the renovations look like today:

Big weekend of film making in 48HRS

dave — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 03:37:36 +0000

This weekend, experienced and budding filmmakers alike will be doing their best to make magnificent films of up to seven minutes in length in just 48 hours.

The 48 hour film festival is stressful, fun and manic all at the same time, especially as the filmmakers don’t know what genre (thriller/romance etc) they will be shooting until the start of the competition. All creativity (writing, shooting, editing, and adding a musical soundtrack), must occur within the 48 hour window beginning Friday evening at 7pm and ending Sunday at 7pm. To add to the mayhem, they must also include some random elements.

In years gone Toby Ricketts (from Tandem) has teamed up with Andy and the guys from The Outwits and this year they’ll again be entering and using Tandem Studios as a base, but… at the other end of Tandem Studios, Logan McMillan from Gorilla Pictures will be working with his team on their entry, so a very busy weekend in the studios.

Let the battle of the films begin!

Heres the film that The Outwits won the Christchurch event with back in 2007. Toby is one of the henchmen in the film and he mixed the audio, as he will again this weekend.

The latest at Tandem

dave — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 01:25:17 +0000

It’s April in the twenty-tens already and we feel like we’re sitting atop a highly-tuned Harley rather than a tandem built for two!

We’ve changed our logo, our website, added a few staff, and really defined our direction for the next few years. As you know today’s media is all about content and that’s exactly what we do; using our experience and expertise we create content for the wide variety of media channels available in both traditional, new media and social media. Find out more at our new website www.tandemstudios.co.nz

New staff: Sean Davies is in the new Mac video editing suite. Kineta Knight is both Social Media Editor – providing strategy and content for client’s social media, website and other communications; and editor of the website we designed and run for the NZ Parliament www.inthehouse.co.nz.

Steve Lyons is on top of Sales, and Deb Stanaway our resident Producer. Jonny Pipe is Studio Manager and is busy developing our ‘music for games’ business (already we’ve made music for three games, with a 4th soon to begin)

Growth: as the new staff suggest, Tandem has seen a lot of growth in business over the last year, including television commercials, website builds, documentaries, and the creation of a world first ‘Parliament TV on demand’ website called www.inthehouse.co.nz for the Office of the Clerk

Voice Agency: still the biggest agency in the South Island by a country mile, and still attracting great new talent – like the legendary Michael Morrissey (Telecom and a few other ads over the years).

The Voice School: we’ve just had one and there’ll be another in a couple of months. We have professionals teaching the skills and business of voiceovers – the only course of it’s kind in the country! Classes are small and the whole weekend’s a blast!

Check out our blog which is updated on a daily basis, and please note the new email address – ‘firstname’@tandemstudios.co.nz

Case Study: Richard Dawkins podcast

toby — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 02:01:57 +0000

Tandem Studios was proud to collaborate with the Christchurch Press recently to bring you Richard Dawkins’ lecture held recently at the town hall. Richard Dawkins is one of the worlds most promenent evolutionary biologists and atheists, and in promoting his latest book ‘The Greatest Show On Earth’ gave a 2 hour talk at the Christchurch Town Hall.

Podcasting is the perfect vehicle for distributing this kind of long-form content, and we’ve used it sucessfully to promote lectures, talks, and presentations in a variety of situations.

If you do not record events like these, then they are lost forever. It is so easy to capture this content and make it available forever so that it has a much larger effect over a longer time.

Click below to have a listen to the first episode of Richard Dawkins at Christchurch Town Hall:

Click here to subscribe to the entire free podcast.

And here’s the video!

Tandem Voice School

kineta — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 02:38:58 +0000

Tandem held its Voice School over the weekend, introducing interested talent to the voicing market.

Having voiced commercials for radio and television for a few years now, I didn’t think there was really any need for me to attend a voice school. I mean, I’m getting work, so I’m obviously OK at what I do, right? Ahhh, yes, the arrogance of youth..

I had the opportunity to take part in Tandem’s Voice School over the weekend, and when I turned up at 9am on Saturday, all I could think about was it was way too early to be awake, let alone ready to learn. But as soon as Dave Dunlay went through what we would be doing over the course of the weekend, who the tutors were, and the mention of lunch, I started to get a little more excited.

Our first tutor was Deb Stanaway, a familiar voice from radio and television commercials, who had us write up a ‘pros and cons’ list of what we thought of our voices. I would go through this list with you, but it’s so long it might bore you to extinction. However, there were a number of things I wanted to work on, and was interested to see how that panned out.

Toby Ricketts went through the basics of what to expect in a studio – etiquette and professionalism, which lead into Deb’s tutorial on how to be conscious of your voice and how to take care of it.

And then it was time to head into the voice booth – reading children’s stories. I was last to have a go in the booth, and as I sat there while the five guys had their turn ahead of me, I was getting more and more nervous. It’s funny how your brain can do these funny things to you. I mean, I’ve performed in front of thousands of people before, yet, reading a story to just a few had me holding my script with sweaty palms. But as soon as I was in the booth, all anxiety was gone and away I went.

The feedback Deb gave us was instant and valuable. We stood in the booth, behind the mic with our headphones on, and as she gave us direction we would take it on board and try again. It’s amazing what can be learnt just by reading a children’s story. Key point: remember your audience; who are you speaking to?

Michael Morrissey, one of New Zealand’s top commercial voices, including being the voice of Telecom, hosted the afternoon session – interpreting the creative. It was an invaluable lesson on how to record ads with different scripts, different reads and different interpretations – how to ‘meet the brief’. He was an exceptionally encouraging and honest tutor, which we all appreciated.

The following day’s morning session saw us learning how to speak in different accents, with Norman Forsey. Although accents don’t come naturally to most people, Norm made it fun for us, and giving it a go in an environment where everyone else was doing the exact same thing made it OK.

In the afternoon, Ron Rodger took us for an acting for radio session. Ron had written an original script for us all to perform in this acting and improvisation session.

View the session here:

The weekend voice school is definitely something I would recommend to other ‘voices’ around New Zealand, or anyone thinking they might like to give voicing a go. It’s amazing how much you can learn in just one weekend, and you leave with a sample of your best work on CD for potential employers to listen to.

For more information about Tandem’s Voice School: http://www.voiceschool.co.nz/

Le Race 2010

kineta — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 01:20:23 +0000

Le Race is one of New Zealand’s leading annual hill-climb cycling events – racing 100km from the centre of Christchurch, over the Port Hills to Akaroa.

Tandem Studios’ Dave Dunlay was this year’s MC for Le Race. Here is a video he shot over the course of the day – 20 March, 2010:

A Tour of Tandem Studios…

toby — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:58:48 +0000

Take a tour of Tandem Studios with Creative Director – Dave Dunlay…