Examination of Witnesses (Questions 19420
- 19439)
19420. So far as compensation is concerned,
if, of course, Crossrail's predictions are correct and everything
works smoothly and the studio can function, then, of course, the
issue of compensation would not arise. If, on the other hand,
the uncertainties attributed to the model render business incapable
of being conducted because of the sensitivity of the studio then
we say, in those circumstances, we will have to close, and it
is inequitable to harness the statutory system which debars us
from compensation. If they are wrong, we have to go and close
and Crossrail would have it we do so without any form of compensation
whatsoever. We think that is inequitable and unfair.
Mr Ivor Taylor, Recalled
Re-examined by Mr Newberry
19421. Committee, we were dealing with Mr Ivor
Taylor last time and we got, I think, to paragraph 22. Mr Taylor,
you were about to discuss what is the most critical part of the
studio's work. I wonder if you could take us forward on that,
please.
(Mr Taylor) Good morning.
The most critical part of our work is voice recording itself.
Voice is something which we all learn to very clearly and instantly
identify in tonality, origin, ethnicity and sounds around that
voice. We can hear somebody speaking from the other side of the
world and we might have talked to them for three or four years
and we will instantly recognise the voice, we know it is somebody
we know. Our job in commercials is to record the voice with the
correct intonation the correct delivery the script calls for and
the correct clarity as well. We record the voice in the voiceover
booth, it is listened to time and time again and often you will
have many, many takes, and I described earlier the Julie Andrew's
session which took 300 takes. You listen to it very carefully,
you are listening for defects and for the artistic side and the
technical side. Once that has been done, then we find out the
other things that are recorded in the studio which may be sound
effects, sounds effects which you have got from the computer or
sounds effects you have created yourself, where we record things
such as the door opening because that is what is required for
that script. All those elements are listened to individually,
appraised individually and put together and checked for how they
fit and how they sound, and that is the process we make in a final
mix. In that environment we need to exclude all identifiable sound
sources. I mentioned last time about how we check the voiceover,
sitting in a chair and it squeaking, paper rustling noise, a voiceover
when you are taking the script, they cannot touch the paper like
that (indicating), all those will shatter completely the illusion
that you are trying to create, and our concern about the Crossrail
noise is that noise is identifiable as a rumbling or a train,
people hear those noises and if that intrudes into our voice recording
anywhere, into the recording of sound effects and other issues
or into quality control, you can have a situation where you have
recorded the voice and it is perfect, but you have another extraneous
noise. You check an extraneous noise on the recording and also
in the monitoring environment, so there was no contamination,
the recording is clean. The voice recording is a very pure start
but then moves into the production environment which is the control
and in that again you would listen with high acuity, very high
levels, trying to detect things that are incorrect and at the
same time working to very tight deadlines and the service of the
clients. That is what we do. Is now the right time for me to report
on the Marks & Spencer's commercial, which I could play the
Committee if it is appropriate and the work we have done on the
BBC Two re-launch which was promoted on BBC Television with the
BBC Two Idents, all the work which we are very proud of?
19422. Chairman: How long will it take?
(Mr Taylor) Five minutes.
19423. Then I think we will suspend the Committee
and come back.
After a short break
19424. Mr Newberry: Yes, Mr Taylor.
(Mr Taylor) (Marks and Spencer Christmas television
advertisement shown):[2]
We have been doing all the Marks and Spencer food commercials
which have achieved a huge impact for Marks and Spencer because
they speak of quality. They raise the image of Marks and Spencer's
food significantly. The voice is Dervla Kirwan's voice. It is
a voice you recognise and a voice that is very smooth. It is recorded
with great attention to detail and intonation. That voice take,
which is about 30 seconds, took two hours to record and there
were 25 retakes of the recording. Inside that retake there will
be places where the engineer, Gary Turnbull, will have spliced
in and out words which did not quite fit the delivery. Gary joined
us when he was 25. He is 35 now. He joined us as a runner; he
is now a top post-production engineer in commercials. He is home
bred. We train our people inside. (BBC Television Advertisment
for BBC Radio 2 shown): With this we were trying to create the
effect of Elvis with a super band in concert. The super band are
the artists who are on BBC Radio 2 ; Elvis is dead. He does not
exist but after this commercial, some people thought we had recreated
him. It involved a voiceover artist performing with a microphone
in front of a projection screen about three or four times the
size of that in Studio 9—which is where we did all the noise
tests with Crossrail and our noise experts. There was a three
to four hour session, which involved drinking Coca-Cola, eating
hamburgers and fries to get in the mood, and the voiceover artist
had a microphone of that sort of era and age and he acted out
the Elvis performance. It was a three or four hour session with
about sixty voice takes to it. We were supplied with music and
everything else was completely mute. The crowd is not a real crowd;
it is a created crowd. The voice is not Elvis; it is a created
voice. It achieved 37,000 hits when fans uploaded that to YouTube
in one day—so Elvis now lives forever on the internet in
that guise as well. Also, the Elvis Foundation put it on to their
website—which is a tribute to how well they thought we had
managed to do it. It is the BBC team who did all the work and
we were recruited to do the sound. We would not in any way take
the credit of the huge team behind it, but we have played a very
budget-conscious role—which is surprising because people
think the BBC throw money away and they are actually very budget
conscious—and we played a huge time role as well, which
was to get this done and get it done on time. (New BBC Two idents
shown): Many years ago I remember seeing a BBC Two radio-controlled
number scoot under the screen and that was the BBC Two hero logo.
It was invented in 1989 and it became iconic. You saw the number
go in many different guises: it was sophisticated, it was a ruffian,
it did this, it did that, and it was the branding of BBC Two.
It changed BBC Two audience percentages in a positive way, big
time. The BBC are in a huge re-branding process as they align
for the digital age. We were asked to do the sound for the new
idents that they have created. Again, it is a team-working media:
five different directors. Again, the budget was a very important
issue, and that is a function of time, but we were working for
the BBC: at the end of the day, they are the holders of quality,
and if the quality of the work is not technically up to it then
it will not even get to the next stage, which is the creative
side. I am going to try to play you three or four of these clips.
I have nineteen Idents which ended up in 54 different versions.
We did the sound for all of them. The engineer is the same engineer
for Elvis, another home-grown engineer, Majhindra Thind. We call
him Munzie and he joined us when he was 19 years old. He is a
British Asian and he is now 32. He has gone from being a runner,
making tea. He is completely unqualified; completely house trained.
He is now one of the hottest properties in commercial post-production
sound engineering in the UK. His work is of world-class standard.
(Cappuccino ident shown): The chocolate at the front is not chocolate.
That is foam and it is tea leaves sprinkled on to cardboard. Chocolate
does not sound right. You have to record that in the studio. It
is a very quiet sound, as are the sugar lumps and as is the spoon
on the side of the cup. No two sugar lumps are quite the same
and no spoon going into a cup is quite the same. You have to match
it to the action and you have to make it sound right. We were
supplied with the music for all these by a company called BeatRoot.
That is what we call the sound bed and we have to balance all
the sound effects against the sound bed and get it to fit the
director's requirement. Just looking through my notes, Cappuccino
was one day's work. It took eight or nine hours' work to achieve
15 seconds. (Sea ident shown): That is very relaxing. The sea
going through the gap is not real sea. That is computer: CGI done
in Soho. It is nothing to do with us but it is very impressive
because you cannot get the sea to work in that relaxing way. The
sounds are underwater explosions. They are not at all peaceful;
they are actually quite violent. Munzie's job was to take those
explosions with other sounds and to mix them together to give
you the illusion of that wonderful relaxing sound as the sea comes
through but it is actually an explosion. That was a whole day.
19425. Chairman: How many more do you
have, Mr Taylor? I think we have the general idea.
(Mr Taylor) I will show
you one more and then call it quits. (Tagging ident shown) There
is one where they do it to a policeman. The tagging ones are the
aggressive ones. There are also peaceful and relaxing ones. That
is what we do. Thank you very much for that.
19426. You do a lot of work, Mr Taylor, for
the BBC. Thank you for showing us.
19427. Mr Newberry: When you were going
through your commentary on production of those various commercials,
you indicated that (a) they took a long time and (b) that there
was a repetition of what you called "takes".
(Mr Taylor) That is correct,
yes.
19428. As I understand it, that is in a world
where Crossrail does not exist. Can you tell us, please, why it
takes so long in a pre-Crossrail world to achieve that level of
perfection of the sound reproduction?
(Mr Taylor Simply put: our
clients have very high standards and we have very high standards.
No two sounds are ever the same. You will have a situation where
a sound is made and that is the sound you want. You can try ten
times to make that sound and you only get it on the tenth time.
Or you might get it on the first or the third time. That goes
for sounds. If you are recording in Foley, it goes for the voices
you are recording. Otherwise, we are doing 30 seconds of a commercial
and we could go in, do it, and in five minutes be out, job done.
19429. They are brilliant sounds, so you can
put them together.
(Mr Taylor) Thank you.
19430. If you can create sounds, can you not
create silence?
(Mr Taylor) No. Silence
is virtually impossible to create. Silence is the absence of sound
and sound is around at all times. Even in the quietest of environments,
there will be some sounds. Having no sound at all is very uncomfortable
and very unpleasant. If you go into a thing called an anechoic
chamber, there is no reverberation and also no sound. It is extremely
unpleasant. You can start to hear your blood and your heart and
the hearing mechanism in your ear working. You do not want absolute
silence. In our situation, we are looking for no recognisable
unwanted sounds. In this room there is a background hiss. The
background hiss is acceptable in this room. The only really annoying
thing I can hear at the moment in this room is a tick, which I
think is the projector or the clock—and I can never work
out which one. You have all become used to that sound, so you
do not notice it, but when I entered the environment I noticed
that sound immediately. If we recorded this sound and put it into
a commercial, you would not hear the background hiss but you would
hear the tick.
19431. You cannot take those sounds out.
(Mr Taylor) No. The way
we record it, they become inside the sound. We then manipulate
the sound and raise the level or lower the level and those ticks,
rumbles and silence or whatever it might be—and in this
case a train—will stay in that sound. It is a bit like starting
with faulty materials when you build a house. If you build a house,
you start with foundations and you want to have good quality foundations,
using good quality materials. When we build a commercial from
the ground up, part of the whole approach we take is to have very
high-quality foundations and very high-quality materials that
we build up, so that when you put this commercial or this sound
into a big cinema or onto the radio or into a listening environment
you can hear the clarity. You have nothing that disturbs. You
have no clock ticking that you can hear. I listened to a BBC interviewer
the other day, the and there was a hum, and the voice record is
there and he has not taken his watch off. I am sitting there listening
and, rather than listening to the voice, I am listening to the
man's watch ticking. You cannot take sound out. It is technically
impossible. If it was do-able, in time terms our clients would
not accept it. We sell time by the half-hour. These things can
take time. They can also sometimes be done very quickly. Our day
is a moving feast. We do not know until six o'clock at night what
we are doing the following day. Six studios, half-hour sessions,
chop/change, chop/change the whole day through, but you cannot
predict and you cannot plan. Our studio functions on the concept,
as do all the studios in Soho, that there are eight/nine hours
a day where you can record sound without external contamination
and that is our business environment. If we could take out noise,
we would love to do it. We would be multi-multi-multi-millionaires.
I have seen it done in a university laboratory under controlled
conditions in Barcelona and that is the only time I have ever
seen it. I thought I would never see that in my lifetime.
19432. You used the word "contamination",
can you just indicate to the Committee the effect on the type
of operation you have described in recording these commercials
of the nature of the contamination of the train underneath the
studios. What is that going to do in the real world to your work?
(Mr Taylor) First, it is
unacceptable in the end product. The reason it is unacceptable
in the end product is because it destroys the illusion. If I am
talking about Christmas puds from Marks and Spencer and a train
goes past, people will hear it, even when it is very, very quiet.
Your hearing is incredibly acute because it is designed for safety.
It is designed to stop you getting killed by the sabre-toothed
tiger who has just put his paw beside you. I can be talking to
you, hear a sound behind me, and I will go, "What's that?"
We have all had that happen to us. We all know it happens. The
same thing occurs in commercials, in TV, in sound and in films.
That is why it is so essential to keep recognisable, external,
unpredicted sounds out. In operational terms, the clients would
be sitting there and they would ask to do that again. After two
or three occurrences of that, they would be unhappy with the session
and when they left they would not come back but would go to another
studio.
19433. Mr Binley: It seems to me we have
a problem. There is a conflict between what the Promoter says,
which is that they will produce a "use of new rail (smooth
track without corrugations or discrete irregularities) installed
at the start of the works with joints achieving variation"
whereas you are saying, that you really need a floating, continuously
welded track. That is the nub of the difference, is it not?
(Mr Taylor) We have looked
long and hard at this. We do not design railways.
19434. I understand that.
(Mr Taylor) I believe we
have agreed with Crossrail a noise standard that allows us to
operate once the operational train is in place. There is a problem
with the ten-month construction period, where the noise generated
would in our view be completely audible in the kind of environment
we are talking about when we are doing voice takes and when we
are doing mixing. That would cause our business to be extinguished,
which is a problem.
19435. Mr Taylor: I am sorry to interrupt
but I may be able to clarify. The Promoter is committed to floating
slab track which is provided for the operational railway. The
argument we have here is about the specification of the noise
criterion to be applied to the construction railway, which for
obvious reasons cannot be built on floating slab track. The particular
issue with which we are concerned here is not about floating slab
track for the operational railway. That we are committed to.
19436. Mr Binley: Thank you very much.
I understand.
19437. Mr Newberry: Whether or not it
is impractical to have floating track when you are building the
railway is an issue we will perhaps have to look at later on.
Mr Taylor, we have been told that the construction period is of
the order of ten months. On the Promoter's case at present they
are not going to provide floating track at all during that period,
therefore it will be short stretches of track without the technicalities
of floating. If that is the case, and that maintains to be the
Promoter's case, what do you understand is likely to be the impact
for that ten months, first of all, on the production of commercials
and, secondly, if one is looking at a ten-month period, on the
impact on your business?
(Mr Taylor) For my sins
I am also the finance director of this business. What would happen
is that we would basically see clients taking their work elsewhere.
We would also see key staff feeling that there was no potential
future for them inside the business, because how do you cross
the tenth-month divide, where your business effectively would
be reduced by 70 or 80 per cent and in reality that translates
to 100 per cent, where staff are not working? We would lose staff,
which are our biggest single asset, and we would go out of business.
It is as simple as that, unless we could find some operational
working of schedule for the trains, or something that would allow
the noise criterion we have agreed with Crossrail—which
I would say is the existing noise criterion we have. We are not
asking for any more than we have. This is my understanding from
the noise experts. The constructional train period is loud. We
would hear those noises and they would get onto voice takes, they
would get onto Foley work, they will make clients go elsewhere.
It is as simple as that.
19438. My understanding is that the tunnel-boring
machines are operating 24-hours a day, seven days a week. Is that
right?
(Mr Taylor) I am not an
expert—though I am more of an expert than I used to be—on
tunnel-boring machines. There is a period of time which we accept
is unavoidable when the tunnel-boring machines will pass. I believe
these machines are quite long and we know that when they are passing
they will make a lot of noise and they will damage our business.
That is unavoidable. My guess is that that is probably when these
large monsters go underneath the building, which is probably a
period of a month. These machines need a service railway to bring
concrete segments to put after them, otherwise the tunnel falls
down. That, again, is my current understanding. The problem for
Crossrail—and I know they have tried very hard to find ways
to work around it—is that you have to have the trains going
at a certain speed, otherwise there are not enough segments and
the tunnel-boring machine slows down and stops which has huge
problems and cost issues for the contractor. I think I am right
in saying that underneath us they have brought the train down
to five kilometres per hour. It is on track which is not floating
track, it is slab track, so it is noisy. The noise prediction,
as I understand it, is on the NC25 curve. We have experts who
will speak to that in the dB terms. My experience of recording
studios is that we are looking for a smooth, uncontaminated noise.
You can have quite a high noise level sometimes and you can still
record in it, but in any recording work you do you are looking
to record the thing you want and nothing else. I would say that
we want the voice and nothing but the voice, but you might want
the sprinkled coffee (the sprinkled tea leaves on to cardboard)
and nothing else but that. If you have NC25, the primary identifiable
noise component is going to be the train and you are going to
hear it. It is as simple as that. It is 8dB above our agreed with
Crossrail—and we are all, as I understand it, happy with
that as a noise requirement for the operational side. That operational
requirement is our minimum. That is what we currently have. Our
studios are designed on the commercial basis of lowest cost, highest
performance, Crossrail changes that whole situation.
19439. Can you explain the difference in the
operation of the studios between the control room and the booths?
For example, where would the Elvis Presley commercial primarily
be dealt with?
(Mr Taylor) The Elvis Presley
commercial was almost entirely dealt with in the control room,
not a voice recording booth. The voice recording booth has a higher
standard of noise isolation, so for Marks and Spencer the voice
would be done in a voice recording booth, but there are many occasions
where you would need to act and move and in those situations the
recording is often done inside the control room. You may turn
off equipment inside the control room to be able to do that.
2 Committee Ref: A220, Grand Central Studios, Marks
and Spencer, BBC Radio 2 and BBC2 re-branding idents (WESTCC-9305A-035). Back
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