The Story of Red Angel Media

Russell Wait | Head of Dubbing at RED ANGEL MEDIA in Hong Kong gives his thoughts on the future of audio post-production technology in the Cantonese English markets.

When was Red Angel Media founded?  

Red Angel Media was founded in the mid-2000s in Hong Kong.

What was the primary driver to set up the business?

My partner and I both worked in the dubbing industry as freelance talent, director, translator, and adaptors.  We wanted the chance to establish our own workflow and fully take control of projects from start to finish – allowing us to ensure a particular level of quality. We are both still heavily involved in the production and are always looking for ways to improve our quality and efficiency.

What are the primary areas of the business?

Our primary business is in localizing Voice Over recording for Video Games, Television dramas, cartoons, and Film dubbing. Our primary languages are English and Cantonese.

What are the key sector trends driving change?

A lot of our clients these days are requesting single track edited recordings, and prefer to mix themselves.  As a result, we end up spending many more hours in the studio recording each performer separately. It's critical to have technology solutions that enable efficient detailed preparation.  Therefore we spend less time, get more done, and consistently deliver high-quality projects.

‍What are the key consumer trends driving change?

Content providers are offering their consumers many alternative methods to watch the video, and as a result, many more providers are offering localized versions.  Consumers are increasingly aware that they can watch video content or play games in the language of their choice. Together with entertainment on demand services they can enjoy this content whenever they want, wherever they want.

This, in turn, is creating an environment where localization studios, like Red Angel Media, can grow. While this sounds wonderful, in practice it also presents a challenge for a smaller studio as we are pressed to deliver high-quality content with very tight deadlines in order to fill the demand. In order to solve this, we are always looking for technology and best practice ways to improve our accuracy, efficiency and quality.

What are the key workflow problems to solve?

One of the primary workflow issues we face is always talent.  Finding actors is usually no problem, but finding actors who understand lip-sync dubbing is often difficult.  Normally a lot of time training in the studio is required before they understand how to apply their craft to our particular form of performance.

‍What area is VoiceQ of most value?  

VoiceQ is very helpful across all of our Dubbing and ADR workflows.  For high-quality dubbing it offers unparalleled features to ensure that script translation and adaptation is time code and lip-synch perfect. The advancements in its script ingestion and edit features have significantly reduced preparation time which makes the pre-record workflow efficient. The UI is easy to understand for beginners with plenty of options for mastery.

VoiceQ really assists with spotting dialogue in difficult scenes – i.e. when main characters are talking over each other such as a five-person argument or party scene.  This is so much easier to spot using VoiceQ’s rythmo-band technology.

In contrast to paper scripts,  VoiceQ’s prompting features allow the actor to be 100% more comfortable knowing when their cue is and how to deliver it. VoiceQ makes syncing dialogue so much easier, as the actor no longer has to worry about when to speak, and can focus on performance.  

One of our actors recently said this,  “It’s so refreshing. It allows you to just do it, and be part of it.”  We find that we have been able to greatly increase our talent pool, faster, and with better accuracy using VoiceQ.

Overall, when we use VoiceQ Pro in the recording studio with the script properly adapted and cued we fly through sessions with an average of 50 - 75% increase in booking efficiency.

There are other options to choose from,  why did you choose VoiceQ as your solution?

Honestly, we went from paper and printer to VoiceQ.  The other cueing software applications are cost-prohibitive and not nearly as accessible. One of the best things about the VoiceQ Team is that they offer fast and knowledgeable support, and are just as passionate about their software as we are about using it.  Also, we don’t need dedicated IT staff to operate VoiceQ or complex computer setup which makes implementing VoiceQ very easy to do, once you decide to take the plunge.

Get your FREE VoiceQ trial and start a conversation with our friendly team at VoiceQ today.