The Kitchen Case Study

We recently caught up with key members of The Kitchen Group to get their thoughts on the future of work and technology in the audio post localization sector. Ken Lorber, President & CEO, Brad  Strickland, Role Director of Production The Kitchen Miami, and Andreas Kohler CEO, The Kitchen Karlsruhe, Germany share insights on what it takes to achieve efficient, quality and sustainable localization.

‍Background

The Kitchen, founded in 2001, in Miami, Florida, USA, with Ken Lorber as President, began as a localization facility for a leading South American group of television channels. It’s reputation in the Latin American market quickly grew, and within months, the Miami-based operation was offering both Neutral Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese dubbing services for major networks, studios, producers, game developers and distribution companies from every continent.

Miami is an international city, with an abundance of talent, and a global understanding of the business. It proximity to Latin America also provides a gateway to the US from Europe. Shortly after its introduction, The Kitchen’s TM Systems, created and developed the industry’s first end to end language localization software, which immediately gave the studio a unique status within the industry.  Within months of its introduction, The Kitchen won a prestigious Primetime Emmy® Award (2002) and then again in 2007 for “elevating the status of the overall language localization industry”.

In early 2017, The Kitchen began a global expansion, that now proudly includes 14 owned and operated language dubbing facilities in countries around the world, offering clients the ability to centralize all of their localization needs. The Kitchen provides language services, to and from most major languages, and for all formats and genres of programming.

A secondary studio hub and the studios’ European headquarters, was introduced in 2023, in Madrid, Spain. The new hub and updated language dubbing studio supplements the high volume Miami-based hub, and allows for rapid response forEuropean and Asian clients. Ken Lorber, President and CEO notes, “We are giving our clients the ability to unify all of their language needs, to and from every language, and for all genres and formats of programming. International networks and program distributors have increasingly been moving toward consolidating their localization work, selecting a global studio that can provide a multiple language service while maintaining overall quality and consistency. As an abundance of programming today is offered in every language, there has never been a greater need for what we do.”

For over 23 years has been known as THE company where individual attention and quality of work is unparalleled. Validating this, The Kitchen has been honored twice by TheTelevision Academy for developing the industry’s only Emmy® Award-winning language translation, dubbing and subtitling software technology. The Kitchen has also received the AIM Award for its technology by the National Association of Broadcasters.

The Kitchen | Project Dubs Examples

English
· Bubu and the Little Owls
· Kung Fu Sock
· Misha the Purple Cat (seasons 1-2)
· Monica and Friends
· Lastman (Blu-ray dub)‍

Latin American Spanish
· Lalaloopsy (Carolina Ayala's dialogues)
· LazyTown (seasons 1, 3-4)
· The Fairly OddParents
· The Fairly OddParents: Fairly Odder
· My Hero Academia
· Pound Puppies‍

Brazilian Portuguese
· Space Racers
· LazyTown
· Littlest Pet Shop: A World of Our Own
 
Anime | Animation | Series
· Monica and Friends (Original dub)
· Fantasy Island (2010)
· Little Spirou (2012)
· The Crumpets (2013-2018) (Episodes 53-104; for 4.21 Productions)
· Earth to Luna! (2014)
· Lastman (2016-2022)
· Arthur and the Minimoys (2017-2018)
· Bubu and the Little Owls (2018-present)
· Kev's World (2018)
· Captain Tsubasa (2018-2019) Episodes 5-52; for VME & Televix
· Fairy-teens (2019-present)
· Ninjin (2019-2020)
· Kung Fu Sock (2021-present)

Live Action Series
· Case Closed (2001-present)
· Betty in New York (2019)
· A Bloody Lucky Day (2023)
· Pyramid Game (2024)
 
Animation Films
· Little Eggs: An African Rescue (2021)

The Kitchen Partnership with VoiceQ

In 2020 The Kitchen approached VoiceQ to exploring technology innovations to improve workflows and options to enhance or replace their legacy software.

In 2021 The Kitchen established facility classification standards ranging from A-E. Facilities with a classification of either A, B or C rated as Premium Content Handling Facilities. Successful pilots of VoiceQ Pro andVoiceQ Writer were achieved with Miami USA, Karlsruhe Germany and Montpellier France Groups. VoiceQ Pro and VoiceQ Writer native macOS applications were implemented as adaptation and recording software of choice for facilities handling Premium Content. A global agreement was struck between The Kitchen LLC and VoiceQ, including custom training and implementation support, priority R&D, contribution to product strategy, predicated on The Kitchen's growth plans.

Between 2022-2024 both parties have continued to work closely developing new workflows and tools to improve efficiency, capability and capacity. Lorber comments, “in 2023 we responded to the industry wide slowdown in the localization by increasing its investment in scalable technologies, namely VoiceQ and OOONA, to reduce any compromises on quality and efficiencies. This has been a strategic investment that returned well and provided sustainability.” During this period VoiceQ Cloud application was also implemented as the software of choice for project coordination of Premium Content.

Andreas Kohler, CEO Karlsruhe Germany, comments

What were the key problem(s) you were trying to solve before implementing VoiceQ?
Combining the three work steps translate adapt and timing.

How did VoiceQ resolve this?
Ability to solve problems with one software platform

Which VoiceQ products do you implement?
VoiceQ Writer and VoiceQ Pro

What is your favourite VoiceQ feature(s)?
Changing text during the recording process

What have been the results from an efficiency perspective?
Significant improvement in workflow efficiency of translating, adapting, and timing

What have been the results from a capacity perspective?
VoiceQ has allowed us to shift three roles into one, reducing costs by 66% while allowing us to treble capacity if choose to have 3 member team. To achieve this level of efficiency and capacity, the staff must be well-trained in the software. VoiceQ offers excellent implementation support and ongoing training.

How would rate service and support?
We are very happy that we have VoiceQ and use it for every project.

How would summarise your Voice experience thus far?
We have been using VoiceQ Pro andWriter in Germany since October 2021. This has helped us to deliver big projects for Lionsgate, ZDF, Moonbug and Amazon. After high volume usage, we look forward to further co-design opportunities with the VoiceQ team to take it to the next level.

Brad Strickland, Director of Production Miami US, comments

What were the key problems you were trying to solve before implementing VoiceQ?
We had an internal legacy software that was used for our dubbing projects. The issue with it was that it was aging and no updates for it had been deployed for a long time. We were also looking to eliminate the use of multiple computers (One for recording, another for the script/video).

How did VoiceQ resolve this?
VoiceQ is able to be implemented in our Mac computers we use for recording. Also, VoiceQ has an abundant amount of customisation to make the recordings smoother, making it easier to focus on recording and not on troubleshooting.

Which VoiceQ products do you use, and what is your favourite feature(s)? 
We use VoiceQ Pro, VoiceQ Writer and VoiceQ Cloud. The VoiceQ customisation is my favourite feature. Being able to create different setups depending on the type of project we are working on is excellent.

What have been the results from an efficiency and quality perspective?
We are able to spend less time messing with our system, fixing lines and or time issues and focus everything on the recording. Our directors and recordists are able to pay more attention to the acting and script instead of troubleshooting the software.

What have been the results from a scalability perspective?
Getting more Macs online with VoiceQ is a very easy process using the iLOK License Manager. We were able to have all of our rooms operational quickly with minimal troubleshooting issues.

What have been the results from a capacity perspective?
For VoiceQ Native Writer and Pro Having all of our licenses centralized in the ILOK License Manager makes it easy to keep count of our licenses and know how many more we would need for extra recording rooms.

For VoiceQ Cloud On large projects like novellas we typically have 12 team members working collaboratively, for smaller projects on average we would have eight team members working collaboratively. Currently we have Audio Dept and Casting on for visibility, Adapters with Adapting permissions, and Directors, and Admin staff with Admin permissions.

How would you rate service and support?
I am 100% a believer in the power of the VoiceQ offering, and there are tons of great features that we probably don’t even utilize yet because we are often working at a fast pace. Another key factor to success is the working relationship with VoiceQ’s development team who remain agile and responsive our needs and optimization of the user experience. Service and support from Jordan and the team has been spectacular. Any issues that we’ve had with either the software develop mentor subscription deployment have been handled efficiently. This has resulted in over 50 co-designed features and associated training support. Examples include incorporating our custom line count formulae and providing tools that enable us to complete efficient ASR QC. i.e. every line on the script must match what was recorded. Complimentary to this we have witnessed significant evolution of VoiceQ Cloud over the last 12 months, and we now rely on it heavily for our day-to-day actor payments, reporting, delivery and scalability.

Can you share the results of any recent projects?
Yes – we recently worked on a long form television series Pyramid Game. The series follows Sung Su-ji, a transfer student at Baekyeon Girls' HighSchool in Seoul, who discovers that fitting in requires participating in a monthly popularity contest. Students use a phone app to rank each other, and the student with the fewest votes is bullied by their classmates.

‍

Project User Experience Insights

Our Translators, Adaptors, Directors, Engineers, and Voice Talent reported high levels of satisfaction across all VoiceQ tools. We were very happy with the quality of the project and improvements in efficiencies and costs. There are variety of VoiceQ Cloud features that haven’t utilised yet but we will do so as our hybrid workflows evolve.

‍

Learn more about The Kitchen at https://www.thekitchen.tv/