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You don’t become Dawn French’s go-to recording studio by accident but a Plymouth business can boast of being just that after the TV star chose it twice in a year.
Since 1998 Fresh Air studios has been recording the voices of the famous and the familiar at its Stonehouse base near the historic Royal William Yard.
Most recently Vicar of Dibley star Ms French, who hails from Plymouth, used the studio to record A Reindeer’s First Christmas which was broadcast on Channel 4 on Christmas Eve and also – with her long-time comedy partner Jennifer Saunders – to produce the hit Audible audiobook French and Saunders: Titting About.
“It was a very intense and fun three days – a proper team effort where it really felt we were all firing on all cylinders,” said company founder Paul Philpott, who reckons that even if you haven’t listened to one of Fresh Air Studios’ more high-profile recordings you will doubtless have heard something produced at their Stonehouse studios.
That’s because a huge area of expertise for Mr Philpott and his team is recording IVR – Interactive Voice Response – the messages which greet people when they phone any number of businesses such as mobile phone providers.
“They get a lot of bad press but they are a necessary evil,” said Mr Philpott. “You might have tens of thousands of people working for a business, there is no way that the first person you speak to will have the answer you are after.
“So IVR allows your call to be routed to the right person. It’s not as easy as you may think – our skill lies in making it bright and uplifting and appropriate.”
Fresh Air Studios works with Royal Mail Group, Post Office Ltd, Three Mobile and Wickes to name but a few and an IVR job providing a voicemail system can see a voice artist recording anything up to a thousand “prompts”.
Numbers, for instance, have to be recorded in at least three different inflections so that the digital systems can stitch them together to create a fluent message, a process called concatenation.
“I’m certain pretty much everyone reading this will have heard something we have created,” he said.
For nine years before establishing his business Mr Philpott was radio station Plymouth Sound’s Black Thunder Paul, a roving reporter. But once he clocked off at 10am he would go home to work on his fledgling business making radio ads.
Fresh Air Studios’ first client in 1998 was Microsoft and the job was to create training materials for Microsoft Office for a series of CD-Roms.
“At the time we didn’t have our own studios and that was the real springboard for us,” said Mr Philpott.
Since then Fresh Air Studios has gone from strength to strength with an office in Budapest, a production team of six, plus a network of freelancers and welcoming big names like Ms French on a regular basis.
Mr Philpott believes there is kind of alchemy to choosing the right voice and Fresh Air Studios has a sister company which showcases more than 300 voice artists from around the world.
The team also has to factor in compression and coding methods which – for a lot of IVR – means that female voices tend to work better and where a lower range, a more booming timbre, tends not to survive the compression process quite so well.
If time and budget allow, the team will also go through the process of User Accessibility. This intensive input at the start of a project pays off because it can go some way to minimising hang up rates – one of the main indicators of whether the IVR or a particular voice is doing the trick.
Mr Philpott is proud of running a successful business from the city he grew up in and he says the location is both “a bonus and a challenge”.
“We’re very proud of being based here,” he said. “It’s very hard to take a bad promotional photograph of where we are and we find our clients really do respond to that.
“If people had to travel to us to record before the pandemic restrictions we always suggested they come on a Thursday or Friday so that they could stay on for a weekend and lots of people did do that – we champion Plymouth at every opportunity.”
One of the main challenges for Mr Philpott during the Covid menace has been keeping up with the amount of work because companies have had to swiftly adapt their communications to encompass changes wrought by the pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns.
The number of people able to travel to record at the studios has been hit by the pandemic so, in true Fresh Air Studios style, the team has quickly adapted and created high-spec recording kits which are dispatched where they are needed and are proving a viable alternative, allowing the team to emulate the studio scenario.
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A similar forward-thinking approach is evident in the setting up of the Budapest office – a precautionary measure to help manage the implications of Brexit.
“We do have clients in Europe so we needed to think ‘how do we navigate the formalities of this?’” said Mr Philpott. “Its location means we can liaise easily with our clients in Europe – it’s a safety net for us.”
If people can make it to the Fresh Air studios they will find them fully Covid-compliant. Recently, a German actor, filming in Plymouth, was able to safely record a voiceover for a commercial with a live link to Germany, an indicator of the way no two days are the same for Mr Philpott and his team.
Recording announcements connected to the new iPhone were also on the agenda recently, along with a real growth area for Fresh Air Studios: podcasts.
“Podcasts are the future,” said Mr Philpott, who is convinced of their ability to transform business and internal communications. “Everyone has a story to tell, there will always be people who are interested in how you started, what trials and challenges you have had to navigate.
“Podcasting is very personable, and you can’t get more personal than sticking a pair of headphones in your ears, speaking on a one-to-one basis. They’ve really come into their own during the pandemic.”
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The reputation of that team means Fresh Air Studios rarely advertises its services and gains new clients, quite literally, through word of mouth.
But even with clients across the world there is still something special about recording projects a little closer to home and creating the Plymouth Trails app which, along with the French and Saunders project, has been a particular highlight of 2020.
“Showcasing Plymouth and putting a genuine Janner accent out there with the brilliant (award-winning comedian) Suzy Bennett was a great job to be part of,” said Mr Philpott.
He added: “I love what we do: injecting creativity where there doesn’t, at first glance, appear to be any, using audio solutions to enable first-class storytelling.
“I’m lucky because I have such an incredible team of innovative people to work with and I consider myself fortunate to be able to do a job I enjoy every day in a fantastic location in my home city. It doesn’t get much better than that.”
