A busy couple of weeks working on the trailer campaign for the big new British movie Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, based on the epic spy novel by John Le Carre and famously filmed for TV with Alec Guiness back in 1979. The new version, directed by Swedish director Tomas Alfredson, and starring Gary Oldman and a stellar British cast (even Colin Firth only gets second billing!) is a dark, gritty and completely compelling. It’s already causing early awards tremors, and deservedly so. Gary Oldman completely owns the part of George Smiley, while making an elegant nod to his illustrious forebear. The publicity machine is cranking up to full speed and I’ve recorded a stack of TV, cinema and radio spots with the team at Empire and Working Title prior to the official launch on 16th September. Here’s a sneak preview of the international version of the trailer:

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A fun couple of  sessions at the studio when the wonderful Dame Judi Dench dropped by to record a bunch of commercials via Source Connect with New Zealand for ASB Bank. She is always one of the nicest people on the planet to work with – completely natural, self-deprecating and very funny. She was just about to start filming the new Bond movie. “Any nice locations this time?” we asked. “Oh, probably just the usual shed at Pinewood…” she replied.

More user films are now finished for the Rolls Royce Ghost, the vehicle the company describes as their “entry level” model. Naturally, it boasts a rather handsome level of specification to which, of course, the happy prospective owner is invited to add infinite further levels of refinement. Each film illustrates a different feature, in this case the remarkable anti-roll mechanism which apparently makes the ride seem like floating on air…

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An unusual and sobering job came in this week from design company ResolutionDV who had been commissioned by The Royal Electrical & Mechanical Engineers Regimental museum to create a visual roll-call of the names of soldiers killed in battle with an audio track of names and ranks to be read aloud as a continuous loop of audio. Reading a list of several hundred names and ranks might seem like a simple thing to do but it was actually one of the harder tasks I’ve undertaken recently. There’s something deeply moving about lists like this. I remember feeling the same standing in some of those huge WW1 cemeteries in France and at Arlington in the US. The vastness is overwhelming and yet you are acutely aware that each name represents a devastating loss for families and individuals. It also reminded me of the famous scene after Agincourt in Henry V when Henry reads out a roll-call of the dead. I hope we managed to honour each and every indivdual…

Conspiracy theorists will enjoy a new documentary I’ve just narrated called Area 51: I Was There.

Made famous by The X Files, Area 51 was established in the Nevada desert by the CIA in 1955 to develop classified military projects. The remoteness of the site and extreme levels of secrecy have led to claims over the years that the US government carries out experiments here on everything from UFOs to aliens themselves, but the reality is probably a little harder-edged. The show features exclusive interviews with many former workers at the site and the interesting thing to me was observing the profiles of these now mostly quite elderly men: stolid, unquestioning and slightly enjoying the secrecy they are still sworn to.

The show airs at these time on the National Geographic Channel (UK):
Sun 5 June, 9pm
Mon 6 June, 10pm
Tues 7 June, 5pm 

Having worked on the trailers for hit movie The King’s Speech, it was interesting to be asked to contribute to the promo campaign for a follow-up documetary airing on NatGeo called The King’s Speech Revealed. It follows the fascinating story of Lionel Logue, the Australian speech therapist played by Geoffrey Rush in the film, and how his letters and diaries were first discovered by his grandson Mark Logue. Highly interesting stuff:

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Longtime clients Volvo Cars have been going through a bit of upheaval lately
having been sold by Ford to Chinese conglomerate Zhejiang Geely in August 2010 with the subsequent appointment of former VW America boss Stefan Jacoby as CEO.

So all eyes were on the launch of their new luxury model, curiously named the Concept Universe, at the Shanghai Motor Show last week. Here’s the video I narrated for the launch. It looks like an impressive car (though I’m still not sure about that name):

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The terrible destruction and suffering left by the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan
can leave one feeling at a loss to know what to do, beyond making a donation to the relief fund. So hats off to producer Neil Gardner of Ladbroke Productions and Spokenworld Audio who decided at short notice to produce a downloadable audiobook of Japanese fairy stories to raise funds. I was pleased to be asked to read one of the stories and the complete book can be bought here (all proceeds to the Red Cross Japan apeal):  www.spokenworldaudio.com/japanesefairyworld.html

Some interesting work this week with Rareday Films, the production company headed by former More 4 supremo Peter Dale, who are handling the launch of the new PBS channel in the UK. PBS, of course, is the venerable and celebrated US public service broadcaster. Here at CKUK we spent a day putting together the audio for several test promos and a promotional film. Launch is slated for later this year.

Meanwhile The King’s Speech swept all (or nearly all) before it at the Oscars, amid much rejoicing at Momentum Pictures. It’s hard now to remember now how difficult it was to get this movie off the ground a couple of years back. Here is another of the original trailers I voiced on launch late last year:

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An interesting project that’s been gathering steam over the last few weeks has been Onetonnelife, an initiative between Volvo Cars, house designers A-hus and energy company Vattenfall. They have installed a Swedish family in a climate smart house for six months with the aim of lowering average output of CO2 from 7 tonnes to one tonne per person per year. The eco-designed house generates it’s own energy from the sun, and even powers the family’s Volvo C30 electric car. Their journey is being charted through webisods, blogs and articles at onetonnelife.com. Here is the trailer for the project with my voiceover:

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