Hackenbacker Wins A British Academy Television Craft Award For Best Sound Fiction 2011

Hackenbacker Audio Post Production has announced that it has won the 2011 British Academy Television Craft Awards in the Best Sound Fiction category.
The London-based facility won the award for its work on ITV's major costume drama series, Downtown Abbey, which aired on ITV1 in the Autumn of 2010. The award was presented at the weekend at The Brewery in London.
Nigel Heath, Hackenbacker's Founder and Director, said: "I am absolutely thrilled that Hackenbacker has won this award and I was delighted to accept it on behalf of the whole team, all of whom have played an important part in making Downton Abbey a 'sound' success. Costume dramas are not the easiest projects to tackle from an audio point of view because of the need to make them sound almost 'timeless'. We have to ensure that no modern day noises such as aeroplanes or cars get into the mix and shatter the illusion. We were honoured to be asked to work on the show and we are all very proud of the result."
Hackenbacker was nominated twice in the Best Sound Fiction category - for Downton Abbey and for Any Human Heart, a four-part mini series that was shown on Channel 4 last November and December.
Heath added: "The list of nominees for this category was exceptional and we were proud to be ranked amongst such an esteemed list, all of whom are great examples of talented and dedicated practitioners in the art of sound for television."
Downton Abbey, a Carnival Films/MASTERPIECE co-production, was set in an Edwardian country house in 1912 and portrayed the lives of the Crawley family and the servants who work for them during the period from the sinking of the Titanic to the outbreak of the First World War.
Series Producer Liz Trubridge, whose previous productions include From Time to Time and A Short Stay in Switzerland, said: "We went to Hackenbacker with Downton Abbey on the strong recommendation of our Executive Producer and Managing Director of Carnival Gareth Neame. I was delighted we came to that decision. It is always gratifying, with increasingly tight schedules, when the people we work with are willing to go the extra mile, but I found the team at Hackenbacker did that and more… much more. The professionalism of Nigel and his team was both impressive and reassuring and their ingenuity in solving problems meant that I often only found out about them after they had all been sorted or were well on their way to being so."
Hackenbacker has been commissioned to tackle the audio for the second series of Downton Abbey which is currently in production and is expected to air later this year.
(KMcA)