April 4, 2003: ABC’s top-rated daytime show Good Morning America has tapped into Kappa Studios’ new Audio Rescue 911 department for a segment about the first Gulf War. This exciting new service takes distorted, unusable audio and digitally transforms it into usable audio. GMA segment producer Bill Cunningham called on Kappa to clean up some deteriorating tapes that are vitally important to his project. Using real-time technology, the “bad” sound was successfully transferred from micro-cassettes into the system where it was cleaned up and finally recorded onto BetacamSP, resulting in an 80% overall improvement!

Kappa’s lead sound engineer Humberto Zamores says, “We can literally revive audio segments that are cut by most editors.” For their segment entitled Oklahoma Amazing Family, GMA acquired voice “letters” that were recorded onto micro-cassettes during the 1991 Gulf War by a soldier for his wife and child. This set of compelling and often touching tape recordings reveal the uncertain and frightening world of the typical Gulf War soldier. It was imperative to ABC Producers that viewers at home hear the sincerity in this soldier’s voice. “These tapes had a lot of ambient background noise and a warble from the recorder,” noted Zamores. “This would have been fine as a personal message, but for broadcast…it would sound like a foreign language in desperate need of sub-titles.”

With this technology, it’s possible to filter unwanted interference and boost the desired audio, thus greatly enhancing the quality of what is being communicated. Networks like ABC as well as production companies, producers, directors – anyone that has been plagued with good video and bad audio -can call Kappa Studios for help. Amazingly, location recordings that were once deemed unusable can now be cleaned of offending artifacts without affecting the dialogue content! This emergency service saves thousands by avoiding expensive reshoots and time consuming ADR. Extremely fast turnaround is available on most jobs. Audio Rescue 911 is part of Kappa Studios’ sound restoration department which specializes in archival motion picture sound restoration.

The most powerful state-of-the-art equipment – the Audio Cube – is used for de-noising, de-clicking, de-popping, de-hissing and other restorative processes. With over ten years of combined experience in the restoration field Kappa offers a broad and practical awareness of how to treat audio anomalies of all types. This experience really comes into play with the restoration of not only film projects but also music on tape or vinyl, lectures, historical recordings and forensic sound cleanup.

Kappa Studios, Inc. works with each client to create a post-production package that fits each unique project and budget. A complete description of services, credit lists, as well as photos of the environment are available at www.kappastudios.com.
CONTACT: Paul Long

3619 W. Magnolia Blvd. Burbank, CA 91505

office: (818) 843-3400

FAX: 818.559.2418

email: paul@kappastudios.com