Over the last couple of years, we have completed a few ADR projects for animation but are currently unable to record do ADR for live film production. We are currently working on infrastructure changes to make these ADR sessions happen. When these changes take place it will mean that actors living in the Highlands will be able to do the majority of their voiceover recording from the Highlands. They will no longer need to travel to Edinburgh, Glasgow or other city studios. These studios often still retain control of the audio production but the actor can work with them via the Highland studio.

Our aim will be to cater to encourage more actors to spend time in the lovely Highlands of Scotland with the knowledge that they can complete their regular or ad hoc voiceover contracts from here.

The beauty of the Highlands is that generally the public will leave actors alone, they can go about their daily lives without a demand for autographs or selfies. Skibo Castle is less than 10 miles from our studio and is an ideal location for a Highland retreat.

Inverness Airport now offers a point-to-point service to the rest of the world. The large number of flights available make it easy for actors to live here and jet out to their film location. We also have a small airfield less than 10 miles away, for those flying in with private planes.

Locally, we also have many private estates and luxury hotels such as 5* Links House in Dornoch. These would be ideal locations for actors who wanted to holiday in the Highlands, with access to a voiceover studio only a 10 minute drive away.

So far our Studio Hire clients have been based in London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Madrid, Los Angeles and more. We have worked with a number of high profile clients on some very exciting productions.

As you will see from the homepage of our website, our studio is located in Tain. This is North of Inverness, close to the towns of Dornoch, Dingwall and Invergordon. The Highlands is a very popular film location, with lots of filming taking place throughout the year. The Highland Film Commission (soon to be renamed Screen Highland) are the people to speak to if you are looking to use the Highlands as your film location. They will be able to help with all aspects of this and have a detailed directory of companies and resources that you may need….. including a wee studio in Tain!

This photograph is of the Million Dollar View at Struie Hill. This is not far from our studio. The image was taken by David Kratz and can be found on his websites – Northern Sights

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To help with soundproofing, we took the walls back to the bricks and added lots of soundproofing insulation. We also put in a lower ceiling and more sound insulations was added up there. The same was added to the loft space. One of the main issues the studio has is that the two main windows are single glazed and they make up the majority of the studio front. We had a new wall constructed with lots of soundproofing and a triple glazed door. This meant that only one of the windows was now in the studio control room.

To treat this window, we spoke with a company in Perth called Glaze & Save (name has recently changed to Cocoon) and they installed a custom made Invisi Therm magnetic secondary window. This helped to further reduce the noise pollution and it has the added benefit of keeping the warmth inside in the winter and it doesn’t get too hot in summer. Feel free to contact me about this as a couple of other studios have reached out about this new technology. I can highly recommend Cocoon – www.cocoon.tech

Recording takes place in a Kube vocal booth which I can’t recommend highly enough. The team at Kube were fantastic and given our rural Highland location, the delivery driver did a great job of making sure the booth was dropped off at the door.

The images above and below will give you an idea of the level of renovation that was undertaken. The studio continues to adapt to meet the needs of our various Studio Hire clients. Lots of new equipment has been purchased and installed as per client requests. Over time we have also adapted the software that we use to match our client’s studio.

So many changes have taken place since we first opened in 2020 and we have some even bigger changes planned for 2024 – watch this space!

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My name is Carrie Forbes and I’m a Scottish Voiceover Artist, living in the Highlands. For years I’ve worked from a home studio but the space was quite cramped and I knew I needed a larger space. I had the technology for directed sessions in my home studio but I was always embarrassed about any of my clients seeing my recording set up. There was no extra space in the home to expand the recording space, so in 2019 I began to look for a commercial studio building in my local town of Tain.

I found the perfect space in 2020 and it’s less than 1 mile from my home. At this stage, I was still focusing on the studio being a space to record my own voiceover work, I hadn’t really contemplated rented the space out to others.

Over the next couple of years more enquiries came in from production companies, VO agents and people filming in the Highlands – all wanting to hire the studio for their productions. I started to adapt the set up to cater for each of the studio hire jobs – this included buying new microphones, interfaces, chairs, lighting etc. In 2024 the changes are continuing with lots more infrastructure adjustments to come.

I have worked with lots of different studio hire clients on some very exciting productions. Some of the VO actors live locally, others have been here on holiday or working in the Highlands. Prior to finding the studio, these actors were having to travel 8 hour round trips to the Scottish Central Belt to record their voice over work. The actors that live here now have a much better work / life balance as they can record their VO work locally. It also allows them to respond quickly to requests for auditions or voiceover jobs with tight timescales. If they were still travelling to Edinburgh or Glasgow, they would have missed out on these opportunities.

To date, most of our clients have been London based with others from as far away as Madrid and Los Angeles. Some of the clients previously used to have to send expensive audio recording equipment up to the Highlands and then had to talk the actors through how to set it all up. I’ve been told that this can be quite a stressful process for both parties!

The Scottish Highlands is a very popular filming location and there have been some amazing productions working up here. My mission now will be to try and let these companies know that VO production is possible in the Highlands. I’m hoping it will help to save these companies both time and money.

I’ve been asked about ADR recording and while this is possible for animation productions, it has not been possible for film production. This is changing and we hope to have ADR capability very soon.

I’ll leave you with some pics of the studio prior to the renovation – it was previously a Barber shop. Frankie the barber was famous in these parts and was still working in his 90’s.

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