Services Spotlight: OMUK

Founded nearly 20 years ago in 1996, OMUK is a London-based production company that specialises services in dialogue casting and recording. Its offerings also expand areas such as getting involved in writing, editorial, character and story development, performance capture and tools.

OMUK CEO Mark Estdale says the firm transforms its recording studio into a fully ‘game immersive recording environment’ as it plots to get the most out of acting talent and provide game’s with crisp and clear audio. The firm’s casting services include ‘to script’ recorded and filmed casting sessions, plus access to a database of more than 12,000 specifically recorded voice samples.

He goes on to say that voice acting is crucial for games, particularly in modern titles where quality audio is crucial, as it creates a sense of immersion, which could easily be broken with a bad recording.

“Get it wrong at your peril, as the curse of NPC 1701 will get you,” he says.

He adds: “Recording at OMUK is like being on a film set for games. Everything about the recording studios has been redesigned ground up for our work with games: the physical space, the technology and the recording methodology. Actors perform immersed in the game world, fully in context.

 “Everyone in session can see and hear what the performance will be like in-game at the very point of creation.”

The firm has provided services for hundreds of games, not least including The Witcher, TimeSplitters, Tales of Monkey Island, The Wolf Among Us, Driver: San Francisco and Silent Hill: Origins. It’s work on Broken Sword 5: The Serpent’s Curse (pictured left) meanwhile won it the 2014 Best Voice Acting AGGIE Award. Revolution’s Kickstarter-funded title was also the first UK title to use OMUK’s ‘game immersive recording environment’ and Creative Dialogue Tools. Estdale says these were designed to make the production process for game dialogue more intuitive, easier and accurate.

Currently, the team is working on new titles: Telltale’s Game of Thrones, Block ‘n’ Load and Trine 3.

On top of the current array of services that the company offers, Estdale says OMUK plans to expand its business further.

“Currently we’re working on new studio technology for performance capture and we’re bringing the ‘game immersive voice recording’ approach to localisation with a suite of software tools imaginatively called Creative Localisation Tools,” he says.