About 20% of the work done at The Sound Kitchen in Vancouver comes from longer-form television work such as documentaries and television series, says co-owner Judy Harnett. Another 30% of the business is claimed by television and radio commercial production work, and the balance comes from sound design and composing for corporate videos.

Growth has come at a steady 10% or more per year since the company began five years ago, an achievement wrought from old-fashioned hard work and marketing. ‘We’re a boutique audio post company,’ Harnett explains, ‘friendly and client-oriented.’

Sound Kitchen fits into the mid-market of Vancouver’s growing post-production sector. The company – which employs six people – provides everything from sound effects to original music and adr.

In each of two nonlinear audio suites operates a Digidesign Pro Tools software system on a Macintosh computer core. The company offers a full complement of sound effects – both canned and original – and uses a time code dat machine, says Sound Kitchen’s head engineer Marty Taylor.

According to Taylor, the real competition in the market comes from other mid-sized players such as Ferocious Fish rather than the larger companies such as Pinewood Sound, Post Modern Sound or Sharpe Sound.

In many cases, because of the workload and the need for expensive technical support, the larger companies end up feeding work to the mid-level companies.

Sound Kitchen is currently working on 21 ‘mini-documentaries’ for the King Abdulaziz Historical Center in Saudi Arabia. Each segment of between four to eight minutes will be used in information kiosks or multiscreen presentations and deals with the geography and social history of the area.

Another credit is Citizen Shame, a Vidatron Entertainment documentary about poverty in Vancouver, which aired on vtv and other Baton stations in September.

In other long-form television work, Sound Kitchen is doing the sound on the Jim Byrnes Show (PS Films) and did the daily newlywed-style game show called Love Handles for Global last year. For bctv and the rcmp, the company did the audio post on the half-dozen one-hour specials on personal safety called Be Careful Be Safe.

Sound Kitchen recently worked (through ad agency Palmer Jarvis) on a recent controversial television spot for B.C. Fisheries that dealt with the dwindling salmon stocks in b.c. The company also handled the sound for this year’s television ad for the Pacific National Exhibition.

On the corporate side, Sound Kitchen is a regular supplier for training videos produced by the Workers’ Compensation Board of b.c.

Sound Kitchen was founded by Harnett, but merged with parent company Avenue Music Productions a couple of years ago. Avenue Music – an original music company doing jingles, soundtracks and show themes – is owned by Sound Kitchen partner Paul Airey.