Media Story: Creo’s Audio Growth
April 2nd, 2009 at 6:40 AM
Young Grand Rapids A/V studio adds audio engineer, recording capabilities
By: Deborah Johnson Wood
Creo Productions has taken a big step in its plans to offer sophisticated audio recording services with the hire of its first full-time position, an audio engineer to run the firm's new recording studio.
Last year, the company moved from 200 square feet in owner Aaron Carriere’s Eastown home to 1,425 square feet at 40 S. Division, Grand Rapids. Some 475 square feet of the lower level is dedicated to the audio studio completed in December, dubbed 40 South.
Carriere, 26, and business partner Andrew Tingley, 27, moved downtown with the intention of eventually adding the audio studio for recording musicians.
“With the growth of the video business we decided to make the jump to add a full-time audio engineer,” says Carriere. “We’re primed to grow very quickly with this move.”
The audio studio consists of a soundproof recording room, mixing room and post-production area. Musicians, voice overs, sound effects and more are recorded directly into the mixing room computer system where the audio engineer controls the sound quality, special effects and track layering.
Carriere says there is “tons of collaboration” between the video studio upstairs and the audio studio downstairs. One advantage is that Creo draws upon a network of local musicians, including Carriere and Matthew Korn, to write custom music for any video the company produces. Korn is the new audio engineer.
“Original music increases the value of your video production,” Carriere says, “and you can fit the music to the video.”
Creo Productions’ produced the audio and video for a new short film, Celebrate Heartside, which debuted last month as part of an initiative to bring projected art to downtown Grand Rapids.