All Eclair Versioning & Accessibility (Eclair V&A) facilities are open and all localization services are fully operational.
Two months after the first of our facilities had to stop all recordings in order to protect our employees, voice talents and customers as a result of the CV-19 health pandemic, all Eclair Versioning & Accessibility facilities have now restored all their services after implementing strict protective measures, following governmental and industry recommendations to ensure the protection of both our teams and all visitors to its facilities.
Implemented measures range from compulsory use of protective equipment such as masks and gloves, the provision of alcohol based sanitizer gels, replacing all lectern paper – where still in use – with tablets, introduction of protective disposable covers for various elements and in-house sterilization facilities for a number of devices, to physical changes to spaces and flows introducing a one way system with differentiated entry and exit where possible and plexiglass or other types of physical barriers that facilitate respecting social distancing rules. These measures will stay in place for as long as deemed necessary, always following local official advice and industry bodies best practice’s recommendations.
Whilst subtitling, closed captioning, live subtitling and all translation activities were mostly unaffected during this period, recording talents, and in particular for lip-sync dubbing, had to adapt to comply with new safety requirements. During the last few weeks Eclair V&A has tested several available solutions to implement remote recording until satisfied the same quality of recordings Eclair V&A is recognized for could be achieved to continue to service our partners through potential future crisis.
Eclair V&A teams are actively training actors and directors, whilst at the studio, to become both familiar and equipped for remote recordings. Employees of Eclair V&A will continue to combine “home working” with presential work as required, helping preserve everyone’s health and our partners’ business, which are our most important priorities.
Angel Martin, Managing Director of Eclair V&A, commented: “The CV-19 health crisis pushed our teams to find creative solutions to continue to service our customers' needs. Adapting our workflows to cope with such extraordinary circumstances has allowed Eclair V&A to complete recordings during this period and deliver content for audiences to enjoy whilst in lockdown. These past weeks we have implemented new ways of working in each facility and country; some of these new practices will stay and some solutions implemented will continue to offer additional flexibility when required.”
Eclair Studios Germany in Berlin (aka Christa Kistner Synchronproduktion) was the first facility to re-open its recording rooms, having re-started recordings on Monday 20 th April. Production at Studio7 in Karlsruhe never stopped.
Tecnison in Madrid was the second one, having re-started studio-based production from Monday 27th April with a reduced team, before going back to full production on 4 th May. Barcelona recording facility re-opened the same week. See the video shown on Spanish national news here.
The centrally located facilities of Eclair Vanves in Paris and Eclair Strasbourg re-opened on Monday 11th May, with both studios now back in full production.
Live Subtitling services rendered by ST501, also based in Paris, never stopped during this period becoming an example of immediate adaptation to all challenges.
Eclair V&A looks forward to continuing to service all customers’ localization needs, both presential and virtually.
About Eclair Versioning & Accessibility
Part of Ymagis Group, with offices in France, Germany, Spain and Morocco, Eclair Versioning & Accessibility (Eclair V&A) performs localization services, including script adaptation, voice casting, dubbing, lip-sync recording and mixing, as well as accessibility services such as live and multilingual subtitling and audio description, providing services to broadcasters, theatrical releases, DVD, Blu-ray, VOD/SVOD platforms, OTT channels and audiobooks.