LazyTown is a leading and highly respected children's entertainment brand comprising an award-winning TV series, live stage shows, sports events, publishing, and more. The LazyTown concept is entertainment for children and the whole family, dedicated to promoting a healthy lifestyle in a fun and engaging way. The TV show has become an international success since it was first launched in 2004 and has been broadcast in over 170 countries, reaching over 500 million homes and dubbed in over 30 languages.
LazyTown's sound supervisor, Gunnar Arnason, who also owns a recording and post production company called Upptekid, is responsible for selecting all of the audio equipment used by LazyTown Entertainment at its state of the art studio in Gardabaer, Iceland.
"My task is to create the entire audio workflow for each LazyTown series, from studio recording through to the final sound mixes," he explains. "Over the past two years we have relied on DPA microphones for dialogue recording, using them on the live actors and also to record the puppeteers. We chose DPA microphones because they have an excellent signal to noise ratio and because they are extremely well-built, which means that they last a long time and are very durable."
DPA's Icelandic distributor Exton has supplied LazyTown Entertainment with 12 DPA 4061 miniature microphones.
"The puppeteers have the miniature microphones mounted in sweatbands on their foreheads, while the live actors have them hidden in their clothes," Arnason explains. "This works well, especially for the puppeteers who have to work with their hands above their heads, so they need a microphone that will stay firmly in place and won't get knocked when they move around. Also, when the microphone is tight on the forehead you get some resonance from the skull, which makes the sound even better."
Currently shooting its fourth series, LazyTown is an Icelandic production with an international cast from Iceland, the UK, and the USA. The series was created by former aerobics champion Magnus Scheving, who also plays the lead character Sportacus in the show, to motivate children to get active and make healthy lifestyle choices. Cleverly mixing live characters, puppets and CGI, LazyTown creates engaging storylines that have a healthy message - delivering entertainment that inspires, and raising the bar for children's television.
(Jim Evans)
