September 26, 2007

AUDIO HOUSES PIRATE & MCHALE MERGE

Last year, Chris McHale restructured his fourteen-year-old McHale Barone creative audio shop, which today stands as a 12,000 square foot duplex studio/office complex on Irving Place. He established a number of alliances too, including ones with Ludorum Animation and Festival Network, an international concert production company.

Pirate founding partner Terry O'Reilly and partner Tom Eymundson were also in expansion mode and looked toward New York, where they already knew McHale. 

"While our Toronto studio is the ultimate production facility, with creature comforts that leave the concept of 'cushy' in the dust, our initial visit to McHale's high-tech, Ralph Lauren-esque complex made us feel perfectly at home," says Eymundson. "We knew Chris from many social meetings at London International, New York Festivals, One Show, Mercury and other awards events. Our decision to make him a Pirate was a no brainer."

The New York location is outfitted with four Digidesign Pro Tools|HD 5.1 mixing studios, designed for audio-for-video production and post.

O'Reilly adds that Pirate offers more than just production. It also offers soundtrack direction services for television including music guiding, voice direction, sound-scaping and mixing. Pirate's credits run the gamut, from Molson to Hyundai, Ford, the Yellow Pages and Viagra, all the way to Super Bowl ads.

McHale's creative/production credentials include work for Budweiser, T-Mobile, Siemens, Volkswagen, American Airlines and McDonald's. The arrangement is already seeing benefits as the studio recently worked with agency BBDO on a project with writing created in Toronto and production handled in New York.