Sayit – Educational Media

ABOUT THE COMPANY

Top quality audio recordings, video productions and internet applications.

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Sayit AB is a fully committed team with over 25years experience in producing top quality audio recordings, video productions and internet applications for educational publishers all over Europe.

We have a genuine passion for educational material and we also pay close attention to the latest developments in technology and new teaching methods so that all our products are developed to deliver the best experience to the end user - the student. We work solely with educational publishers throughout Europe, using only native speakers and professional voiceover artists in all our productions, and we are always on the lookout for new voice-talents to help your project come alive. Sayit AB has been around for over 25 years and in all that time we have never once missed a deadline. But above all we enjoy the work we do – and we do it well.

Our services include:

Audio recordings in English, German, French, Spanish and Swedish

Video production

Production of songs/music [for the educational market]

Production of internet applications in html5.

We only use native speakers and professional voiceover artists in all our productions.

English audio recordings

Spacious studio with natural daylight, air conditioning, and carefully tailored acoustics for different tasks.

studio2

Sayit AB has a well established cooperation with all major voiceover agents throughout the London area, providing an excellent supply of good voices, both children and adults, offering a marvelous variety of accents and dialects to meet all possible requirements needed, and we are always on the lookout for new voice-talents to help your project come alive.

Apart from voice recordings we offer music/ song production (composition, arrangement and recording) on the basis of song texts you provide. We collaborate with a range of adult and adolescent musicians and singers Our recording studio is situated close to the village of Hampton,(35 minutes from London Waterloo station) with all the rich history of Hampton Court just around the corner.

Situated on a private island in the middle of the River Thames it’s surrounded by the history of a more recent era, a history that few visitors to London ever get to know.

From 1868 Platts Eyot Island was the home of many and various boat builders.

The boatyard closed in the mid-60s and now plays host to a number of small business units, one of which is the Sayit recording studio. In fact, the Sayit facility houses two versatile studio spaces - one smaller room that comfortably seats six voice artists at separate microphones, and a larger room that can accommodate anything from a bus full of school kids (minus the bus) to a concert orchestra! Natural daylight with a 4, 5 meter ceiling provides excellent reading conditions in both studios.

The larger studio is quickly converted to a film studio for shooting video, and we are lucky to have the peaceful surroundings of the island to use for any outside locations.

The state-of-the-art control room offers every comfort to producers / editors / authors and visitors with plush leather sofas, air conditioning and plenty of room to spread out scripts, laptops and phones.

Refreshments are always on hand from our kitchen and excellent lunches are delivered from the village by a local café. Free Wi-Fi connection is available at all times.

Studio directions...

If coming by car:

From M25 leave at junction 12 to join M3 signposted London SW/ Richmond. Leave the M3 at junction 1 (signposted Sunbury, Kingston) and at Sunbury Cross roundabout take the 4th exit onto Staines Road (East) – A308. Continue on Staines Road East for about 5 minutes until you come to the Thames Water Works on your right. At the traffic lights turn right onto Lower Sunbury Road. Continue down the road until you see the Platts Eyot car park on your left and the large green footbridge. There is plenty of free parking (just past the letter box) then walk over the iron footbridge. Once on the island, go up the little hill and down the other side. The building at the bottom on the left has a big sign on it that says 'SayIt at Stakeout Studios' - go down the 'corridor' between the two sides of this building to the last door on the right: we'll be in there!

By train: trains to HAMPTON (NOT Wick or Court!) run from Waterloo, via Clapham Junction and Kingston, twice an hour only (12 mins and 42 mins past the hour, but check). So, if you need to be with us at, say, 10.00 you'll need to be on the 0842 train to allow for a comfortable walk the other end.

Walking (station to studio about 12 minutes): Once at Hampton leave the station at the nearest exit and cross over Station Road to the cafe 'Plenty' (good coffee if you have time, BTW).

Turn left and go about 25 yards; between two handsome houses there is a cut-through footpath marked by a 'bicycles forbidden' sign. Turn right there.

Keep walking as straight as you can from there until you go down some wonky concrete steps to the main road, A308 Upper Sunbury Road. It's a quiet walk through mostly residential areas - parked cars and basking cats, that kind of thing.

Once at that main road turn left and walk to the lights. Turn right there on to Lower Sunbury Road.

Follow this all the way round, past the water works, until you see a red letter box on the left. That marks the aforementioned car park and iron bridge to Platts Eyot Island. Then proceed as above.

The address is: Unit 503 Platts Eyot, Lower Sunbury Road, Hampton, Middlesex, TW12 2HF However - if using a GPS device, direct it to Lower Sunbury Road or you could end up on the wrong side of the island!

Recordings in other languages

Other languages Sayit

In Paris we have a well-established network of professional native French, German, Italian and Spanish actors. '

The youngsters that participate in our recordings are recruited from local national and international secondary schools. We also cooperate with major voice over agents throughout the Paris area, thus providing a large variety of common and less common languages, dialects and accents.

Apart from voice recordings we offer song production (composition, arrangement and recording) on the basis of song texts you provide. We collaborate with a range of adult and adolescent musicians and singers.

The studio is conveniently situated in central Paris close to the Montmartre district and Place de Clichy. The studio is located in the basement of an historic building from the early 19 hundreds. The studio is adequately sound isolated to protect it from surrounding city noises.

Refreshments are available from our pantry. We offer free WiFi in the studio.

After work Lunches are available at various nearby restaurants which offer French and international cuisine.

In between and after recording sessions you can stroll through the historic surroundings of Montmartre with bistros, restaurants and cabarets that bring you back to the days of Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec. Sacré Cœur and Place du Tertre are just a 15 minute walk away.

Studio directions The studio address is: Studio du Pékinois, 8, rue Étienne Jodelle, 75018 Paris. The nearest tube station is La Fourche.

The most important factor is not the level of technical perfection but rather the content itself.

Video production

Producing for a ”You Tube generation”

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For a longtime video was something that the educational materials production branch had to do without – expensive production equipment and staff intensive setups made it impossible to include film as a natural component of a teaching materials package. This is simply not the case today.

Today’s youngsters are used to You Tube clips, or using their mobile phones to make their own films with sometimes surprisingly good quality results. The most important factor is not the level of technical perfection but rather the content itself. Today ’content is, indeed, King’.

Our reasoning is similar concerning our video productions. It should always be the concept and the pedagogical value that acts as the driving force and not the technology that dictates the terms or sets unnecessary economic limitations on a project.

For today’s youngsters video is taken for granted as a media from which to learn and therefore - we think - should be a natural component in each and every teaching materials package.

Film technology today is relatively inexpensive and the quality is absolutely “good enough”. This should lead to the educational market being able to break into the field in a more consistent way than it has in the past.

Below is a montage of different films that we have produced according to this philosophy.

Could it be that game developers have found a different approach to teaching...?

Computer games in school

minnites

Good or bad?

Well, this is not an easy question to answer. However, the digital revolution has most surely had an impact on the educational market, as well as the rest of our society, with the result that more and more classrooms are being “plugged in”.

The question is - are schools tapping into the learning potential of today's gaming, You Tube and mobile phone generation?

Could it be that game developers have found a different approach to teaching and a different pedagogical method that could perhaps be transferred into the classroom?

We will let others answer this question, but we do follow current research on the matter and have been involved in creating the first ever computer game entirely aimed at the educational market.

Read more at: https://www.theminnits.com

Tomorrow’s society will be the result of how today’s students succeed in school.

My view on the business

A WORD FROM OUR CEO

ceojohan

It really is quite surprising that I find myself working in the area in which I do, as I never really enjoyed studying English at school.

Boring textbooks and uninspiring teachers meant that I would rather listen to music than listen to the teacher. The upshot was that my English vocabulary was limited to extracts from lyrics of songs by the likes of David Bowie, Pink Floyd and various punk bands - in those days a Mohican hairstyle could upset a whole community…

Now some 25 years later I have thousands of educational English language recordings on my conscience – how did all that happen?

Well, it was not until some years after I had left school and begun inter railing and meeting people from other countries that it dawned on me that what English lessons really ought to deal with was communication. In order to make oneself understood, to understand other people, to see the connection, to suddenly be part of something that otherwise is unintelligible, to have an influence in a global world, to be inspired – and above all be affected, to feel that this is something that concerns me and allows me to react in one way or another - even a negative reaction is better than indifference.

A little as in the film The Dead Poets Society when Robin Williams expounds to his initially unmotivated male students “We didn't just read poetry we let it drip like honey from our tongues” to demonstrate that communication is the key to unlocking the hearts (in this case) of female students.

At this point in my life I also realized that I was a mixture of technician and humanist with passion equally divided between William Wordsworth and Steve Jobs. So in fact my career choice was really quite logical as I could immerse myself in technology, pedagogy and language.

Today I have worked above all with educational English language recordings for 25 years and every day (well almost …) still feels as exciting as when I first began on this road. But why should this be? Well, because it is still a challenge to give every recording the feeling of authenticity, immediacy, sincerity, humour or irony – something that touches the recipients (the students) and makes them react in some way and feel that they are participating.

To work within the school market - and to some extent be able to influence it - is in itself really stimulating, as tomorrow’s society will be the result of how today’s students succeed in school.

The advent of new media in teaching such as, computers, tablets, the internet, smart telephones, interactive video, together with new research concerning the educational value of computer games – something which schools should perhaps embrace more fully, are other factors that make every day a little bit of an adventure.

Now, we don’t write your manuscript, but irrespective of whether it’s an educational audio recording, a video production, an internet application, or a music production – I hope that we can contribute to your project successfully reaching your target group, as well as hopefully eliciting a reaction from the students.

Best wishes, Johan