Wonka at Abbey Road

15th December 2023

After a successful opening week in the UK, the highly anticipated film Wonka is out today the US.

Across the past couple of years, we’ve played host to countless sessions for the Original Score by the wonderful Joby Talbot as well as Original Songs by the prolific Neil Hannon (The Divine Comedy) including sessions with Timothée Chalamet, Hugh Grant, Keegan Michael Key, Matt Lucas, Paterson Joseph, Mat Baynton, Olivia Coleman, Jim Carter, Rich Fulcher, Calah Lane and more.

The process has seen many Abbey Road engineers lend their skills including Paul Pritchard, Lewis Jones, Gordon Davidson, Matt Jones, George Oulton, Marta Di Nozzi, Tom Ashpitel, Al Russell, Mack Kniese, Kobi Quist and Hannes Wannerberger.

Vocal sessions with the actors took place across Studio Three, The Gatehouse and The Front Room, recorded by Jake Jackson from AIR Studios as well as Abbey Road's Lewis Jones, Paul Pritchard and Gordon Davidson.

George Oulton was the recordist for the majority of these with Marta Di Nozzi filling in when he was unavailable.

Sessions featured Timothée Chalamet, Keegan Michael Key, Matt Lucas, Paterson Joseph, Mat Baynton, Olivia Coleman, Jim Carter, Rich Fulcher, Calah Lane and a special Hugh Grant session at Angel Studios with a VFX camera attached to his head used to animate the Oompa-Loompa's face after recording!

The band (drums, bass, keys, guitars, percussion) parts for the Original Songs by Neil Hannon were recorded between Studio Three and Angel Studios with AIR's Tom Bailey as engineer, George Oulton as recordist and Tom Ashpitel and Al Russell as assistant engineers.

The orchestral/big band parts of the songs were recorded between Angel Studios and AIR Studio 1 by Tom B, George and Tom A.

Next, the incredible score by composer Joby Talbot was recorded in Studio One by Tom Bailey, George Oulton, Tom Ashpitel and Mack Kniese.

Halfway through recording pickups for the songs and score AIR Studio 1, Tom Bailey went upstairs to start mixing and Abbey Road's Paul Pritchard came over to engineer.

At that point it became a total takeover of Abbey Road and AIR as the songs were mixed in AIR Studio 2, the score was mixed in AIR Studio 3, choir parts were recorded back in Abbey Road Studio Two by Lewis Jones, Matt Jones and Tom Ashpitel whilst George and Paul continued to record pickups in AIR Studio 1!

Finally, sound mix technicians Kobi Quist and Hannes Wannerberger assisted as engineer Paul Massey mixed final pieces of music in our Mix Stage.