The winners of the Royal Television Society (RTS) 2014/15 Craft and Design Awards were announced at the London Hilton on Park Lane on the evening of Monday 30th November with the team at Encore securing an exciting win in the category of Sound: Drama for their work on Fortitude.

Hosted by comedian Susan Calman, the prestigious awards gala celebrates the best of television broadcast on British screens in the last year. Spanning 30 categories, the awards honour the behind-the scenes professionals involved in TV production. 

Fortitude, produced by Fifty Fathoms (Tiger Aspect/Endemol) for Sky Atlantic was a hugely ambitious drama with extremely high production values. To properly handle a project of such magnitude, Encore brought together a team of four sound editors, a sound designer, two music editors and a Foley department .

Mixed by Associate Sound Mixer Howard Bargroff, Encore’s Chris Roberts was the Supervising Sound Editor for the series. Long-standing Encore collaborators Blair Jollands (Sound Effects Editor/Sound Designer) and Phil Barnes (Dialogue Editor) together with Encore’s Sound Editor Joe Fletcher complete the winning team. 

“The judges felt [Fortitude] quite simply achieved ‘movie sound’ on television,” says the RTS. “The soundscape created a world that the viewer utterly believed in but never felt as if it took over from the drama in any way. It was well judged to enhance the scale and impact of the drama itself.”

“We’re really proud to have been recognised by the RTS for the work we did on Fortitude,” says Encore’s Supervising Sound Editor Chris Roberts. “I am particularly pleased as the award acknowledges the contribution made by the members of both production and post production sound departments. Putting the right team together was essential to create the soundtrack for such bold and imaginative storytelling, and I really couldn’t have wished to be working with any more talented and creative individuals either on the shoot or with us here at Encore.”

Fortitude also went on to win in the category of Effects: Special with Encore posted projects Home Fires (ITV Studios for ITV) winning Music: Original Score and Music: Original Title, Ripper Street (Tiger Aspect for Amazon Prime) winning Effects: Digital, Humans (Kudos for Channel 4/AMC) winning Design: Titles and Marvellous (Fifty Fathoms/Tiger Aspect for BBC Two) securing Director: Fiction.

Johnny Whitehead, Director of Operations at Encore says:  “I’m delighted for the sound team who thoroughly deserve this award for their outstanding work on this ground breaking series. Everyone involved went the extra mile to help make this series so special – it was a great team effort and we are immensely proud, not only to have worked on Fortitude, but to also have our work on the series recognised by the Royal Television Society. To see so many of the productions we have worked on here at Encore honoured at the same event made for a really special evening.”