19 Sound Strengthens Offering with Expansion into Long-Form Storytelling

Left to right : Jack Wyllie sound designer and Will Ward sound designer

Building on a decade of experience in the commercial and short-form content world, the team at 19 Sound have broadened into long-form, with a particular focus on documentaries.

Their long-form work spans full audio post-production pipelines; from voice over recording, sound/dialogue editing, detailed sound design, original music composition, and final mix.

Life on the Edge was their first feature length documentary, and was a real labour of love. Working closely with Anima Films, who produced and directed the film, Will Ward and Jack Wyllie crafted the sound design, sound edited the dialogue and sync sounds, recorded replacement dialogue, and fully scored the film. It’s a beautiful, dark and moving story based around Nuka (a native Greenlander) and the work he does across Greenland to help people deal with, alcoholism, suicide, depression and generally living a ‘life on the edge’. It had its world premiere at Sheffield Documentary Festival, where it was nominated for the youth jury prize, and has been touring the world on the film festival circuit ever since.

For White Man Walking (BBC Storyville), directed by Rob Bliss and Denise Alder, their main objective was to deliver a clean, mix with clarity and sonic balance. The film is a deeply intimate and politically charged road documentary that requires the viewer to be able to hear the conversations and feel the passion in peoples voices. Shot on location during a 1,500-mile walk through the American South, the film relied on raw, naturalistic sound. Their role included detailed editing of unpredictable, roughly recorded dialogue, crafting a textured and often haunting soundscape from the recorded location ambience, and delivering a final mix that underscored both confrontational and contemplative scenes with subtle precision. The film had premiere cinema screenings at The Hackney Picture House and Ritzy Brixton, before its broadcast on the BBC on May 27th 2025. It is available to watch on IPlayer.

On Global War and Who Paid for WW2 Will Ward zoomed out to the macro scale, exploring the global implications of modern conflict, detailing the funding behind these transformative historical events and looking into the details of how the war really began. Adrian's narration was recorded their Charlotte St Studio, and then everything was sound-edited, designed, and mixed for TV, and online broadcast. The sonic challenge here was to craft an immersive yet restrained environment across the diverse international settings, balancing grandeur with intimacy, all while supporting Adrian Munsey’s clear editorial vision. Utilising hundreds of archive clips, Will Ward brought forgotten and silent environments to life through sound design and enhanced spatial atmospheres. This approach was a constant point of collaboration with Adrian, as they sought the perfect balance between realism and artistic license. This project also gave them the perfect opportunity to partner with their newly formed 'sister' company, Charlotte St Post, a video-post edit facility, operating from the same location, 26 Charlotte St, as 19 Sound.

Doing this enables 19 Sound to offer an agile 'all in one' cost effective video-audio post solution.

Global War and Who Paid for WW2 will be broadcast on Sky Arts and Sky Documentaries (Date TBC).

Writer and director Adrian Munsey's one concern at the beginning of the post process was finding an editor, as his regular editor of choice was unavailable, and he was struggling to find someone suitable to bring on board. After discussing in detail the needs of this project with Oscar Kugblenu, 19 Sound's post production manager, Oscar suggested Adrian should use our partner company, Charlotte St Post, for the film edit. Charlotte St Post, is a Dry Hire film edit facility, which shares the same office and working space as 19 Sound. It can be hired out independently, or in conjunction with 19 Sound, for a cost effective 'all in one' video -audio post solution. Oscar presented Adrian with a narrowed down list of recommended editors, from which Adrian chose Don McNulty aka DonShades. Once Don was set up at Charlotte St Post, everything else fell into place quickly; Don editing in one room, Will Ward track-laying, sound editing /designing in the room next door. A seamless process, which not only saved Adrian time that would have been lost moving between separate facilities, it also offered him greater creative flexibility, as he’d often craft both the sound design and film edit simultaneously, and of course, and maybe even more importantly, saving him money.

For The Real History of Communism, a two-part archival documentary narrated by Hugh Bonneville, 19 Sound handled sound design, full mix, and selected music composition. Working entirely with historical footage, our task was to bring cohesion and emotional weight to a narrative spanning the 20th century. Jack Wyllie composed six additional pieces of original music for specific scenes, to subtly support tonal shifts such as hope, oppression and revolution, while using layered archival textures to evoke time and place without overwhelming the voiceover. The final mix balanced Bonneville’s narration (recorded at Forever) with a carefully structured interplay of archival sound, the original supplied music, and the newly composed musical elements,

The Real History of Communism broadcast dates TBC.

Across all of these projects, 19 Sound’s approach remains the same: serve the story, support the director’s vision, and use sound to create emotional and narrative clarity.

Long-form documentary has become a core strand of their creative work and one they are excited to keep expanding into.