Guinness - Rise

Wave Studios is a globally acclaimed sound design and audio post production company working in the fields of commercials, feature films, promos, gaming, and sonic branding. Wave has a roster of some of the world's best sound designers, mixers, recordists and supervisors.

Wave began in 1999 when Warren Hamilton and Johnnie Burn established their company with a growing reputation of hard graft producing excellent creative craftsmanship. Wave is now a collection of around 40 people who really care about sound. Wave sits in the heart of London’s Soho, a pretty canal in central Amsterdam and most recently in 2018 opened their doors in New York. Our teams work globally, both remotely and in person. We shape sound to moving image, and also work on a wide range of sound design pieces, including company logos, video game environments, or even car indicator sounds, for example.

Wave's first piece of work was the widely regarded best ever piece of advertising, the Guinness “Surfer’ commercial. Since then Wave’s client list reads like a who’s who of the worlds best artists, musicians, directors and creatives, like Frederik Bond, Juan Cabral, Walter Campbell, Tom Carty, Chris Cunningham, David Bowie, Jonathan Glazer, Michel Gondry, Tony Kaye, Kasabian, Kylie, Madonna, Michael Mann, Rupert Sanders, and Ridley Scott. 

There have been many career highs including opening Amsterdam, growing in London from one floor to the whole building, making the sounds of Skype, the Sesame Street Games titles for Microsoft, and our first feature film ‘Birth’. Other noteable events have been winning Hollywood Post Alliance sound design awards, Cannes Lions, and more D&AD pencils than any other audio outfit.

Wave cemented its place in audio history by winning the only D&AD black pencil ever awarded specifically in sound for its work on Honda ‘GRR’ in 2005. Last year, Wave was crowned 'Facility of The Year’ at the Conch awards, Aaron Reynolds won many awards with his sound design on the Lurpak commercials including the only Gold Cannes Lion awarded in the UK and Johnnie and Warren received recognition for their craft with a BTAA Lifetime Achievement Fellowship award. 

Recently Johnnie Burn won a nomination at the British Independent Film Awards for Outstanding Achievement reflecting a years work making the Sound Design on Jonathan Glazer’s film 'Under The Skin’, starring Scarlett Johansson as an alien seductress.