Guest Lecture – Lucy Johnstone – Sound Editor

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Blog post by L3 AP student Sam Jenkins.

Lucy Johnstone graduated from the University of Nottingham in 2008 with a degree in Classical Music. She started as a runner at Envy Post Production and progressed to become Audio Assistant Manager. After a few years in the machine room, Lucy was promoted to Tracklayer, whilst also running voice-over sessions and providing fully mixed Sound Design for television.

Lucy’s presentation was targeted towards Post Production Sound for Factual TV. She began the talk by explicitly informing us that the presentation we were about to observe was focused on what had worked for Lucy personally, conveying her own experiences and practice in the industry. She stated that this could be completely different to other specialists within the same profession.

Lucy focused on the main Post-Production Sound categories of dialogue (and voice-overs), atmos and Foley+SFX. When overseeing a VO session, she suggested that 30% of work is what you know, but 70% is how you are. This meant that although the engineer could be an expert with Pro Tools and their DAW, those who have greater personal skills will be those who are hired. This is something I am aiming to improve when working professionally on set. I hope to improve my personal, professional and communication skills while working with the client, giving me greater experience for the real world.

When dealing with atmos and SFX, especially when on a tight timescale, Lucy suggested a couple of tips to help speed up our process. The first is acknowledging that we do not have time to add every single sound effect, so prioritize the most important. Also, there may not be time to Foley everything, if at all, so either invest or go out and record sound effects, such as footsteps and create a library. Secondly, if we do use our own libraries, try to add variation: do not use the same two footsteps throughout, or 10 seconds of the same crowd noise. Ask the offline editor for handles but use effects such as time stretch or pitch shift to alter the sounds slightly, which stops the sound becoming repetitive and predictable. And ALWAYS keep a copy of the original tracks underneath, in case the editor wants to use them or something goes wrong. It will be very useful to use this method of prioritisation when working on Cognition.

Finally, Lucy offered some real world job advice with regards to this industry. Firstly, she stated that work experience is essential and will help a long way to persuading a company to employ you. Secondly, within this role expect to be making drinks on a low wage as a runner for a while, getting your foot in the door with a company – just because we have a degree does not mean we should just land a high-end job, we still have to work for it! Next, that an in-house role would likely be the best route for graduates, as freelance work requires knowing enough, having enough (good) credits, and knowing enough people – contacts. This brought the presentation succinctly to an end, where Lucy suggested using Twitter, LinkedIn and emails to network on a 1-to-1 basis, if approaching a large group of people and introducing yourself is not one of your strengths.

I was very impressed with the presentation and learned most about just how different the real world is, compared to university work. For example, being given only one day to complete a Factual TV soundtrack, ensuring you network with enough people to build up contacts, and the importance of speed and competence once you have a job. I also picked up useful skills such as prioritizing jobs (dialogue/foley/sfx/atmos) and the importance of personal, communication skills.

Finally, I am pleased that guest lecturers, such as Lucy, are working in the real world right now, as they give us much advice and direction, and tell us how it is right now, rather than what it was like ‘in their day’.

towards automation for sound effects

MIT/CSAIL researchers add realistic sounds to silent videos, a step toward automating sound effects for movies?

Screen Shot 2016-06-16 at 08.35.26MIT researchers have developed a computer system that independently adds realistic sounds to silent videos. Although the technology is nascent, it’s a step toward automating sound effects for movies.

“From the gentle blowing of the wind to the buzzing of laptops, at any given moment there are so many ambient sounds that aren’t related to what we’re actually looking at,” says MITPhD student Andrew Owens . “What would be really exciting is to somehow simulate sound that is less directly associated to the visuals.”

The notion of artificial sound generation has been around for sometime now, with concepts such as procedural audio, and in many ways its long overdue that the same amount of attention and computing power that is afforded to visual effects, be directed towards sound generation. CSAIL is directed by Tim Berners-Lee and is the largest research laboratory at MIT and one of the world’s most important centres of information technology research. I have found several articles which discuss this new development and have selected sections of them here :

see demonstration video here 

the following is a selection from articles:

“Researchers envision future versions of similar algorithms being used to automatically produce sound effects for movies and TV shows, as well as to help robots better understand objects’ properties.

“When you run your finger across a wine glass, the sound it makes reflects how much liquid is in it,” says CSAIL PhD student Andrew Owens, who was lead author on an upcoming paper describing the work. “An algorithm that simulates such sounds can reveal key information about objects’ shapes and material types, as well as the force and motion of their interactions with the world.”

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The team used techniques from the field of “deep learning,” which involves teaching computers to sift through huge amounts of data to find patterns on their own. Deep learning approaches are especially useful because they free computer scientists from having to hand-design algorithms and supervise their progress.

The paper’s co-authors include recent PhD graduate Phillip Isola and MIT professors Edward Adelson, Bill Freeman, Josh McDermott, and Antonio Torralba. The paper will be presented later this month at the annual conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) in Las Vegas.

In a series of videos of drumsticks striking things — including sidewalks, grass and metal surfaces — the computer learned to pair a fitting sound effect, such as the sound of a drumstick hitting a piece of wood or of rustling leaves.

The findings are an example of the power of deep learning, a type of artificial intelligence whose application is trendy in tech circles. With deep learning, a computer system learns to recognize patterns in huge piles of data and applies what it learns in useful ways.

In this case, the researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab recorded about 1,000 videos of a drumstick scraping and hitting real-world objects. These videos were fed to the computer system, which learns what sounds are associated with various actions and surfaces. The sound of the drumstick hitting a piece of wood is different than when it disrupts a pile of leaves.
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Once the computer system had all these examples, the researchers gave it silent videos of the same drumstick hitting other surfaces, and they instructed the computer system to pair an appropriate sound with the video.
To do this, the computer selects a pitch and loudness that fits what it sees in the video, and it finds an appropriate sound clip in its database to play with the video.

To demonstrate their accomplishment, the researcher then played half-second video clips for test subjects, who struggled to tell apart whether the clips included an authentic sound or one that a computer system had added artificially.
But the technology is not perfect, as MIT PhD candidate Andrew Owens, the lead author on the research, acknowledged. When the team tried longer video clips, the computer system would sometimes misfire and play a sound when the drumstick was not striking anything. Test subjects immediately knew the audio was not real.

And the researchers were able to get the computer to produce fitting sounds only when they used videos with a drumstick. Creating a computer that automatically provides the best sound effect for any video — the kind of development that could disrupt the sound-effects industry — remains out of reach for now.

Although the technology world has seen significant strides of late in artificial intelligence, there are still big differences in how humans and machines learn. Owens wants to push computer systems to learn more similarly to the way an infant learns about the world, by physically poking and prodding its environment. He sees potential for other researchers to use sound recordings and interactions with materials such as sidewalk cement as a step toward machines’ better understanding our physical world.

 

taken from this article
and this webpage

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The Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory – known as CSAIL ­– is the largest research laboratory at MIT and one of the world’s most important centers of information technology research.
CSAIL and its members have played a key role in the computer revolution. The Lab’s researchers have been key movers in developments like time-sharing, massively parallel computers, public key encryption, the mass commercialization of robots, and much of the technology underlying the ARPANet, Internet and the World Wide Web.  
CSAIL members (former and current) have launched more than 100 companies, including 3Com, Lotus Development Corporation, RSA Data Security, Akamai, iRobot, Meraki, ITA Software, and Vertica. The Lab is home to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), directed by Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web and a CSAIL member.

 

Guest Lecture – Mark Hills – Sound Engineer

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Blog post by L3 Audio Production students Jack Webber.

This week we were fortunate enough to receive a guest Lecture from Mark Hills, a Lincoln University Media Production Graduate and sound engineer in a highly reputable audio post-production house in Soho, London called Soho Square Studios. Soho Square studios are a Dolby approved studio and focus on audio post production for Advertisement, animations, feature films, and voice recordings for games.

Mark began the lecture talking a bit about his background and how he got to where he is now. He explained how similarly to most sound designers he fell in love with electronic music at an early age. He took media at A-Levels and then became a Lincoln University Media Production Undergraduate in 2007.
I won’t go too much in to detail about his background as he has personally blogged about it, this can be found here.

Mark then talked about the challenges of getting into this industry and working in a studio like Soho Square Studios. He explained the importance of ‘running’ and how although we have (will have) a degree, we will still be expected to start from the bottom as runners. He explained how it’s better to go for a running job at a smaller studio with around 10-15 people, as the opportunity to grow, learn and promotion is higher. Whereas the larger companies, you could find yourself being a runner for many years and not get anywhere.

He also gave us some advice for our CVs. He said that the studio aren’t always that interested in how many student films you’ve worked on, what they want to know is, if you have a degree; and have some real work experience. What he meant by that is customer focused work experience e.g. working in a pub. The studio likes this as it shows you can deal with, and work well with clients.

The Lecture gave a great insight to what it’s like working in an industry we are all passionate about, but also gave us all a bit of a reality check in regards to the amount of work it takes to get to his position. This was a slightly different approach than most guest lectures give, however I felt like it was good for us to get a bit of a reality check to push us more to where we want to go.

The day after this lecture myself and another AP student, Matt Jones went to London and visited Soho Square Studios to interview Mark and his manager Tom Mackewn for research in our R&D case study module. We arrived at the Studio and saw Mark in action finishing up a session, where we were quite impressed by the speed of his Pro tools skills. He then gave us a tour of some of the studio rooms and showed us some of his previous work.

When we interviewed Mark, we asked questions about his role as sound engineer and what he does day-to-day etc. I was interested to find out how the working hours were 9am to 6pm Monday to Friday, as most creative industries involve working unsociable hours. He told us that they don’t have ‘official lunch breaks’ and work around their daily schedules to fit in lunch, and also about some of the perks of the job – he said how he loved being able to do a hobby for a job and that you get to work with some amazing high status people.

The SOUND OF CAPITAL

THE SOUND OF CAPITAL

BBC new Drama Capital is edited by an ex-colleague of mine Philip Kloss and the Dialogue editor is by co-incidence the man who designed our Sound Effect Software we use here at LSFM.
This recent article is a fascinating insight into some of the sound post challenges.

To create an authentic soundscape for BBC drama Capital, dubbing mixer Howard Bargroff took a trip to the part of south London in which it is set,
writes George Bevir [from an article first published in Broadcast Online]

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CREDITS

TX 9pm, Wednesdays, from 24 November, BBC1
Length 3 x 60 minutes
Dubbing mixer/ FX editor Howard Bargroff
Foley editor Stuart Bagshaw
Dialogue editor Peter Gates (two episodes); Michele Woods (one episode)
ADR supervisor Kallis Shamaris
FX editor Mike Wabro (one episode)
Picture post Technicolor
Director Euros Lyn
Writer John Lanchester

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Lesley Sharp (Mary)

Stepping out of the studio to capture authentic audio is not always without peril, no matter how inconspicuous the individual or discreet the recording device. A few years ago, dubbing mixer Howard Bargroff needed some crowd noise for a rap album he was working on but a trip to a pub at closing time to record the sound of a pack of people nearly resulted in him being “lynched” by the suspicious boozers.

“You have to be careful you don’t look like a psychopath, but people can still be suspicious,” he says.

Fortunately for Bargroff, his trip to Clapham to capture the sounds of south London for BBC drama Capital passed by with little more than a few sideways glances.

The three-parter, which is based on John Lanchester’s novel, is a portrait of a road in Clapham that is transformed by rising property prices and then rocked by an anonymous hate campaign. Bargroff ’s brief was to give London a presence so that the city becomes a character in its own right and “leaks” in to every scene.

 

“It’s a contemporary piece about the gentrification of London, so I went to south London and made a bunch of recordings,” says Bargroff. “As I moved around Clapham, I saw microcosms of the plot – people interacting with builders, posh mums coming out of buildings, and so on. It was as though the book was coming alive and I was recording it.”

Bargroff says his recordings, made using a Zoom H5, became the “sonic backbone” of the series, comprising around 50% of the background sound.

“We used lots of bridging sounds, such as sirens, between cuts. At first I thought the recordings were a luxury, but they soon became a necessity; those recordings of Clapham High Street, of a park, of close and distant traffic, planes passing overhead and sirens became themes throughout the episodes. It helped to create the feeling that in London you are never more than a few streets away from a busy high street.”

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Exiting London
Bargroff, who worked at De Lane Lea, Future Post, Videosonics and Pepper before going freelance, waved goodbye to the city a couple of years ago when he moved from Battery Studios in Willesden to a studio attached to his home in Woburn Sands. Since then, through his company Sonorous, he has mixed both series of Broadchurch (ITV) and From There To Here (BBC1) from home, and as a freelancer completed the pre-mix for Fortitude (Sky Atlantic) and Luther (BBC1) in his home studio.

Bargroff ’s standard approach for an hour of drama is to spend three days premixing at home, followed by two client-attended days at a dry-hire facility in London. That means he needs to keep his home set-up as up-to-date as possible so that it is compatible with other facilities (see box) and he can quickly pick up where he left off. For Capital, he completed the final mix with director Euros Lyn at the “excellent” Hackenbacker, which also provided the ADR and Foley.

 

“Dru Masters created a fantastic score and delivered it quite early so I had time to weave it and the music treatments in. That meant when I turned up with Euros at Hackenbacker on the first day, we could play the whole episode, so we had quite a lot of review time. I like the three-day premix because it means you can turn up with something cohesive. I try to protect that 3:2 approach; most jobs fit that template and clients are usually happy to accommodate it.”

CAPITAL KEY KIT

Bargroff’s home studio is equipped with Avid Pro Tools HDX2, an Icon D-Command 16-fader desk and PMC twotwo active monitors. Plug-ins are “industry standard”, including Audio Ease Altiverb, Waves WNS, iZotope RX, ReVibe and Speakerphone.

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Projects are transferred between facilities using portable drives, with Cronosynch software to synchronise work completed at home with a transfer drive and a local drive in a dry-hire facility. “I keep the transfer drive synched to both ends so at any point during the job I have a mirror of the media in two locations, which is great for back-up. At the end of the job, everything is backed up to a Raid system for archiving.”

Bargroff also uses the Soundminer librarian program for managing his library of work. “It can scan multiple terabytes in a few hours and give you complete breakdown, or you can do a keyword search. All my libraries are well organised, but without that software I wouldn’t be able to find a thing.”

(The copyright to this content lies with Broadcast Online and is reproduced here under educational licence)
Original article is here http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/techfacils/capital-bbc1/5097498.article

Guest Lecture – Neil Collymore – Dubbing Mixer

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Blog post by level 2 Audio Production student Daniel Marnie.
Photograph by Chris Hainstock.

My fellow Audio Production students and I, recently received a guest lecture from BAFTA and RTS nominated Dubbing Mixer and Sound Designer Neil Collymore. Neil’s credits include the critically acclaimed TV series Spooks, as well as Hustle, Law & Order UK, and the films Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Billy Elliot, and Chicken Run.

During his lecture Neil talked us through his workflow when beginning a project, using his own Pro Tools sessions from an episode of Spooks and a promo for the E4 TV channel. As he worked though the project file he would outline the sort of state a project might turn up in, and showed how he’d get the best out any situation. He was at all times open to questions, of which there were several!

He spoke at some length about some of the restrictions TV faces compared to film; discussing how the new loudness format (R128) provides a little more technical freedom over its predecessor (PPM6). It is hoped that this new format could help combat the high audio levels that companies request in their ads in order to stand out from the competition. Neil also stressed that the projects he works on are not his, and that the Director always has the final say in any decision.

Neil gave us a fascinating insight into his work, and closed the lecture off with an excellent Q&A session in which we learned about his time as a freelancer, his working preferences and workflow, as well as the kinds of costs involved with sound work.

Adrian Bell – Feature Film and TV sound recordist

ADRIAN BELL

We get all the best visitors to Lincoln School of Film and Media.

This is Adrian Bell, a Film and TV recordist, just back from filming the new DaVinci Code film ‘Inferno’ directed by Ron Howard.
Check out his CV at www.adrianbell.net  He won a BAFTA for best sound in 2014 for Dancing on the Edge
adrian bell

He’s in town to be interviewed by BBC Radio Lincs tomorrow about the feature film ‘Everest’ he worked on earlier in 2014 Directed by Baltasar Kormakur, and yes I tool the oportunity of giving him a tour and collared him to come back and talk to students some time soon. He’s on BBC Lincolnshire sometime after 11.00am tomorrow

Adrian lives in London but is originally from Lincolnshire. He has a wealth of experience and is keen to come and contribute to the Audio Production course content if he can.

here’s a short photo slideshow

Mark Hills, Class of 2010 – Sound Designer Soho Square Studios

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Original post by RW

At only 26 years old, I feel incredibly fortunate to be in the position I am right now. Most people my age in this industry are still working as runners, making teas and fetching lunches. Some may be working in transfer or as an assistant, dealing with files, deliverables and setting up sessions. I decided to send in my alumni story to offer my own insight as someone who has now been in the audio post industry for nearly 5 years. This is a recent piece of sound design I finished for Pierre Michel, creative director at Digital Domain in LA.

Like most sound designers, my love of sound came from a musical background. At the age of 12, I fell in love with electronic music. This inevitably led me towards buying a pair of turntables and music production, making “fat beats” on Dance eJay and recording my mixtapes into Cool Edit 2 (now known as Adobe Audition!). I took media studies as a course at A-level and immediately realised, that in one capacity or another, creative media was the path I wanted to choose as a career.

Unfortunately, when I applied to Lincoln in 2007, the Audio Production course was still being prepared. In fact, I believe it was announced shortly before I graduated. It was a shame, because I would have loved to have applied for it. Instead, I chose BA (Hons) Media Production, and in many ways, this was a better choice for me. I got to experience all aspects of the industry at a time when I wasn’t 100% where I wanted to end up. I was able to try my hand at photography, graphic design, motion graphics, film making and script writing to name a few. In my final year, I actually specialised in “Digital Media”, motion/3d graphics using After Effects, Maya and 3D max. I loved the challenge of it and I wanted to be able to come away from University having learnt a new skill. There was one small problem though… Although I really enjoyed it, I wasn’t very good at it. I could never translate the ideas in my head into my actual work, and in all honesty I bit off more than I could chew for someone with such little experience. This led to months of stress and frustration, staring at a render bar and never being happy with the end result. Until this point, I had anticipated a career in VFX, but after my third year final project very nearly didn’t make it to hand in (My friend George literally was burning it to disc for me on his laptop whilst we ran to the faculty), I decided to throw the towel in and accept it wasn’t for me.

I spent the majority of my time at University working as the “sound guy” on practically every project, writing the music and adding the SFX. I had always loved this, and coupled with my passion for music production and interest in sound, I began looking for companies that only specialised in audio post production. Being so naive, I had no idea just how many studios there were. After graduating, I began the process of putting together a CV and sending it out to as many companies as possible. 170 CVs in fact (I remember counting them some time later). Out of those 170 CVs, I had 5 interviews and a trial day. That right there, is the first lesson. Do not be disheartened if you do not receive a response immediately. Sound engineering has become a very popular job, and there is a huge amount of competition. You won’t always get replies, and if you do it will be often be “thanks for the interest, we have no positions at the moment but we’ll keep your CV on record.”

Persistence is key. Many times, I sent CVs to the same companies more than once. In fact, that’s how I got the job at Soho Square Studios. I had sent a CV a few weeks prior and received no response, whether it was intentional or not on my part (it all got a bit of a blur after a while of sending so many applications) I sent them another in late May 2011. Incredibly, within 5 minutes of sending it, my mobile rang. The owner of the company happened to be sitting upstairs on the front desk at the time, and my CV arrived just as they decided they needed an extra pair of hands the next day to help with their re-branding launch party. And that was it, that was my beginning in the industry.

I spent my first working day at a studio filling bags of popcorn and blowing up balloons. I worked as a freelance runner for the next nine months, being called in for the odd days/weeks here and there before finally being offered a full time job in January 2012. During this period, whilst not running I worked on a handful of paid freelance projects, short films mostly. I found these on mandy.com in the job section. It’s amazing how much you think you know when you’re fresh out of Uni, then after a few years later of being in the industry you look back and laugh at the mistakes you made and how much easier it would be if the project was undertaken now. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. I hope to look back on the work I’m doing now in 5 years and feel the same.

When looking for jobs, take full advantage of the job seekers allowance, I’m not just talking about taking the money every week – but the fact that if you have an interview, they will pay for your travel (at least they did in 2011, hopefully it hasn’t changed!). I was living in a small village in Norfolk at the time, and the cost of a return train ticket to London was £80. I had five interviews whilst I was looking for employment, and by being on JSA, it meant the £400 in travel expenses was covered. I would have never been able to afford as a recent graduate with a huge overdraft.

This brings me onto my next lesson, and possibly the most important one I can give to any inspirational sound engineer. In fact, this is relevant to pretty much ANYONE who wants to get into either production or post production. Once you finally find yourself a studio or company, you will have to run. Running, is the true definition of starting out at the bottom in order to work your way up. You might have graduated with first class honours, best in year, and worked on some really successful films. You may even have a masters degree. Trust me when I tell you that if you want to work at a studio worth working for, you will have to be a runner. It involves working very long hours, for minimum wage, doing very menial tasks like making tea, tidying studios and fetching lunch for people. Welcome to the industry. This is something I have found some people have a real problem with. Far too often we receive CVs sent through from people fresh out of University applying for sound engineer roles. When we try to explain that’s not how it works and they will have to work up from a runner position, they often respond with a look of shock or as if we’ve insulted them.

Running serves a huge purpose though. When a studio employs you as a runner, they know that you don’t want to make tea your whole life. They don’t expect you to be in that role forever. Running is very much a test of character. You want to be a sound engineer? Ok good, prove it. Why should we employ you as a sound engineer over the nine other people who applied for the same job today. If you can shine as a runner, and put 110% into the job and make yourself indispensable, then people will know you will behave in the same manner as a sound engineer. If you approach running with an attitude of it being beneath you and/or give anything less than the your full dedication, it will be looked upon as a reflection of your character. A studio will not trust you with the responsibilities of a sound engineer if you can’t be trusted with the responsibilities of making tea or keeping the rooms tidy. Trust me when I say that studios receive dozens of CVs daily, and if you’re not pulling your weight, there’s plenty of other people a phone call away desperate for the opportunity.

There are also huge upsides to being a runner. At times it felt as if my 2.5/3 years spent as a runner were more valuable and useful to me, than my entire degree. Yes, I was polishing tables, fetching sushi and emptying bins, but look at the environment I was in. I was in professional studios surrounded by the best in the industry. I could watch them work, ask questions, get to know the clients. I was being trained by these people and I took it upon myself to find short films and projects to work on out of hours. When the studios were quiet (and after I’d finished all the jobs I needed to do), I would find an empty studio and open up people’s sessions and simply look at what they did and try to understand why. I would go through their sound effects, their settings and take notes on their methods and techniques. What compressor did they use, how much are they limiting the audio, what some engineers do that others don’t etc. In my first few months of running, the studio was working on Disney Pixar’s “Brave.” I got to meet all the actors, the director and producers who had flown over from America for the week. Fetching Billy Connolly his tea and Emma Thompson’s soup was a pretty cool way to spend the day even if it was exhausting looking after so many people. The place had an amazing atmosphere during that time.

My final word on running however will be this, approach it with an element of caution. Pick your company wisely and don’t just accept the first offer you get because it’s a paid job in the industry. There are a LOT of huge post production companies with huge numbers of staff. One of my first freelance shifts was at a huge company that offered full post production services from the edit, grade, CGI and audio. The company I was at had three different buildings, and employed around 20 runners just in my building alone. These kind of places can be very risky to start your working life at. I’ve heard of many people who have gone to these big facilities that hire dozens of runners, and they never make it into the industry.
The reason for this is firstly due to the competition, if you are running in a team of twenty, that means if a job does open up, you are already statistically at a disadvantage. Secondly, and this is sadly more often the case, if a sound engineer leaves the company and a position opens up, more often than not the facility will simply hire, or or poach a more experienced engineer who is already established in the industry with their own set of clients or a credit list you will never be able to match at that stage. Your worth as an engineer later in your career, is your clients, the people you meet in the industry who want to work with you only, this makes you very valuable to any studio.

These big facilities have a reputation for being a bit of a black hole for runners. I’d heard many stories about people being employed, running whilst receiving training, but then after three years being released as there were no jobs available as engineers. This is the worst case scenario as a runner, as generally you simply won’t get employed as a sound engineer without relevant credits and experience. In this situation, your choices are pretty much limited to finding another studio to begin running at again, or leaving the industry at the thought of doing another three years of tea making.

I can even give an example of this. A few years ago, I was running at the studio and we needed to hire in a freelance runner for the day as it was exceptionally busy. I was talking with him about studios in the area he said he had an interview at one of the big post production facilities in Soho. I knew of this company and had heard of runners experiencing similar situations to what I described above, and I warned him about it and tried to explain he might get swallowed up there. A few weeks later he Linkedin with me and I saw he had taken a full time job as a runner at the company. Late last year, I saw his Linkedin employment change to a sales role at a company I’d never heard of. I googled them, and it was a company that manufactured and sold high end stereo systems. This guy, who had hopes and aspirations of becoming a sound engineer, spent three years of his life running only to go and sell stereos. Now – of course, it is possible that there is more to this story from both sides, maybe he left on his own accord, or he lost his job because he wasn’t good enough or made huge mistake, but his case was literally exactly what other people had warned me about happening.

So, my strongest advice is when you go in for an interview, or research a company, make sure you enquire about how many people, and specifically, other runners they employ. Ask about their structure of promoting runners and what the path looks like and above all else, use a bit of common sense and be savvy. You’re one of nine runners looking after six studios? Do the maths, and don’t be lured in by the companies showreel or the work they do. Smaller studios/ companies are SIGNIFICANTLY better places to start your career at than the big ones. I cannot emphasise this enough. At smaller companies, you will become part of the team and integrate very quickly, you will have a name and a face and you will be given opportunities much sooner. At the big places, you’re just another runner, people will not remember you and you will very quickly feel the “us and them” divide between the runners and everyone else.
Back to me now.

As time marched on at Soho Square, I was gradually given more responsibilities. I began taking on more transfer jobs, downloading/ uploading files, converting videos, preparing sessions etc. This is a huge step up from running and it feels amazing, you’re finally out of the kitchen.
Your tasks are still pretty menial, but you have bigger responsibilities and you begin liaising more with clients. If you continue to work hard, and do a good job, you’ll soon find yourself being booked in smaller, basic engineering sessions. In a smaller company, all it takes is for someone to go on holiday when it’s busy or take a day off sick, and you can find yourself in your first session.

Aside from the initial nerves, your early jobs are likely to be very simple, basic voice records or mixes. As you gain experience, the projects and jobs will become more complex. What you need to make sure of at this early stage is that you have every possible outcome covered, and that you can quickly troubleshoot and deal with the unexpected. Clients may ask for things that can cause you technical headaches or challenges, and you have to make sure you are ready for it. This is not a corporate desk job.

There is no formality, no “congratulations you are now an engineer.” Opportunities come and you grab them. Work hard, make yourself an indispensable member of the team and prove yourself. In my case, I found myself suddenly being booked on more and more jobs until I was practically fully booked out for days or weeks at a time. This meant when the time was right, I had a really strong case to go to my bosses and negotiate a significant pay rise and full engineer status.

A few weeks ago,I read Philip Rollett’s alumini story, a graduate who appears to have gone down a similar path to mine. Whilst reading, I found myself disagreeing with some of what he wrote because of my own experiences, which I’d like to share. Here are a couple of sections from his story that I would like to comment on. “Since leaving university I have done one week’s free work experience in London and it was so bad, I think it was the company’s fault and others are undoubtedly better, but I don’t plan on doing any more, unless it’s for Christopher Nolan or some other amazing opportunity, and even then I’d be like “hey, Nolan, stop being so tight and pay your staff”.

“It’s the company’s fault” is probably not the best attitude to start your working life with. When you start looking for work, you have to make sure you know what you are getting into before you agree to anything. Work experience is a tricky one, as generally it’s for the benefit of you, not the company. A lot of places, including our studio offer work experience when we don’t have to. If you have agreed to unpaid work experience, then you can’t be upset for not being paid when experiencing work. From my personal experience, even if you’re just doing the odd days running, you will have to go through an interview process and that’s where you discuss pay. If you financially cannot afford to do work experience, then you shouldn’t. Look for running jobs, even as a freelance runner doing the odd day making tea, it’s a much better way to get into the industry and meet relevant people.

“Perhaps my unwillingness to work for free is why it has taken me six months to start getting work, but what people expect graduates to do in the media industry for free (or for hardly any money) is absolutely ridiculous. I don’t mean if you visit a studio for a few days because everyone should definitely do that for free, but once you start actually doing work for them you should be getting paid, no doubt about it. It’s only because people are so desperate to get into the media industry that companies can take advantage of students coming out of university and you have to be very careful of that. It’s down to everyone individually, but there’s still plenty of money in the industry to be paid for your contribution.”


It’s not particularly uncommon for it to take six months to find work. In fact, it took me 9 months just to get regular freelance work, and in total about 13-14 months to get a full time position in a studio. I was commuting in from my girlfriend’s flat in Rugby to London every day, a grand total of 600 miles a week and pretty much making a loss financially because my entire wage was being spent on train fares. I was exhausted all the time from commuting, my social life was non-existent and I’d spend the entire weekend just resting and recovering from the working week. I did of course, eventually move to London but I’m just trying to paint a picture of how hard you have to actually work for it if you truly want it.
In my experience, the notion of working for free, is very uncommon. I ran at a few different studios before getting full time work and they all paid (albeit minimum wage). The only places that didn’t offer full pay were smaller independent studios (4-5 staff max) who were offering work experience or internships. They made it very clear and were not attempting to trick me into working for free. One company called and offered me an unpaid internship, but they would cover travel expenses. Had I been living near London, I would have taken it even though I knew it was unpaid. Ultimately, it’s your responsibility, so use common sense. You are there to provide a service and you owe them nothing, and you are fully entitled to expect full payment unless you agree otherwise beforehand.

So finally, I would say that I got to where I am today through sheer grit, determination and hard work, and it is finally paying off. I recently completed my first film feature sound mix in Dolby 5.1 and I’ve worked with some of the biggest clients, companies and celebrities in the world including some of my personal heroes. Spending an afternoon talking football, specifically Norwich City FC (the team I’ve supported all my life) with Stephen Fry was a huge highlight. I’ve worked on films, games, adverts, radio campaigns, short films, documentaries, promos and music composition.

I’m one of the lucky few who actually enjoys going to work, and being able to pursue what is effectively a hobby and a passion as a job, is worth more to me than any money or pay cheque. The first time I ever saw my work on television is a feeling I’ll never forget, and even now when I see TV shows, adverts or promos I’ve worked on broadcast to millions of people, it fills me with a great sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.

I read somewhere once that the term luck can be described as when preparation meets opportunity, and I think in my situation that’s very much the case. I was fortunate to a degree in the sense that positions opened up at the right times and suddenly I was in the deep end, but you better believe that I was ready for it.

Philip Rollett, Class of 2014 | Audio Production Engineer

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Recent graduate Philip Rollett will be on-campus for LSFM’s HEADSPACE event on 6th May with other working audio & radio alumni to share their own industry advice with students. Philip opted for self-employment to start his new business and discusses his experiences here.

About a month ago I was ready to give up on running my own audio company, it seemed like an impossible, thankless, task. I was constantly thinking if I was going to be able to earn a living from a degree that I’d dedicated so much time and money to. You find that you are no longer just an audio engineer, you’re a social media marketer, website developer and a phone salesman. I set my company up Start! Audio in July last year, with the help of my part time employer Howard Young (Engine 7 Post Production), this was around two months after finishing my degree in Audio Production.

Howard took me on part time after I spent a few days with him in his studio.We work on a range of projects such as animation sound design, radio adverts and telephone on hold messages. I was extremely lucky to get paid work from him straight after leaving university, it also meant I was constantly being creative and using Pro Tools. With the work only being part time at Engine 7, Howard was kind enough to give me lots of help and advice to set up my own audio business where I live in Chesterfield. I spent a couple of weeks turning a spare room into a small studio, I purchased some bass traps and foam panels and was ready to go.

My marketing strategy didn’t go much further than Twitter, email and my website, and still doesn’t. I probably should have paid more attention in R&D, but, honestly Twitter has been the best networking/ marketing tool for my business. The majority of the work I get in is from Twitter.

Since leaving university I have done one week’s free work experience in London and it was so bad, I think it was the company’s fault and others are undoubtedly better, but I don’t plan on doing any more, unless it’s for Christopher Nolan or some other amazing opportunity, and even then I’d be like “hey, Nolan, stop being so tight and pay your staff”.

Perhaps my unwillingness to work for free is why it has taken me six months to start getting work, but what people expect graduates to do in the media industry for free (or for hardly any money) is absolutely ridiculous. I don’t mean if you visit a studio for a few days because everyone should definitely do that for free, but once you start actually doing work for them you should be getting paid, no doubt about it. It’s only because people are so desperate to get into the media industry that companies can take advantage of students coming out of university and you have to be very careful of that. It’s down to everyone individually, but there’s still plenty of money in the industry to be paid for your contribution.

There are some people who swear by free labour once you leave university. I personally don’t. I think one thing students don’t realise is that there is lots of media work out there, it might not be on major budget films, but even locally you can find work, such as, explainer videos for local businesses or producing on hold music for their telephones. Earning money in the industry is something that never really seems to get talked about, even at university, and that really should change because it’s so important. Don’t let people fool you into believing you shouldn’t be making money, because in most cases someone will be making money out of the work you do.

I now have two audiobooks to produce this month, along with a few other audio projects like working for the university. I’d still like to be busier, but this month I’ll be making enough money to be earning a proper month’s wage and that’s a great feeling. If you love audio, video, or whatever, then you definitely can make a living from it. It probably will be easier to just be a banker or something, and it’s guaranteed to pay better, but it definitely won’t be as fun. Although, I might still end up being a banker.