TV – Sound and Music Production

Guest Lecture – Lucy Johnstone – Sound Editor

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’.

June 10, 2017 Audio Post Production, featured posts, Guest lecture, Industry, TV 1 Comment

Springwatching

Audio Production students Rob Wynne and Dan Marnie spent the day with the Springwatch crew at the invitation of University of Lincoln Visiting Professor Chris Packham for a behind the scenes look at one of the BBC’s most popular programmes.

Students from the School of Film and Media watched the masses of activity around the build-up to the live broadcast and were shown around the site and technical facilities by Media Production graduate Jack Johnston who edits the show.

Earlier in the year Rob and Dan along with fellow Audio Production student Sam Jenkins recorded Chris Packham’s voice-over in the University’s sound theatre for the Woodland Trust’s tree charter animation.

June 10, 2017 careers, Industry, Students, TV No Comments

BBC radiophonic Workshop: Tape Loops & Tape Replay Setups

Elizabeth Parker and Paddy Kingsland from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in 1979 demonstrate the use of tape loops and tape-replay setups. We hear Elizabeth Parker’s “bubble music” and Paddy Kingsland on the electric guitar with twin Studer tape recorders.

This excerpt is from the BBC documentary The New Sound of Music produced in 1979.

Tape Loops BBC Radiophonic Workshop

Paddy Kingsland demonstrates twin Studer recorders in a delay-replay setup that some might refer to as “Frippertronics’ – named after Robert Fripp I believe. Fripp may have used twin Revox machines in a similar way for some of his compositions. It is an interesting setup, possibly described in some Workshop writings from the 1960s.

The BBC Radiophonic Workshop, one of the sound effects units of the BBC,
was created in 1958 to produce effects and new music for radio.

It was closed in March 1998, although much of its traditional work had already been outsourced by 1995.

The original Radiophonic Workshop was based in the BBC’s Maida Vale Studios
in Delaware Road, London.

We have more on the Radiophonic workshop elsewhere in this blog –
e.g.
free-thinking-bbc-radiophonic-workshop/

doctor-who-how-norfolk-man-created-dalek-and-tardis-sounds/

The techniques initially used by the Radiophonic Workshop were closely related to those used in musique concrète; new sounds for programs were created by using recordings of everyday sounds such as voices, bells or gravel as raw material for “radiophonic” manipulations. In these manipulations, audio tape could be played back at different speeds (altering a sound’s pitch), reversed, cut and joined, or processed using reverb or equalisation. The most famous of the Workshop’s creations using ‘radiophonic’ techniques include the Doctor Who theme music, which Delia Derbyshire created using a plucked string, 12 oscillators and a lot of tape manipulation; and the sound of the TARDIS (the Doctor’s time machine) materialising and dematerialising, which was created by Brian Hodgson running his keys along the rusty bass strings of a broken piano, with the recording slowed down to make an even lower sound.

Much of the equipment used by the Workshop in the earlier years of its operation in the late 1950s was semi-professional and was passed down from other departments, though two giant professional tape-recorders (which appeared to lose all sound above 10 kHz) made an early centrepiece. Reverberation was obtained using an echo chamber, a basement room with bare painted walls empty except for loudspeakers and microphones. Due to the considerable technical challenges faced by the Workshop and BBC traditions, staff initially worked in pairs with one person assigned to the technical aspects of the work and the other to the artistic direction.
[source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Radiophonic_Workshop]

March 6, 2016 Experimental, Industry, Radiophonic Workshop, sound history, Technology, TV, Uncategorized No Comments

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]

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

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.”

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.

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

December 2, 2015 Audio Post Production, Dialogue, field recordings, film sound, Industry, location sound, sound design, sound editing for visual media, TV No Comments

Cutting X-Factor – on AVID with multiple soundtracks

X FACTOR 2014

VT Editors, often have to wrestle with a huge amount of sound information. Especially on shows that have discreet microphones all over the place – such as the X Factor.
Editor Janci Kovic recently did this screengrab of his final timeline for a Bootcamp Episode of X Factor. This was bootcamp the episode after auditions.

Having the ability to cut off words, change the order of what judges are saying and soloing the backstage reactions at the same time was very helpful to get the story done.

Audio was recorded and captured on STEINBERG’S Nuendo Live

THE AUDIO TRACKS SHOWN INCLUDE:
Jury 4ch’s, crowd 2ch’s, singers port, mic and his instrument 3ch’s, band 12ch’s, backstage with moderator 3ch’s, stage mix 2ch’s, music 6ch’s, sfx 4ch’s, vo and other ports.

THE VIDEO was recorded on QUADRUS

November 8, 2014 Audio Post Production, bands, featured posts, Industry, location sound, POP, sound editing for visual media, TV No Comments

‘Dubbing Doctors’ – with BBC’s Richard Hastings-Hall

Richard Hastings-Hall visited Audio Production level 2 students today to talk about ‘dubbing mixing’, in particular mixing for medium budget daytime drama and the technical and creative constraints that working on shows like this can have. They are often handled very differently to other dramas, documentaries and television series etc.

For example the directors of these daytime dramas are not paid to be present at the final mixing session – it’s only the Exec Producer who signs off the mix.
Richard brought his Pyramix set-up (made by Emerging Technologies) with him which sadly did have some technical issues – but this was a good example of how ‘anything that can go wrong – will go wrong’. A thankyou must go to Luke Johnston who showed his skill in drive re-mapping!.

Some students found it reassuring that it wasn’t ‘just them’

Richard mentioned metering and loudness, and the need for good adherence to technical standards.
To find out more about the BBC delivery requirements look here

Richard revealed that often with quick turn around drama shows like Doctors – the sync sound recordings are not always perfect. the crew often doesn’t have time to go again. So very often

The dubbing team are left to ‘fix it in post’. Alternative lines of dialogue are hunted down from the rushes, smoothing techniques are used and generally the pressures are such that all this must be done in one 12 hour session. No foley ar ADR sessions are possible.

“In Doctors we don’t have time for foley sessions, so we have to be very resourceful when it comes to our use of time. Much of what we do is fixing problems”

Louise Wilcox, another dubbing mixer was featured in an article in the Institute of Professional Sound Website which may be of interest

On another occasion during a Jane Austin themed episode he went overboard on a fight scene and had to remix it due to a topical news event which happened close to transmission.

Richard also talked about Brinkburn Street for BBC, which presented some unusual sound dillemas, as it was set in both the present day and the 1930’s so sometimes there were horses and carts outside the houses and sometimes jet engines and traffic. See iPLayer

Richard has been a dubbing mixer for over 20 years and has mixed 717 episodes of Doctors. He is currently freelance, based in Nottingham.

His IMdB page is here

pyramix Find out more about Pyramix here:

March 17, 2014 Audio Post Production, careers, Dialogue, film sound, FOLEY, Guest lecture, Industry, location sound, sound design, sound editing for visual media, TV, Uncategorized No Comments

Doctor Who: How Norfolk man created Dalek and Tardis sounds

With the screening of the 50th Anniversary Dr Who Episode ‘The Day of The Doctor” this weekend, an interesting report of the early sound effects design work, done by sound engineers at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop caught my eye. As is always the case, lateral thinking, a tight deadline and creativity always win the day.

reproduced here from an online article by By Paul Hayes and Martin Barber :
BBC News Website 23/11/13

A broken-down Sunday school piano and the key to a mother’s front door were the unlikely origins to unlocking one of the most recognisable sounds in Doctor Who history.

But for Brian Hodgson, a former BBC Radiophonics Workshop sound engineer, these basic items were the starting point for creating the distinctive, unearthly, sound of a Tardis – the sometimes temperamental vehicle of the Time Lords.

As Doctor Who marks its 50th anniversary, Mr Hodgson, who now lives on the Norfolk Broads, remembers: “It was quite difficult as everybody knew rockets went ‘bang, whoosh’ – but what does a time machine do?”

“It doesn’t go up, it doesn’t go down, it goes everywhere at once. The thing I had in my mind was that it should be coming and going, and very vague.”

Mr Hodgson, 75, joined the workshop in 1962 after working as an actor and stage manager.

On how the Tardis should sound, he said: “I don’t know who thought of it, but we came up with the ‘rending of the fabric of time and space’. I was in a cinema and in the interval I had a programme and I drew it – exactly how I wanted it to go together.

“I’d done a programme called The Survivors where we had to have the sound of a ship scraping on the rocks, and the piano sounds I’d used for that, very slowed down, seemed a good starting point.

Keith Salmon (foreground) and Brian Hodgson at BBC Radiophonic Workshop

Mr Hodgson used a device known as a ring modulator to create the sound of the Daleks

“I got my bunch of keys out, I got my mum’s front door key and scraped that up the strings. We did that several times on the bass strings on an old Sunday school piano that had been taken apart.

“So we took those and speeded them up, slowed them down and cut several of them together and started to add feedback to get that echoey sort of thing.”

‘Great big bang’

Mr Hodgson told BBC Radio Norfolk he remembers the Doctor Who team liked his sound of the Tardis. It had taken him three weeks to create, but it still wasn’t quite right.

“They came to listen to it and said they liked it, but there was something missing – why hadn’t I put a rising note in it?

“I said ‘time machines don’t go up, they go everywhere’. They said ‘well we think it needs it’. So I put the rising note in it with loads of feedback and the Tardis was born.

“Unfortunately, I’d spent so much time on the sound of it taking off, when we were asked for it to land I only had three days to sort that out. So I literally played it backwards, again with loads of feedback on it, and put a great big bang on the end of it.”

As the original sound effects creator on the programme, Mr Hodgson was also responsible for designing the dictatorial modulated tones of the Daleks, whose leader Davros was played by Norfolk’s Terry Molloy for three seasons of the classic series.

During his 10 years working at the workshop on Doctor Who, in addition to the Tardis, Mr Hodgson also created the sounds of invading Cybermen, the Dalek control room and the Time Lord courtroom.

‘Dalek staccato’

“I’d done a voice treatment for a rather posh robot in a radio play called Sword From The Stars,” he said.

“I’d experimented with my own voice and a ring modulator and it seemed to work. So when the Dalek thing came up I thought the modulation thing will probably work as it will grate, but we needed an actor to do the voice, so we got Peter Hawkins in.

Doctor Who production designer Michael Pickwoad reveals the secrets to the Tardis’ new look

“Peter came up with the typical Dalek staccato and I asked him to elongate all the vowels because you only hear the modulation on the vowels.

“If you modulated the consonants they disappear and you can’t hear it – so he did it on all the vowels and that became the Dalek voice.”

After the Daleks appeared in the series in 1963, Mr Hodgson asked producer Verity Lambert if they could have one for the workshop.

He remembers she said that they could have one after the show ended.

“We never got it of course,” he said. “The series had been renewed.”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-25051061

November 23, 2013 Radiophonic Workshop, TV 1 Comment

The Soundworld Of Dr Who

This interesting documentary celebrates the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who and explores the sound design of Doctor Who, both in its early years, and in recording the seventh BBC Wales series. Matthew Sweet interviews Tim Ricketts, Paul Jefferies and Brian Hodgson who are all involved with sound design on Doctor Who, past and present. Also interviewed the voice of the Daleks and Ice Warriors, Nicholas Briggs. It was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 during the interval of the 2013 Doctor Who at the Proms.

Listen to the programme here

Also

Doctor Who: How Norfolk man created Dalek and Tardis sounds

July 19, 2013 electronic music, Radio 3, Radiophonic Workshop, sound design, sound editing for visual media, sound history, TV No Comments

Radio One Broadcast – visit to the truck

19th Ocober 2010
Steve Richards, BBC Sound Engineer gave Level 2 Audio Prod Students a behind the scenes tour of the broadcast truck today – with all the wires, desks, software, hardware, consoles etc, we discovered that the final output gets sent out to air via 3 ISDN lines, temporarily set up by BT about a month ago specially for the broadcast.

[nggallery id=3]

October 19, 2010 featured posts, lincoln school of media, location sound, TV, Uncategorized No Comments

Fearne Cotton defends Lincoln against InBetweeners attack

CAST and crew of cult comedy The Inbetweeners have been invited to Lincoln after labelling the historic city “a shithole”.
(extract from ‘This is Lincolnshire’)
The BAFTA award-winning sitcom about a group of teenage friends struggling through sixth form is notorious for its tongue-in-cheek humour.

And in Monday night’s episode, Lincoln and its university were the latest target of the show’s sharp tongue.

In an exchange between two of the main characters, the E4 comedy described the city as a “shithole”

“, and went on to slate the reputation of the university with the line: “…goodbye first-rate education, hello the University of Lincoln”.

Emma Tatlow, deputy chief executive of Visit Lincolnshire, extended an open invitation to the cast and crew of The Inbetweeners to come to Lincoln and see everything our great city has to offer.

She said:

“People who know and love Lincoln will have been surprised to hear the comment on The Inbetweeners on Monday night – as was I.

“We have historic attractions, fantastic boutique shopping and an event calendar to rival other cities.

“Where else can you see one of the best cathedrals in Europe within walking distance of a Norman castle?

“If the cast and crew of The Inbetweeners want to visit the city for themselves, we’d be delighted to show them around.”

The jibes on the show have sparked a number of Facebook groups in defence of the city and the university, some with up to 3,000 members.

Ian Richards, a spokesman for the University of Lincoln, praised the display of Lincoln pride, and said: “The Inbetweeners is a very funny comedy series, but perhaps not the most reliable source of information on university standards.

“We’d prefer students to look at national university league tables and the National Student Survey, which show we have one of the fastest-rising universities in the country.

“We’ve been delighted by the number of people who have jumped to the defence of the university and the city on Facebook, Twitter and online message boards.

“Even Fearne Cotton was singing the praises of the university and the city on BBC Radio 1.”

After the episode had aired, the show’s co-writer Iain Morris issued an apology to the University of Lincoln through his Twitter account.

He wrote: “So a friend attended Lincoln uni, and it was a joke for them.

“Sorry for the collateral damage we may have caused. Why must the innocent suffer?”

(source) http://www.thisislincolnshire.co.uk/news/Inbetweeners-cast-crew-invited-experience-city-jibe-hit/article-2750754-detail/article.html )

October 13, 2010 lincoln school of media, POP, Radio One, TV 3 Comments

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