LA Sound Mixers Interview with Simon Bysshe

well hi how's everybody doing my name's Chris is now 9 a.m. here in Los Angeles and I think that makes it 5 there in the UK all right Simon yeah I I always get tongue-tied when I have to put these sentences together and I have no idea why it's very easy I'm I admin a group here in LA called LA sound mixers and we're dedicated to the mentorship and education of production sound professionals we started as a very la focused group and and now we seem to have quite a few people from abroad so we just try to keep our mission to mentorship and education and this series of interviews is dedicated to finding how mentorship played its role in the development of our friends careers and we did our previous interview with Jan McLaughlin which was really awesome and today we are really happy to welcome Simon bish so welcome Simon thank you for joining us hi Chris thank you very much for having me so and and I would like to just for a little housekeeping if if you could enter your names on your on your screen there and the city that you're in so that we just can just get an idea of where everybody's from if you have a full-on question please click the raise hand button and I'll notice it there on the side and I'll call on you but if you're just asking for a quick clarification of something that's in the moment feel free to chime in and ask for that clarification but just know the difference between the two and and you can also enter your questions in the chat portion and and I will I will try to scan those and get to those as I can so that would be really great but anyway so a first question starting off Simon what how did you get started in the craft and what was it about you that drew you in to working in production sounds specifically ok how I get started well I guess I I was interested in kind of straight out uni I was interested in internet technologies and interested in software and I was quite driven into us over into a slightly alternative world I saw myself doing that coding computer games and things like this and I found myself after about two years didn't go to university went straight to I found myself thinking though you know what this isn't quite for me I'd much rather get more into the creative arts side of things so after trying to do it on my own and run my own thing I decided to with the help of my parents look they got me in there helped me get into an art foundation course where I started enjoying the things I used to do so much in my earlier years by painting and sculpture and kind of working with Y and working with my hands and drawing and all these sorts of things and that kind of led into they had some video cameras in Southampton where I was studying and I just started doing little short sort of animations with video cameras just sort of stopped frame animation as an adding sound effects at home on my computer and doing a little bit editing and those kind of things and enjoying the whole process I wasn't in focusing on any one thingy it was just the joy of making stuff and so the put the prod that was just a one year foundation course and off the back of that I also sort of at the same time this is a really sort of long-winded way to get into this little sound thing but at the same time I was really interested in eSports and counter-strike was a really big game at the time team-based Counter Strike as was like Warcraft and Starcraft 2 so I was really interested in those games but more specifically I was interested in like the people who played with them and the game fulness themselves and the kind of camaraderie of clans when clans play against other clans and I was a terrible gamer but I was really interested in like being a spectator to these sort of events so I wanted to document like what it is to be a pro gamer because no one quite unappreciated like what a pro game is about and the pro gamer is a geek or somebody just sits at home and there's no social life or something like that and it sort of wanted to quash a little bit of those those stereotypes mentoree about that a lot of stereotypes about that until they started seeing like stadiums being erected for eSports yeah right I know it's huge back then it's like 9 is just after 2000 so there wasn't really anything there was the occasional big event like I went to uncle eSports woke up and that was one in Dallas Texas called quite calm so I went to a couple of those with my crummy little video camera and did some video interviews and followed the team from the UK and I met John Romero from id Software he'd made doom and quake and it was cool so the whole thing was like editing these things together but the one side of it that was terrible and I can't I cannot apologize enough to people who enjoyed it is that it was all being recorded off the on-board camera on the top of my crappy little DB cap and so I was really unhappy with the fact that wherever I did never seem to quite come across you didn't have the power didn't deliver it was okay but it was just not there so that was one thing that when I decided I wanted to pursue this kind of making a documentaries editing and the whole process to go to film school but the film school course was thoroughly overbooked in Bournemouth Bournemouth Arts Institute they were very popular and I was told you know good luck there's a lot of people on ago they're all around the world and it turned out the only sort of thing that they were looking for was people with an interest in a sound and I was like well in the interview I said I do have an interest in sound I've got no idea how to do and I'm absolutely terrible it but I'd like to learn and I was just keen on like being able to offer like a good soundtrack would be enough for me to be satisfied that I've done my PI and the production you know so so from almost from day one of that course in Bournemouth they knew of you were told that you were the sound person you expected to know it you suppose to do with a microphone I've absolutely no clue so yeah that was my introduction to sounded yeah it's almost like here's your you get off the boat here's your rifle go to war yeah there's a four one six one six sqn yeah it was that it was a DAT it was that machine it was a it wasn't even an h h beatdown i think it's a task and that machine yeah sqn and it's like two meter cable and a boom pole that was you could create you could hear it creaking on set and a very old rusty four one six in a crate in a creaky kept in a creaky cradle and you think was a white coat crave some of the cradle I've never seen again so yeah so that was some of the first gear you worked with in school when when you started working professionally what were some of your first gear purchases at the time yeah the first okay so I sort of started with the actually I was given a boom pole by simon hayes he gave me a pen amick maxy boom pole so that was like one of my first bits of pro kit that I ever got my hands on and it was a wicked present at the end of a ten week job Simon just handed me over this boom my next question is a tourism guidance so yeah oh yeah absolutely so but first thing I sort of bought was actually a sign sign case I think it's called scene II case but it's a company in Bristol that made these beautiful aluminium cases so they're quite small not Pelley cases that are quite bulky all around the edges they they were very neat neat little cases which it has some segments inside and and there was a sound recordist so I got to know whilst being a student he was he'd recently retired and I went to his house and I said can I just have a look at some of your stuff in your garage and I just bought a load of boxes so that was the first thing I ever bought is just cases for decent decent cases or waterproof nice cases and then within then then I started buying like gee fries because they were always really useful I wanted if I went on set with them with someone I wanted to sort have my own receiver so that I didn't limit the number of risk is always a real limit on receivers and stuff so I quite like to bring my own have my own receiver just so I could take it home in the evening you know but yeah my first recorder was a 74 40 that was that was the recorder that I could never afford oh I could actually afford it the six series came out oh I was beautiful I still love that I still use it to record atmospheres and stuff yeah never let's need to a single mono track oh sorry yeah that is a phenomenal recorder well quote so so I mean it sounds like you you went you went to film school and then and then after that let's talk about mentorship relationships who you know how did you making that transition from film school into the professional life so many students are having to go through that especially this time here now how was that journey for you it was kind of driven by my own fear of being left out in the wilderness at the end of a three-year course which wasn't that great the course was in Bournemouth it's on the coast on the South of England I'm quite far away from London quite far away from any film studios a bit too far for any real pros in the industry to come and visit so within the free of course one pro sound recordist real top at the time slam recorders came and visited and his name was sandy McRae and sandy was brilliant he brought in his car he brought in his trolley and he talked about some of the jobs he used to do I think Jewel of the Nile you know that from just beautiful film and and he spoke about the work and about the politics and it just lit up like it was like wow that this is someone truly telling telling how it is and not not just academia side of it so there was a lot of film history in our course which was completely irrelevant really to a lot of the actual stuff we ended up doing in the industry so it through sandy sandy was a part of amps his social association of motion picture sound in the UK and he yeah it's the UK equivalent to the CAS here in states yeah exactly there were groups and there's an AGM and there's meetings and there are people who sources help sustain a companies to help sustain and do shows and stuff and they have get together there's and at this stage there were very few student members so this was sort of back in like 2006 and so I went along to one of their ATMs and there there was everywhere not Ivan Chirac Simon Hays like all of the bigs and so I got to meet a lot of people face to face at the AGM but and that this was whilst I was still a student and sort of that really helped me then give me a little bit of a so so just having that association there made me think wow there is actually a group of people who who openly communicate with each other and work together they're not they're not like bickering and they're not sort of arguing about things there's kind of working together to solve common problems and at the time it was diva you know it wasn't it's prom it was not like this is a new thing would you guys you know moving for my like two channel recording sister for channel 2 six you know so this was all happening at the time and there was lots of timecode issues and post-production syncing so they will do all the issues at the time of being discussed by all the pros and just to sit in a room with them and listen was amazing so that was that for me was like an opportunity that was that I thought I whatever I can do to her to learn more from the people who around me that was that was why I tend to do so it was a combination of getting their phone numbers and just calling them and and and trying to find the right time during the day to call them and ask them whether why might be out of her be able to sitting next to them during and during a shoot as a supernumerary person as a student just to sit and watch right and not and not put any pressure on them to try to make it an arrangement where I'm paid or anything like that because I'm not gonna do anything I'm just watching and that that arrangement worked out fine because I got to visit and lots of really cool film sets over the course of one summer holiday were there any any specific programs set up to help you do that or was this just you you know shaking hands talking and and asked me honest if there was identikit would have been a half as effective as just going out and doing it on your own going off your own steam and making the awkward cold call to someone and sending them a CV and then calling them again to check whether they had a chance to you know see if there's any time that I might go in just for a day you know so I there was there is a scheme and there was a scheme and maybe in those times mmm-hmm but there is currently like a trainee scheme where you can sign up and you can be put onto things but I feel it's much better to actually somewhat target people that you kind of would like to if you get the opportunity arose I'd like so I did certain Sam accorded so I thought were just brilliant like for example some page and and and and got and after a little bit of harassing I managed to get so you were very you were very lucky to to be able to just even go and observe their work yeah yeah yeah it wasn't it wasn't a scheme it was just it was just me sort of banging on the door and asking and and and and it was I suppose it was a busy time of year as well a busy time where lots of people were working lots of lots of sheets were going on and people were quite happy and so when you when you were there let's let's say your first few days you're visiting a big set and you're just watching as a as a fly-on-the-wall kind of intern observer well you know obviously I remember for me the little hairs go up on the back of my neck and you start noticing everything but what were the what were the some of the first things that you noticed that were just important things to learn I did not learn if you were in that environment like I I sat in with Tim Fraser and and with Jim greenhorn it was on film called Breaking and Entering and Jude Law was was the star of this show and this was one of the first big sets on in in was Ealing Elstree Studios so they had a big success is set build up in Sastry studios and I I saw Jude Law's face on the screen and all I could say to the sound mixer is Wow do you long Wow and he's like you know just no none of that please we're not I mean that we're focusing on the court you know nothing so you just saw to learn that you don't just to forget about the star factor and to get on with the focus of the job and I think I learned quite quickly to sort of just not it articulate that particularly because it well it was not the style you know but I was quite I was I saw her taking the whole trying trying to remain kind of calm I guess but the other thing was just keeping an eye out around me I was constantly getting in people's way not having not open to seeing where people were moving and so yeah I mean it was to being totally green on the film set it's pretty terrifying and I felt very green for a very long time I really cuz working with some top people you you're constantly seeing what you're no good at and not really feeling like you're fitting in you know it takes a long time to feel just comfortable on the phone set yeah I remember the first day of my internship I was asked to get a stinger from the juicers and I just knew somebody was gonna was pulling one over on me uh-huh yeah I'm like what yeah so I expect with that feeling so as far as the personalities the mentorship personalities which which which were the people that really took you under their wing and and and said hey you know we'll we'll start that relationship with you well um that was that was quite a few mixes that my Simon haze gave me a really big break in that he got me on a on a 10 week film called love and other disasters and and on that job it was it was the routine that I learned it's more than anything it was it was a it was a military precision routine and the day started early and promptly and and it was full-on all day long and you didn't complain you got on with it you reacted quickly and by the end of the job I felt like I'd been sort of whipped into shape but it was for me everyday all I could hear was what I was doing wrong in a kind of constructive criticism most of the time but yeah it was it was so the best for me the best mentorship is a brutal one I think you know when they're not afraid to tell you what you've done wrong and what you couldn't what you could do to improve you know so I would I would mess up we'd be blamed I mean one of my jobs carpets and cables yeah so running out running tons of cables and organizing that making it safe and laying laying a huge sum has half a van full of carpets and nowadays he's got a separate van full of carpets so this was before his extremely extreme carpet obsession this was this was kind of just before it went really mad but it was still everything everything was carpeted under under dollies under track everything wherever possible one set if the edge of frame was here then the carpet would just touch there border of the safety line so um and it would help with the acoustics it would help with the sound of footsteps and Simon was like if you can take anything from this job take satisfaction that the sound we recorded was was much cleaner because of the work you put into laying carpets okay and and yeah so so he was really good and I would sit next to him and um I'd sit on it over his shoulder and learn pretty quickly not to ask him questions when he had his headphones on could it be like this what bothering the man same thing happened with me yeah that's a that's a good Simon impression you just do bishhh enough listen he's he and his team were a joy to watch really they were so tight they were such a tight crew and they you know that's the one thing I really liked is that Arthur after his main boomer is a phenomenal boom up and his personality really is what makes everyone just enjoy being around him because he's really great fine he's very entertaining he's always he's got that quip that'll have the whole crew burst into laughter you know just after an awkward moment or something you know it's just the right level and yeah and he was like but there's a tried to being in the sound Department there's a genuine like we're the sound Department you know where the sample Department and it wasn't and it was that feeling of no you know yeah okay it's something to be proud of it's something to be you know to feel like you have a grade that's worth consideration and respect onset and that's the way they went they were the same then the sound bottom you know mess you you listen and you in and I mean in other people and you then you respect other people as well but give them take so I try to take on but the problem with going from that style to then working with someone different who is much more ok we'll we'll let them we'll compromise that in order to win their favor for something else you know there's the styles of working which is I learned pretty quickly you can't apply the same no compromise a hundred percent clean absolutely everything every single state perfect you can't apply that on every job you really can't it's different styles of working are not always applicable to that to that side of working so and and he does job he most obviously just does films and then going on to TV dramas where you're much faster pace and you can't just run out carpets and you can't do everything in the same and you can't always cover things in such brilliant ways it was it was difficult for me to get out of that mindset and you sort of we learn other people's ways so it's because that that's the main thing for me is that working with lots of different people when you're still learning so as an assistant I've really left work for a ton of different sound mixers and and I'd go through all their boxes and see what goblins they had and toys they had and stuff and if I had tried to sort of think oh yeah I'd like if I did this I would have a van organized like that and I would have a box like that I like that idea and I try and take all these little things on board I think you might not get if you work with one person for a very long time in your writing when I get the full picture of other people's methodology and the benefits of someone's methodology who is more relaxed and is a bit more forgiving in some ways you might you might do you might find yourself going into a certain avenue of work which better suits of personality like that or something I think yes the mentality of getting at them right but you can still do that without being a certain way or without having to be very very loud on set you know yeah sometimes it's just the inertia of your own yeah yeah just sometimes the inertia of your own career can just pull you into certain styles of shooting where you stay there I have have friends that that do almost exclusively kid shows and puppeteer work and that's just where that's the calls they get and I have other friends that are that are they do episodic TV season to season this season and and some people get pulled into ensemble comedy so that's a very you know specific genre where you have eight or ten actors and a lot of really funny people who could go off-book at any moment so all of those foster certain workflows that you have to be sensitive to adapt to and you know to help tell the story so yeah I mean I can't see where you're coming from for sure so I'm guessing a Simon gave you that boompole after after that 10-week job because maybe he felt like he read you a little too hard or what I didn't think it was a story or anything it was a thank you yeah and I still have it and it's still like the pole it's got a bit smelly and he's a good clean every once in a while yeah fabric on the end not potatoes I forget yeah well cool and and so there was a question that popped up from John McHale in Texas yes that is the same Simon Hays who makes cats yeah in what yeah what indeed what they pulled off there was mesmerizing so what a you know that that was definitely charting a you know going into uncharted territory for a production sound Chris yeah yeah they would they would they would one of the first things Simon ever asked me to do on one of my first days on set ever was go up into the rafters in a very old stage in in Pinewood know Shepparton and and there was some you could see daylight coming in through holes in the ceiling and he said go ahead and put blankets over all of those gaps I want it all clean because there was a catering truck outside just outside main doors and that's where they were serving lunch from a continuous day so people had to go glare but lunch quickly income bracket right and they were white outside so the the generator could kind of be heard through these gaps so the it so he had me going up into the the rafters and plugging gaps in walls and then when he could still hear it after that he asked me to go and ask them if they could turn their generator off and this is like really you know going way beyond what most people would feel kind of comfortable but you do it and you can work with it and you can have an agreement and locations with locations so you really do like push push as much as possible to get and then I guess through pushing after while people and locations will all remember you know what let's just not put it there in the first place you know avoid the hassle so yeah yeah so yeah he really does go full-on and I took a lot from that took a lot from that style of working - so identify all of the smallest annoyances covering up grills and vents and anything that might make noise on set and yeah generally the you know the diplomacy side of things is is the one that is that's the tool for for some of us that's the one that takes the most time to develop and and I always find that the more the more demanding the mixer the better they are at diplomacy usually because if they're really gonna want this stuff then they've had years now figuring out how to approach it how to negotiate for it how in the best possible way while still maintaining your your-your-your alliances on set and your you know just everything going that's right and I think now it's moved that diplomacy has become much more critical with the costume department nowadays because of the reliance of radio mics on shows where you've got three or four cameras and you've got dialogue which has to be clean of example with with shows like Limits and cats they made the agreement early on it has to be usable so you know and more shows now like succession were like this is a radio mic show don't expect to get much on the boom in fact I'd rather that you didn't you know have them in the way because it's two cameras on zoom lenses and you're working constant with changing heads of head rooms constantly-changing head rooms and constant improvisation so it's like so it was a it was it was a the collaboration becomes much more key especially in prep with working with with costume to know what you're gonna get in the morning and have a an idea of having already organized so there's not a big delay right yeah that was my next question was was your work on succession the HBO series I was I gotta say I watched I guess was the last few episodes of season one where they company went to England to shoot a couple says there and I remember seeing your name on the on the credits at the end and I'm like that's the Ursa guy yeah like in the States we we know you is the Ursa guy and and that's part of what it inspired me to ask you to do this was because you're a mixer - you've been a mixer you started as a mixer and you know you know we usually see you with your shirt on showing people how to lab things yeah yeah I really you know I didn't want people to forget you know what your roots are and and how you got started so but succession I mean can you describe to us getting that call maybe how it came to you and then the the mixer on the show that season I believe was the Billy syrup and how did you MIT what questions were asked and answered and how was that in that changeover between you and Billy so at the time well this was a terrifying change for me to get into to get into succession because I've currently been doing a very comfortable job which was a single camera show called the informer in the UK and there was one camera mostly and I was mostly not heavily relying on radio might so we had them on all the time it was two booms it was very staged and designed and it was beautiful almost old-fashioned filmmaking and then I had my agent part of the UK workflow of finding work especially on the higher end of things films and high-end TV is you really need an agent because the first people that productions go to are the agents and say okay this is the new job or the agents will represent producers and then so they all know first who is has got a new job and they'll recommend people to those producers straightaway so so to get an agent in the UK is is pretty critical and it was through my agent independent that that this opportunity to have an interview for succession came along and and the main thing that was said at this by the the line producer called one one Bosman was that this was a very raid in my kevie show that's the way it's been in in New York for the last a episodes because of the shooting style and that meant going and I had a seven eight eight in it meant moving up to a six a a moving from eight channels to twelve channels I needed some and this was the show that made me have to get more than eight yes absolutely I would never be able to do it on eight and I'm very glad I made the switch in time and it was it happened at a time where I had about a week break between the informer and this starting and being able to then completely change over the car and testing your system so the main thing was really making sure that I was in a position to be able to record twelve radio mics or at least 10 rating mice and two booms that was quite common 10 Raiders and two pimps or eleven radios in one day and if it's if it's okay can I show those pictures of yes Sean well let's see listening to the mix on that show it really was um it really was radios they used even when I felt like they had it on the boom they just they just use radios the whole flippin time yeah yeah that's in East nor Castle so this was like me in the Welsh border this amazing old-fashioned building was a castle but it wasn't actually a traditional castle it was a modern bay built castle so there was no worries about getting getting a messy inside or anything but anyway yes so that's the the CL 12 and like and I have my little phone there well it's just a you know regular old old-school iPod I think and that's just working with the wing man okay but fur fur track mainly and stuff but one of the big things at the start of that show was that the most communication I ever had with post-production on that show and the most critical conversations that a lot of people I realized the workflow and and and planning off our naming and folder structure and obviously timecode is so key that there were some very serious email saying though this is exactly how it's has to be right and Billy was recording this on his ax comm system and I was obviously sound devices so I was a bit worried that they might not be happy about that change but it turned out it didn't make any difference it's just so long as I kept to the same folder structure and file naming structure yeah it was cool so there's a lot of chat about that kind of stuff what kind of cameras were they using on this show mini alexa minis okay yeah very common I think it was just I think there were three bodies but there was just there were two so that the DOP two camera operators to focus perlers came over came over from the states and what will surprised me straight off on day one is that the focus pullers and the camera operators come up to me say can we get a set of cans yeah oh no no one told me that I needed like more cans I mean I had spares just in case but it turned that everybody everyone on set needed cans and clearly because constantly they would want to so I was making a mix that was maybe when there was a big ensemble and their cameras looking at different parts of the room I was bringing up people who were having an interesting conversation and focusing my mix or maybe that conversation then I see the camera actually moving over to that conversation Wow and then and they know it so I'd be always I swimming things and trying to listen to out to where the next there's his wedding scene that most of which was cut down but it was so funny because it was just a chaos and camera zooming in and finding little moments and it really felt like a huge collaboration to that you knew that they were listening to the mix and that they were making their decisions based on yeah so that that that wedding scene got pretty complicated with with the reception and the in the speeches I'm you know asked was doing speeches on mic stand and yeah yeah that was cool I mean they cut it down to look really simple but but apparently shooting it wasn't that simple oh yeah well there's a couple of things about that I think I think we've probably had enough of that picture now there's some other ones of like my tent and stuff by that but like um yeah yes so that big sort of marquee that they heard up if you see ya there so so in the last two EPs is all about basically matthew McFadden Tom wagons ganz Mary's in Mary's ship who is the daughter of Logan Roy played by ground Cox so it's their wedding and it's a bit of a sham to be honest because it's all just about you know money and power and the they so they have this incredible marquee set up and one of the things that kind of took me by surprise on this was that they were having speeches with the microphone and no one had discussed whether or not how that was going to work like they're holding a mic okhane luckily I had a mic that they could hold over the wireless mic and I and I had to speak as to like small anchor speakers so we set them up and we were asked art department is that okay for these to be in shot and they were said yeah fine if it's normal for this sort of thing to have speakers and shot I said yeah they're just on the side it's quite subtle and I just thought this would be all that if I could make this clean and I could record a nicer me I was recording I said but I couldn't I could decide how much of their mic to put into the final mix put on to set put through the speakers and I knew those make I knew that this was something I'd have to commit to from the first shot to the last of these sort of speeches and it's one of those things which I feel like sometimes might get overlooked a little bit in prep is is quite how much wood do you want that to be real how do you want that to be a real do you want freedom to do that later but the style of the show was so real and so fast and so like it felt to me that that wasn't even a question that needed asking it was obvious everyone in the audience has to react to what he's saying and it makes it feel all the more real to have a microphone that's coming out loud over PA and the boo everyone's ready mice will hear that and it just gave it a genuinely set the it just made it feel like at the real deal and I didn't feel like I was compromising I was it was cooped contributing as opposed to sort of compromising that the feel on sets I wasn't trying to minimalize it bring it up and down and get it clean nobody I just know it was it was we were in the end the end product I think sounded just like he did on the day it was just like it the room on the day good well and the other mad thing was the Kendall Kendall boy played by Jeremy strong his character is going for a massive mental breakdown at this time this is a mad accident and the end of the last episode and he kind of stumbles back to the tent and he's going for a great deal of stress and one of the things you asked us to do because he's got quite a kind of he has a style of performance which is sort of method in that he likes to have an earpiece with music playing to him to get in the zone so he likes it before tape but also sometimes during a take so he picked out a piece of music there's like a Philip Glass type composition it was quite abstract and he wanted us to play this to him and it was a scene where he's dancing with his kids and their payment their kids to say this is among the first time he gets sort of connect with his kids he's constantly constantly pushing them away and this is the first time his kids with dad come on let's let's dance and he and so all this awful scenario has just happened and he wants to try and forget about it and dance with his kids and this keeps his memory keeps washing back to this this incident and so what we were chose what we were tasked to do was to have the the upbeat music playing through the speakers and then to kit and then to gradually fade in this like terrifying Philip Glass music but for everyone to carry on dancing as though it's like this puppy tune but what mark what Jamie hears is this like screeching cacophony of noise and it helps him you then see that he is falling back into by place again and then grab your ring back in the music that's really interesting so much of his so much of that characters it was all could this inner turmoil the stuff getting healing and not saying so to get those things to manifest themselves in a place where we can actually see it and feel it yeah it's pretty cool that the sound Department plays that role and helping make that happen yeah totally it really was he would keyword often ask us like if we could be a big picture and tracks and quite often would play it out on a speaker or in this case it was a combination of an earpiece induction loop and choosing between speaker and playback depending on what was required and the director would sort of point at me during the take and that's the point where I'd gradually fade from like cacophony back to poppy music and then it was just brilliant I just felt like that's a nice they just and it was all done off-the-cuff it was all arranged and organized ten minutes before we filmed this wasn't discussed it was an idea at the time that was made reality and that's the kind of stuff that I really enjoyed you feel like you are you're adding to you adding something special those are the things you always have to be open to you you don't know all those other all those other creative processes going on around you you you have to be ready to help help them and so and hopefully they can help you and you need it so that's very cool so so your your your access to pre-production time and and to the creative nucleus I guess during pre-production for succession was that quite extensive as far as pre-planning and and how does that compare with the other shows you typically do in the UK this was way bigger than anything I've ever done this was definitely a step up for me personally because HBO I mean I've been doing BBC One dramas but then outsourced to other production companies mostly peaky blinders or so so like they're big productions well-known but not necessarily big big budgets and this was a really large budget her and there was there were more meetings and I've ever been to in prayer that's for sure so there was lots of discussions about just big production meetings are normal but there was much more communication in advance about everything and the whole recce process was very very extended extended and we went everywhere I mean it was they just you know it wasn't that different to be honest it was just it was the kind of the same processes you do on a different drummer it was just bigger more people oh I feels a little mistake yeah yeah I guess - if you have a lot of the the players on the crew coming in from an you know from you from the state I mean that's gonna be a little bit intimidating because just want to learn their workflow their style yeah that's right the DEP was very cool and he just sort of took me under his wing he said all right Simon this is gonna be a bit of a nightmare for you but you know we'll look after you will help you let's let's help each other less what I try and tell you as much as I can to help you in advance and I'll lead you and so we had it was nice we it was it was a very friendly crew and I'm really and to know more like they would play music like offset the camera department would have a little speaker on right liner and they would it was just it was just a really positive feeling on set and there people would just enjoy being there and people generally liked the project we knew we were making something a bit special so I got I got a really good vibes from the crew basically from the us crew and it was a very can-do kind of attitude they bought you know they would they were rushed into doing this the last two episodes it felt there was a feeling of slight brush and panic in the pre-production there's an awful lot to organize but I felt better vibes from that crew than I have for most UK crews I would imagine yeah I would imagine a lot of it has to be you know with hey we shot it eight episodes in the States and now we're in a new place you know there aren't adventures though yeah that's that's kind of cool when when the crap you have takes you places but I just got a genuine sense for the love of the work and and and and the can-do attitude that I don't often see and I really enjoyed that part of the shoe yeah we do have a question from Robin Gerry Rose what labs did you use on succession dpa forty sixty is almost exclusively even our ties and whatnot at that time sixty 60s weren't really they were out at that point and I and I was reluctant to change I was reluctant to use anything except GPA forty sixty even if I felt like it was there was a slight risk of it being seen yeah that's the only a mic I used way I had lots of different colors so in lots of different shades it was brown white beige back right and I had lots and lots of them in case anything happened because they tended to walk off with yeah yeah you never know when you get them back and EPA's are fairly expensive mics compared to the others don't want to lose that let's see we have another question from Matthias Larson and Matthias if you could chime in here and expand this what it says is hi Simon interesting to hear about the PA experience then it says where did you place booms in that context oh yeah this is like similar to when you're recording music on set and you're doing perspective and then getting tighter and then getting tighter where does the boom go do you want the sound to get tighter or do you want that to be the constant and then you know the plants or the mics on the instruments to be that to be the other constant and then I imagine that's an easier mix impost to give them a constant boom position that doesn't change and doesn't have the drum suddenly much louder because obviously the directionality so that's kind of the approach we took is that I had two booms in the space and they were giving me so kind of high left and right perspective of the speakers and the speech but they were what obviously like Brian everyone doing speech they had their labs and then we had this mic this audio as well a handheld mic audio so the booms were really they're almost exclusively at least in this 10 environment to capture the space of the room and then and then my mix was creating that nice balance between the proximity of the lab and finding the right mix between the the perspective of the boom and the laughs and and trying to make it work in a make it sound clear because obviously clarity is one my main job is making sure that I'm recording clout clear dialogue but also in Berlin that sounds like just about any synthetic sounds like they're coming for you oh yeah look one other question from a friend of mine who's asking what is what is your fondest memory onset so far Wow I think possibly so like a time when I was very young as like 27 or 26 when I when I boomed on The Hurt Locker and I had no idea what I was going into going to do a big alone madness that was who's that it was was the mixer was Ray Beckett yeah I can't forget to talk about Ray Beckett because he was absolutely fundamentally a massive mentor for me and my earliest sort of experiences and he really took me under his wing and he let me be his boom up because that job I thought when he called me up I thought he was gonna offer it to me as an assistant and I was ready to say I would love to assist you on this you know and there oh the boom the other course so I was going right in the deep end with with people who were super pros and so I had two big Basu so I suppose that made the joy of that was was kind of those moments where you're like do you feel like you're you're on set you're one of the few people who us who are very close to the action it was all hand held all charging about Wireless electro boom and it was just the joy of charging after cameras and getting in and getting and keeping an eye on everything going on and just so yes so I I've just seen there's a sniper seen in the desert as you've seen it where they've got a Gatling gun is like extremely powerful sniper rifle that was a very very intense scene to film it kind of starts with ray Fiennes they meet up with Rafe withing the cars kind of me and then it becomes a sniper situation and that was filmed over the course of about three days in the desert and and it was a really tough conditions to film in and brutal and it was a picture of me and right at the end of one of the days and we're just like orange sand you know and the cantar is just you can barely see the knobs anymore it's just covered because it gets so much going around but the satisfaction of kind of going back in the Humvee at the end of the day bouncing around getting back to the hotel you know stinking and sweating covered in dirt and you're like wow we did a good job there I think you know I'm really happy with that that's that that's it's the end of the day feeling of satisfaction that that I kind of get very cool I know that let's see there's a couple of the questions at Danny Mauer in LA here says a win or what show did your interest in in developing products begin all right that's good hmm well my first main job as a sound recordist was a show called the tunnel Steve and Elaine Clements posed a they play a French in UK detective duo and there's a there's a there's a killer who's killed in the middle of the Channel Tunnel and because it was on the line of the border between France and England both sides have to collaborate in in this detective drama to find the killer so so we got to travel to France and there's a lot of traveling involvement so I boomed the first series and then I my first recordist job was to record the second series and as I had already spent 25 weeks on the first series and I knew the cast and I had you know that was my end I was really lucky that was my break and it was all based on self very lovely producer who had my back but I knew Clements from the first series didn't like wearing transmitters very much and she would always wore very tight outfit very tight trousers boots you can put anything around the ankle and her costumes she was used but the saving grace was she had a leather jacket most of time so you could hide something on the small of her back that was about it but she didn't like any of the straps we had on the first season which made it difficult to wear her up on the way Esther she was always putting it in her pocket and it would kind of come out of the pocket and I felt like we we and we also had like woody Oh 20 40s at that time you know there's big chunky transmitters so when I did it I made sure that I had the SMB electrodes a much smaller transmitted single battery and and we prototyped before it was even called Ursa we prototype straps specifically for Clements for that show and she would give us feedback about how it felt to wear over the course of a day and we developed the right sort of sizing for her and we started off with a totally different fabric not the fabric that we ended up with for Ursa but we tried out different levels of stretch in all sorts so really the first trip was was the tunnel service to in Clements was I was our guinea pig and and yeah and it kind of started from there nice very cool awesome thank you for the question Danny I appreciate it let's see there's another question from Pavel I believe Koval was the last name Kol which boom Mike's do you love exterior and interior and while you talk about that let's we'll pull up some of the pictures okay yeah I began so I love I love MK 41 shirts MK 41 see can't beat him I used them with CMC 6u preamp and cut 60 there's a cut 60 is quite a critical part and I can get a cut one but it makes it's quite heavy and big and then and then that the capsule so I so I recently I've got I've got about six or seven MK 41 's and like I will have and I have some CCMS as well which are the smaller ones which are like built in capsule and the collect cable right out the back so I have a lot of different ones and then I have the knuckles so you can rig them in cars and stuff so that picture on the screen is on a circle safe house and we and that was my sort of upper mountain rig in less less trolley and those those seemed it's inside the Cinelli's and at that point I hadn't got gone to upstate ends didn't exist so I I was on lecturer Wallace's yeah with little um with with you know small directional aerials in the back but yeah I use a you see seemed it seemed it five you not the digital one just a regular seem at five you outdoors mmm at least that was like that's what I used to do a lot but my last job Panna for Amazon Prime we were often working in woods where it was actually quite quiet and it's so quiet you could hear sometimes you could hear like a little bit of motorway possibly in the distance or you could hear the Jenny you know seems quiet enough to hear those little things and usually when I was like I'd much rather have an open sounding mic for this than one which did was directional but I wasn't really wasn't really worried about directionality because I wanted to hear the atmosphere of of these forests and I felt like using a 41 on a cosy so sanella has this much smaller map called a cozy and they're flipping amazing you can bang the pole around jump about run backwards and the cosy it's got a decent amount of fur around it and and so it's got a really good wind protection it's got a really good suspension noise reduction and you can so that allowed me to use the 41 outdoors and I bruising that an awful lot now to capture dialogue outdoors and the seem it's been sitting in the box a bit more but you can see where this picture back on the on the trolley there's at the third the Mike on the the third might to the left that's what I call my Atmos boom yeah that's one that's so that sort of stays on the trolley or it's on a cable and I might run it out and put it on a stand somewhere and that will basically be my Atmos so all the time all the time I've got a channel recording that Mike sometimes it just hears me chatting but if I got it in the right place for example if we have a an environment where we have certain noises that will be heard on set but I want to record those noises clean that boom is really critical for that and I've spoken to lots of sound editors who edited my stuff and they were really grateful to have just a clean track of room tone essentially during the tank and if I'm confident that I've got that boom in the right place hearing the car passing that you also hear one set over dialogue I feel like there's no need for me to ask for room tone and so I focus a lot on my effort on getting that my utmost boom in a good place and make sure people around it know that that's an atmosphere so they're not going to be making too much noise around it right often why I positioned myself in that tent far away from set so I can have a good atmosphere sound and and then they can refer to that for the bed basically yeah we're talk what type of mic is in there is it a 41 okay it's good - only one out of 41 for there must be a 10:1 tummy - directional for the others yeah very cool very cool and I really love the tint that you have I think it's really I know I've asked you on two occasions now for the information on it this company in the UK this is actually made so imagine you're going down a motorway and some was fixing some kind of as you know it's two things it's crime scenes and it's fixing traffic incidents notice yeah they also sold body bags yeah yeah okay so but it's just wicked ten rash Omar heard the sound recordist I work for a lot as his boom up the that he used and I nicked the idea of him basically so sheer speed tent SH ier speed code at UK and it's got so it's got clear windows it steams up a little bit but you can open up the side so the bit of air comes in but it's perfect in the evening so if we're doing a night shoot I have myself set up in there and I'll have a little heater and then the minute you unzip and go inside it's like walking into a greenhouse yes oh yeah you can't beat it the night sheets for sure yeah at I ended up buying a I bought Jeff Wexler's Pell Sutent when he retired thank you Jeff I yeah I was just gonna ask you if I forgot whether I gave you the Pell straight out but this this looks so much nicer than the Pell so I like it being light colored for one thing I mean I got kind of bored with the the Pell Sue yellow yeah the windows I mean the windows allow you to just gauge you know exactly what's going on outside yeah I can peek out and then just put the head back down again just coming out through the window yes yes so there you can see the cable kind of goes through a hole in the side it's got these vents on the side so you can just run a cable out and then I just plug it into the in that case you just put the antennas outside on there on the very right of that picture you'll see a sandbag and a stand but that's kind of hidden we're actually just in shock there but this is like this big 360 thing under a motorway but we're just kind of hidden by all the grilles and stuff so we rigged the stands just behind there and that's in my areas on so just to lecture oh shark fins on the top of that passive with a decent BNC is I think it's a slightly higher persistence BNC so it's a slightly better less loss on the BNC as using for my aerial cables um but um yeah and the cool thing with the tent is that it's it son of cops so it kind of folds down really flat into a bag that fits in the top of the van transporter v-dub transporter and then you you open it out by just sort of popping the sides so you can get pop pop pop pop and suddenly you've got a 10 it's real it's really easy to do once you learn how to do it yes it's pretty funny to watch people learning how to do it yes on your face yeah I had an overzealous I was doing pickups for a movie called us and I had this over so it's utility that they decided to take my Pell suit out to the lot where we were gonna do an exterior and once I got out there I'm looking at it going why does the look different and somehow he figured out how to open it inside out oh wow all the polls were on me outside I'm like how did that work you know and apparently it took two of them to do it and and then so and it's dressed so fine the muscle I turn it inside out and then when they popped over the out it was it was just that I wasn't there to see it so the funny thing was those those two poor guys trying to work together to to ride it again was like everybody's head was scrambled and it was it was hilarious so luckily I mean we had rain rigs but we didn't necessarily have it was drizzly that night but wasn't it wasn't too bad but man that was yeah that took some work it's pretty brilliant but this picture is funny though is this like somebody saying hey Simon and you turning and looking yeah basically yes but you can see on the left there are some next to the boom poles this is the other key thing on this see those red kind of small roll those are BNC drums and they're made by a company in Canada called I'll try to remember and post a thing about it but they're brilliant just I don't like the drums which the cable can be kind of loose and visible they're very small and there's like 100 meters a BNC in each of those um yeah they coil cable that for you yes you so you kind of call them with it from on the outside and they coil in there really nicely and I find those I saw yeah I think it might be Lee Mack Lee Mack yeah Lee Mack yeah very cool and then you have you is this your dock cart over here yeah that's the one you can just see that that's the mother called easy car or something but they've really taken off you find costume and camera and grips or use those now because they fold up so neatly and you can bang them in the back of a truck yeah and you can see all manner of heavy things in them in there yeah they're I think they're originally made for boating for people on docks and that kind of stuff so that's where you would find very what else do we want to take a look at and that was obviously your 788 T rig right yeah that's the 78 in the co nine and I've got on the very top of the trolley if you zoom in to the top of the trolley okay so see where those poles are coming out just above my bag so on the left there's two transmitters so that's public and private and on the right there's two receivers Sennheiser receivers on the other side of the so it's why it's right kind of two above the octave pack oh there's activity so those my crew my boom ops are both wearing transmitter mics HT 26 is with a flip-down mic much like the mic much like the headphones on the side of my trolley on the right right okay Alps will wear one of those when they flip it down it enables the mic and that goes into the transmitter they're wearing on their body next to their receiver now kinds received onto the trolley there goes into a separate 302 in the back of the trolley you can't see that leads into a returned feed which isn't being recorded and it can only be heard by me and them so that when I talk to them on my private comm which only goes out on their private line I were then I then listened to my return which listens to the same mix I'm normally listening to plus the feedback from those two receivers and the mix and that way I can have a two-way freeway conversation with my crew it's not hot it's not stop talk listen talk you know overlapping but they can all talk at once and have much more natural conversations like that and and so long as the range is good it works pretty well are those Sennheiser yeah yeah yeah I think I may be upgraded the the receivers and outs of the transmitters that they have a slightly better but yeah we put them on a hundred milli watt output for the transmitters that they wear naughty but me we want our us hear each other right that's called and that that is what that's again an idea I stole from Simon house who has his whole team sometimes five or six people they will have these clips and my and they're constantly using that for communications because she learnt very early on I think it I think it was on a film with with was it Prometheus I think they were hearing Ridley Scott didn't want to hear like Arthur and Simon chatting well Arthur who want to hear are for talking he was either one here well that about what the sound Department need so they realized they needed to keep all of that chat completely off the booms no chat on the booms at all so that's when they went to age 26 is will flip their mics and I'm like idea of him he does it much better than I do but yeah and was this after a bad taker after climbing to the top of a hill yeah with far too many clothes on I know I hate it I expect it to be cold and then I'm dressed for cold and then you start up the hill and you're sweating inside your jacket then it is yeah and that's the first thing I take anywhere is my chair obviously you will schlep that thing everywhere yeah pretty cool and yeah I suppose there's a better picture of the rig now your 688 CL 12 yeah so I have a I have a 6 AAA and then then it has a SL 6 I think which allows free receivers and one of those is an a-10 and then I have a PSC rack one which gives me the other free receivers so we're giving me 12 all together routing between the PSC rack into the SL 6 rack to get 12 in and everything to get yeah I noticed you know two booms do you typically have two booms on every crew you work on oh absolutely yeah yeah I try to get them both paid relatively parity to each other if possible as well because you know you often when you've got two people and set booming they both got boom operator skills and radio mic skills particularly so more and more I've been trying to get almost equivalent rate between the key boom up and the additional beam up but yeah I always even if even if I'm always recording the second boom even if it's not doing anything it's just like another Atmos boom so I feel like why not record the channel is free it's free data and why not just leave the recording I say just put the second boom over there and a corner point it out over there and I'll still record it and maybe it will be useful yeah anything to help the editors get into and out of a take yeah that's all that's a big time lifeline notice this cool boat rig you did what sure was this this was called safe house and it was filmed in the I love mmm it was in Scotland oh yeah so it was it was on a little island and we were going out and it was there was like quite a lot of sailing and boat stuff going on so he was boat to boat so obviously we were filming a dialogue happening on a sailing boat so they had radio mics on and we had the range was fine thankfully but yeah so we were just recording their exchange on a boat so yeah that was that's quite nice those boats are pretty fast - I've been on something similar but were those two elders those things can yeah it was bouncy it's very bouncy if the key thing there I think is that yes I have a at that time I had a surf in a day and I always so the 78 on the trolley stayed on a trolley and I had a 7 7 8 a in a in a bag with another market a pack with all the same frequencies and everything and all the same card details so I could swim I could use I could hand into cards and they won from the bag where we've gone for the trolley rig it was it wasn't different metadata structures I wasn't using a very expensive if I bought a cantor I probably wouldn't be able to use it to have a second cantor in the bag rig so I would be going from can TARDIS and devices and using different its folder structure and name structure and all that sort of stuff when I feel like I kind of that's kind of one things I quite like about the small sound device this rig is um you can have a bag rig and then you can have a trolley meg and and that's so that's what I had you can't stay in the pitch about it down below kind of like cable tied up is there's my bag rig and which goes in the boots of cars goes goes and all sorts of places right yeah my bag is taking rides and helicopters and really fast car and I'm always get it back going oh I got your back um well that's very cool very cool well let's I think we have some some questions here so let's see what we got let's somebody was asking for the model number of the headphones just one more yeah well HD HD 26 - I think they are I see 26 - well I I II and and it's there there's a model which has they've actually discontinued it really annoyingly but now it's always on so whether it's up or down it's always on but they have a slight issue where there was a bit of a we have a there's a crackle sometimes when you flick it down it enables and then it unmutes but some of the that now in order to if you buy them they'll always be on wherever they are but you can have a where there's a guy in the UK called Chris who takes them engineers it so that they then mute again when you flip them up so the one I wear on the trolley is constantly constantly on but it doesn't matter because it's so there no one hears in unless I press my button but the ones that they wear you don't want them to be constantly on otherwise you'd always be hearing I've been there you know each other that both boombox would always be hearing each other's mic even if they were off set on toilet or something so you want to have the meeting functionality right and it looks like undress poncey is a is he's asking about the the mix crea that was on the bottom of yours of your I guess your CLA on that picture and that's how you that was so yeah so the mix perforce but yeah so the mix pre so that was at a time when I was using cable booms almost all the time and only and only going to Wireless booms when I when I had to so I was using that mix pre ISOs down the bottom that would be my I'd liked the app I'd liked the limiter on it and I liked the sound I think the old-fashioned sound devices mix pre and the like for 78744 and like the the I felt like the limiter on that was much much nicer to my ear than the limiter on the seven eight eight so I'd always go go into that and then go line into my seven a a from that we go to no control so that would that's the only reason that exists I just couldn't I didn't like the limiter and they didn't like the preamps particularly when going from a seven four four seven monday i could instantly hear oh there's something missing here came back with that yeah the 744 was known for rid those really are some free apps that it had and moving over to the six series you didn't see her and really a reason to keep going that route or to be honest everything got everything was digital wireless at that point so everything going into it is already lying you know so all of the limiting is already handled by their tool record by the transmitter or to handle this were so I'm less reliant on Leslie I'm not leaning and my whole workflow has changed to twenty-four bear and like obviously you've more Headroom so you don't have to ride it super high and so I'm less yes so I also so now because everything's wireless and everything's line high yeah I don't feel unless I had a kind of question about communication Simon because there's been in lots of these discussions that we've been having people talk about communication you know amongst their own crew and for me communication was never never an issue but that's also because I'm a really old guy and I worked on movies a long long time ago and we really didn't have any need to I mean I never had any need to talk to my boom operator about anything and he of course never really wanted to talk to me about anything we just got the work done but how I guess every production is different in terms of how much communication how much talking you have to do I mean I know you know markula know typically is you know like writing a novel you know in everybody's headphones so it's how does that work out with you in terms of how much communicating how much talking do you have to do um and I find I I do a lot and unfortunately I know how annoying it can be as a boom up to have a sound mix that likes to talk during takes and I find it very distracting because you're focusing on what you're doing your edge your remembering the lines of dialogue and then you've got a sound man going go up down down one go down down yeah so what I would do is if I think I talk a lot between takes obviously to describe what it is that I would like and what could be improved and obviously things like that but during a take I try to keep it to a few least number of acidities as possible but usually it's like information about the framing and I'm always trying to guide both booms to be right on the edge so that's generally my focuses I'm watching the monitor and I'm saying okay boom one down down a little bit down a little bit stop so that would be the limit of it and and that that again is a very Simon hazy type thing he did it all the time yeah I guess the big difference with my career is certainly the first 15 years or more you know we had no video assist I mean that wasn't even something so there's there's no reason for me to ever be talking to the boom operator in terms of frame lines yeah and other than that I think even later discussions that I would have with Don were really just our strategy for a scene in other words so you know I would know what Don's doing he would know what I'm planning on doing but we would never never talk at all during the take yeah it feels like I would appreciate that workflow to happen more as well because there is an there is a trueness to that as well as a recording style and I think when I was first dying out and watching boom ups work they they their feed they didn't want to hear the radio mics this was actually actually no the first boom where they didn't want to hear the mics at all they didn't want to hear their own mic they would they just wanted they didn't want to have any headphones on they were happy not hearing it and just trusting the position of the boom and then when then they were sort of told their cave we have to wear headphones now because obviously been using talkback quite a lot so if that became a thing but then boom UPS would ask I just want to hear the boom I don't want to hear the radios so you would send the boom up just the boom ops feed and they're not the mix so quite often that would be a thing where you send the boom box just at the boom but as a personally as I went and became a bill I was more interested in the bigger picture of it I was like okay I trust kind of what the boom is getting but I actually do want to hear the radio mics because I feel personally like I feel that's part of my responsibility is that they sound good and if and if I can hear them doing a take and I noticed there's an issue then I will know that I can maybe do a quick tweak on checks and adjust a radio mic between takes based on what I heard during a take so I kind of feel like with the huge number of radio - all that play now I feel like that's somehow changed the lord of the boom offered to if if you were working like selfishly i remember that we always used to talk about the fact that we heard that there were boom operators in the UK did not wear headphones which i found actually astonishing they still managed to get the job done somehow but you're saying at some point that practice sort of stopped and people you know boom operators are wearing headphones yeah yeah yeah they were but yeah there's definitely someone working on a job with amin beaten his work with Joe Wilson an awful lot and he didn't and that was that was all that was with a guy called Maurice Hillier and they and they just that was a that according on adapt no radios eight one six you know there was it was very very minimal and and yeah and they got an incredible stuff incredible sound it amazed it sound amazing and it was very very very kind of less and less of a mountain less is more approach but yes things have changed an awful lot for that yeah it's you know sometimes talking in the middle of a take you know it from crew to crew that changes on how much it was on I know for me all generally silent during takes unless the motivation of what one of the two or three cameras is doing changes drastically and I'll just even though and I tell them up even though you you probably know what's going on already I'm just gonna articulate that not just for for you but for the utility listening as well because if B camera decides we're gonna do this oh no let's now swing over and get this and that becomes more important and my verbalization of that can help the utility know that okay well we're always trying to keep whatever's in play up in tip-top shape there's another really really critical thing about this talkback system that is that that has a whole new utilization which is that I often need to be cued to do certain things especially playback if there's a certain moment and Owen Hanna they they used a lot of playback for mood and there was the director wanted certain sound effects to be played on set certain moments but she wasn't like a relay over a radio and then to an ad next to me and I know so what would happen is my assistant would be on set and she would use her comms to give me whisper to me the cues that she could see from the director so it was it became a way of of yeah of of relaying messages during takes so I just been listening to my return for you during the take and I'd be hearing cues for certain sounds to be played on set so it worked both ways so yeah talking to you talking to in takes from the boom up and the system that has happened has helped me a lot yeah we have a question from a guy named Angus which I had met but yeah last time I was in London we had coffee I think that was mid January I think he and you and I met up on that trip too yeah yeah he had a question he says just a question for Simon if you get the chance he says what is the most important lesson you learned when networking for your initial trainee or utility jobs okay well promptness being obviously being key ones like that turn it get there early basically relative stay relatively quiet listen like stay focused on what it is that you need to do and don't be easily distracted by all the going on around you if you're not sure if you just been asked something to do and you're not 100% sure what it is you're supposed to do just be straight and say ask again what it is exactly you need me to do just say that you don't fully because the last thing you want to do is go back to the van and then not know exactly what it was that you supposed to go and get so I just think honesty is absolutely the key thing when working in a fast dynamic environment just to be completely straight aways what it is that you've been asked to do be clear so but what what I look for is people who just have her have a positivity and are just you know have a positive fatigue a good a good attitude to do it to work and and yeah a big fun to be around you know yeah you definitely want you as somebody who's bringing people out of your team you want people who want to be there who want to make that contribution and you know they don't get tanked out very easily yeah not too serious as well some people get very serious about it all I know let's just have a nice time I said let's have a giggle and I miss about and then so yeah yeah to be able to vote to be able to be kind of relaxed and also focus on many things one good piece of advice experience bang you're good go man I'll have you on my team any day man yeah he's very cool very cool let's see a Shane Costello from Ireland he's asking are the boom ops wearing transmitters and receivers yeah yeah they are until I can find a better system which is just like one box and I believe Zach's call might have a thing there but I they do they have a transmitter and receiver on their belts and and the cable from the headphones ends with the mini jack and one and A two mini jacks one mini jack for transmitter for the mic one mini jack for their for their headphones just runs down a single cable in what's your IFB system of choice electro ComTech or something else oh for the director and everyone well for boom UPS from well that's the best g-free yeah okay yeah so that said we don't really have contacts in the UK you're never really caught on I know the invoice had them at one point but they were very old I think and we've always had G freezes us or go to so I have this for a director and script and anybody else using what G freeze so I have about 25 of them basically and yeah yeah you just need tons of tons of them yeah these are these are the models volumes with the volume knob on yes yeah I think the quality is okay III know that lecture have come out with a much nicer duet system and I think that's genuinely if I got on a nice chunky big drama where there was a demand for real quality in the headphones then I would be switching over to that but that's a pretty expensive switch for like 25 of them so I would maybe think about maybe giving my boom ops duets and I think I maybe would help the range and give them a better experience so yeah range is so important for your crew it really is you need to be able to lean on that feed and a lot of judgements based on that the clarity specially nowadays listening to your talk to the big group chat the other day about having remotes comms you know remote receivers on set and running those long cables either you know were they the multiple video and audio and aerial all going down one cable and back to a van or you know that kind of thing is gonna become quite big consideration now if we start getting to a world of separation between the sound man and the set I'm not I'm not too fond of that idea I really like to be near I mean not super near I'd like to be in my own little space quiet in my own space away from set but I don't want to be able to be so far away that I can't go go on to stand point something and say we need to move that or something you know I just want to be then want to be able to be near enough to see rehearsals and feel like I'm part of the show so I kind of really fear the whole way that this might end up going and sticking yeah I mean I'm a big fan of at least being able to see video village from where I am I don't need to be I don't need to be that close to hear every word they're saying but oh but I like to just you know you can just tell I mean some directors when they're watching the monitor during a show or during a shoot that some directors are wearing on their sleeves like you know when they're when they like it and when we're getting close and and you know those are just to me things as being part of the team I love and and who knows it might take a tent with clear windows to help me achieve that so even on a soundstage I mean I think having having that tent will just make everybody else feel a little better it's like you know I don't wear a mask 21 isolation yeah yeah but my boobs are in here and yeah I'm all for that if we can find a way of staying close without you know necessarily being you know being safe we should we should be working on those sorts of solutions and not like ways to make ourselves less present you know yeah yeah I feel like we can't we can't be giving into this whole no boom opps bollocks you know we can't be giving into that crap I'm reluctant to allow people to wire themselves up as well but I'm a foot I'm afraid that we might be going in that direction you know handing over things to costume and then expecting it to sound amazing it's just on unrealistic but it is unfortunately something for at least in the short term we're going to have to accept well I think there's going to be just my own speculation there's gonna be some some broad strokes guidelines that come down from mptp sag all these you know there'll be some broad strokes things but at the end of the day a lot of it's just gonna be you know taking those in a common-sense application to to our filmmaking situations which as we know vary from job to job quite extensively so it's gonna take a lot of interpretation and common-sense by us on set to adapt I think productions are sensible and and they're doing they're making these big release statements about how they can be you know healthy set but I think productions they know that they can't film until social distancing as these dramatically we really can't go into until those until we have a social distancing rule which we can work on set in the way we are normally allowed to work just won't function so I've been offered something in November and it's on the basis that social distancing on the problem basically yeah they know that they can't try to pretend to make it work with with social distancing onset and so everything's kind of hinging on whether we're not week and then we can get we can find solution I would expect I would expect a normal hierarchy to take place whereas most of the people's first concern are with the actors who have to be intimate with each other and then everything will trickle down from that point and it's like obviously when there's social distancing you obviously can't have strangers kissing strangers on camera you know playing a role so this is like the first problem that people think about and then it trickles down to the rest of us all the workflow parts of it but there's a question here from from Erin in LA who who's just asking what is let's see how how do we find mentors or professionals willing to take us under their wing and learn maybe working as boom ops or utility what advice would you give them coming out of film school now all I can really go off is my own experiences here is that being proactive is really really the key I my guide was the amps directory now you may have a similar directory in the US where people's names are listed I mean obviously Facebook now exists and yet it forms like JW sound and at least our mixers are very open and this sort of thing I think I feel in some ways is slightly easier to make introductions to introduce yourself to be through social media now but I would feel like it's better to make a phone call still it's better to and rather than sending someone with text or sending someone instant message or Instagram messaging or something like that I feel that if someone just calls me up out of the blue and says hi I'm just starting you know I'm not I want to learn can I come in with you then I'm much more open to talking and getting to know that person and someone did that to me a little while ago and we met and we had a drink and it was great it was really it was it wasn't we should try to sort of limit social media to it's a sort of a delay this kind of this kind of thing and not and not business too much you know I think I feel phoning people up it's still the right way to make an introduction and meeting people face-to-face after that point so I just recommend finding people through some sort of directory phoning them up then email don't bother with the emailing people phone them up because like because then you can talk to them and and try to find if it's not a good time then just asked when you can call them back and call them back exactly then and and that's what I did and I called maybe 30 people and I got paid some paid work and lots of experience and lots of trainee stuff as a student I really recommend doing that and don't fit don't just don't call in a Sunday yeah I would say yeah polite persistence yeah and and you can you know it's being able to articulate your goals what you want to learn helps because so many people call and they don't actually know what they want to do yet and and so your now is the somebody calling me I'm having to peel back the layers at the end you feel like what they wanted to figure out what they want to do and but but yeah I at least I can say nowadays social media really helps in learning who the players are learning is what work do your research that's that's a big part of it to do your research know who you're contacting and why you're contacting that don't you know you know I get a lot of messages from people that are just like you can see they pasted your name in and everything else like that you can see this is what really gets me is if you get an email and you can see that this is just the body of it is the same that they sent to everyone else and you can see that they've written your name because the fonts different for your name or something like that and there's little telltale signs that they just haven't even bothered to put the effort in to the email yeah it's a very good tool that someone might not have the effort but there's it and there's such a huge amount of information now you can find out about what makes report on what movies you know you could find out who the leadership of amps is and who where they came from you can find out the CAS you know leadership there and how they were like just a lot of information so do your research do your homework and it was like watching lock stock and snatch and being like can we talk about those films how did you make it how did you get that how did you do that you know and then it's like oh wow I'd love to talk about that with someone you know you're sure that's the kind of thing so yeah just like it's difficult to find a good reason to have a chat with something even if it's just a chat yeah yeah for sure or in terms of getting work you know just you know there is a certain amount of luck involved unfortunately in timing so yeah there's some things you can't invent you know no matter how persistent or you know just sometimes it just comes down to luck yeah that's the benefit of calling 30-some other people as well is that one of them will have something coming up and it just really is like spinning spinning the wheel and you see where it lands but but when you're contacting 30 people chances are if they don't if they have a comfortable conversation with you and and then they might know somebody who would be you know what this this kid can put a sentence together and it's self-aware yeah yeah and that's that's kind of what you're looking for so yeah sure the same as when I was playing music you know you you want to you want to pick the guy you're gonna have a good time with not necessarily maybe the best player the best personality will do the job yeah some I guess what can map this up here so just for for wrapping it up how many recording rigs do you maintain now you have your your your regular trolley then you have a bag rig is there any other yeah there's like an app there's like a vo stroke sometimes more portable ADR thing or additional dialogue recording so that's a seven for forty no radios on that one that's just the seven four four in a small bag with a NP battery setup and you know so yeah I've got and then I've got a zoom you know the zoom what you call my h6 or something with the two mics on the top and and then you can plug in mics into it and I often just had they do that so much anymore because they don't sound that great the on-board stereo mic but it is a nice stereo setup and I have if you could get close to an interesting sound I will put my zoom recorder just bare with some batteries in it and leave it recording for an hour or so and walk away and then you will have something that if it rains whatever you know if it gets run over doesn't matter and it costs 200 quid or whatever um but like it's getting it's getting something but you'll never actually listen to but someone later on what I do is I pull all of that stuff so I did this a fair bit on the show I was doing like hammer and other ones up in Scotland when you're in some interesting acoustic and interesting wood audio environments that active audio invite has lots of sea ghazal there's birdsong winds that you want to capture and you don't really want to go to the hassle of trying to do it properly so this feels like a an option I always feel it's better to record something rather than you know I'd rather even if the quality isn't quite there I'd rather be able to capture it then not capture anything so so I have this little Pelle case with with the zoom recorder in and if I feel like we're in an interesting environment then it will go out and I'll stick it on a roof or I'll put it somewhere I'm in a bush and I'll leave it recording and occasionally I might move it and at the end of the day I'll just take all that data and I'll bring it onto my laptop I might rename them I listened to the first beginning I'll intro them obviously doing audio entry and then at the end of the job I'll handover that along with a big list of to the to the sound directly to the dialogue editor because they're the ones that actually use it and I'll send them these in my wild tracks I'll just send it directly to them officer hand them over for a hard disk which has all of my wild tracks on and all of my atmospheres and stuff and they were all like scene related so obviously they own though okay that's relates to the actual episode in that scene or that moment so yeah that would be jump and playback cart or a music card or anything or I haven't I used my I used my laptop and that usually sits on a box next to me it's very basic I I haven't gone and done enough musical stuff to need anything more like I've never really gone into the world of Pro Tools playback that I've managed myself so really my playback is limited to running running a Sam you know oh you know this cool app values it's called sound sound board you see this and you press buttons you can so sometimes I'm literally my playback is my phone and I'll have my cable coming out of that going into it one of the cellos and I'll be playing back sound effects and music just by pressing buttons on this and I'll find that yes am bored yeah nice and so you can just kind of I'll go where's the screen you can just kind of name things and then when you press it and I will be queuing in playback either want to speak to allow for phone conversations and stuff so if quite often on shows it's like Alice I would already recorded the other side of the conversation and like Paddy Considine is listening on the phone he wants to hear that he doesn't want someone else to read that in and I can play it on set and I'll play it in and I'll cue it and I'll add all of these and different numbers and I'll just play them back on to a speak on set so we can hear the real timing and the real voice very cool them and I don't bother with ID because often we're out in the field and I couldn't want to pull out my laptop the battery might die but I know I can charge this on set so I this is this is more becoming a key part of my kid cool no that's awesome and it's got what was it called again sorry it was a sound plant I actually had to buy it it cost something like 70 bucks but like sound board sound board they're refusing sound board yeah I think I bought the premium version otherwise you get annoying stuff but it's it's damn useful and the way of getting stuff into it is I can kind of import over like airdrop I think but sometimes in order to just get on to it I literally put this into voice memo record mode and put it next to my headphones and just record it directly onto that the fastest way I can get something onto this without using a laptop I wish there was a way on sound devices to sort of airdrop to a phone you know some kind of communication between the recorder and my and my phone that would be very handy you know other than emailing you to yourself and do yeah yeah well rather than that because even an email is quite difficult to then get it on to sound board it being an Apple product it being an apple and write difficult to communicate with apples basically sure let's see a question from Karl world and out of New York there any been been any projects that you just thought went so poorly that you didn't win you're credited yes fine yes yeah oh yeah many many I used to do lots of short films and student films but like when I was in when I was between booming and recording I was doing lots of short and inquest you those never seem like they well you know that's where we that's what we learned especially short films are great because that's like the microcosm of the of the entire process and it's all compact and you can see you know you can see every part of the process going on around you did you use it did you use a pseudonym yeah but the favorite ones are Mike Russell and Justin frame you know there was one movie where I was only hired to do what three days of pickups this was like 10 something like that and they wanted to give me the credit for the entire movie and and and because there was a disaster story about about the mixer that did the movie who just was kind of universally hated amongst the entire crew for whatever reason and then they wanted to give me credit for the whole movie and I'm just like I was only here three days like sometimes it's those awful jobs where you learn the most you know where you have those bad experiences and you know what not to do again definitely at least what not to take again what the warning signs the warning signs that first conversation with the director who who is asking for something unrealistic and behaving in a way which doesn't have any respect for what really is trying to further their professions involved in I chose at the time to ignore the warning signs and go ahead anyway and yeah it can be tough because you know as a sound mixer and I know this is you know for me moving forward now it's still one of the parts of my job is is you know I properly research the directors I work with but finding what their background is so you have directors some directors are a literary background some directors are are cinematographers former former filmmakers you know James Cameron comes from props in our department and can you know their points of engagement with the process but then there's others where it's just really hard to pin down at what point they or what point they start carrying about certain things that we can have control over and then at what point they just lose bandwidth and you just it does you no good to flood them or advise them or flood them with information that they can't process so you're always just trying to find work that threshold with your creative team and that's you know that's that's the thing well I think we can wrap it up if anybody has any other questions feel free to chime in but at Simon I really appreciate you making time for us I know doing this for an hour and a half or hour and 40 minutes thank you for dinner thank you for doing I mean we all yeah we all know you as the ursa guy but it's really neat to to understand you know the history where you came from and how you got into it and how mentorship played the role in helping you get started how esports helped if you weren't here in the beginning if you're interested in the documentary I made about video about eSports and modern-day gamer and you can find it on YouTube it's had about two hits modern-day gamer one and two they were the first things I ever did and I was I wanted to be a director and I wanted to shoot video gaming documentaries and I still do it's so interesting I still watch a lot of eSports I'm flipping and love watching I love watching sports my kids watch so many they play video games but then they want they go to youtube and watch their favorite gamers play Starcraft yeah you know I grew a beard playing missed well even bigger than is playing myth back in the 90s oh my gosh not ik music that's all the photos yeah next thing you know it's for my mother really good one actually because it's the best yeah yeah very cool well thank you so much everybody well we will shut it down unless there's any other questions feel free to speak now forever hold your peace and oh yeah send me a message on I'm happy yeah how can people contact you what's the best way good route yeah Facebook Messenger just friend and face to me a message yeah yeah very cool thank you so much all right we'll see you guys later next time thank you everybody thank you cheering Cheers cool wow that was long all right so how's that for you Jeff extreme now and I'm gonna stop the recording thank you

Channel: URSA Straps

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Id: 2JDL4uy0vbE

Length: 102min 51sec (6171 seconds)

Published: Fri May 08 2020