Posted by mv on 11/02/06 16:09

I've just got back to this debate after some days. Some of us have to go
on location and actually produce films !!!

I have to say that as far as I'm concerned and I'll qualify that by
declaring over 30 years in TV, Film, Music, Theatre and media
entertainment, over twenty of which as managing director and often
multitasking producer, broadcast cameraman and sometime dedicated sound
recordist of a fully commercial production company with perhaps fifty
odd UK TV productions in the can (BBC, Channel 4, ITV, Flextech etc.)
together with perhaps another twenty or so 'foreign' ones (Turner
Broadcasting, Universal, CBS, German, Swiss and others), one 35mm
feature done and two more in development, numerous corporates,
commercials and information films etc., etc., 12 years as a BFI
Certified production skills trainer. I could go on but the point I'm
making is that even if one doesn't agree with my assertions it has not
prevented me from operating and functioning as a well used professional
in our industry.. I'll say again, one should never take ones own or any
one else's case for a generality. The debate on going here about double
system audio recordings and the strengths and weaknesses of HDV compared
to whatever is mostly misleading but you can take it from me that
there's absolutely loads of folks, including a few on this group, who
are making high production value programmes, acceptable to the highest
standards of UK broadcasters, on single camera audio, without a
dedicated sound recordist, on everything from Z1's to HDCAM's that sound
perfectly, and I mean perfectly, fine. And I'm not talking just news. I
recently had an 8' 30" film short listed amongst nine out of well over
200 at the London Brick Lane 'Chilli' Film festival that I shot and
produced using a Z1 and an A1 as a single person crew, in very demanding
conditions in the rugged Northern Region of Ghana, using mostly a camera
mounted Sennheiser K3/ME80 in HDV mode, the sound and picture is as
clean and well defined as one could possibly use.

The thing with sound people right now is that they are trying
desperately to defend a discipline and occupation that whilst still
demanding for feature films and very high end feature documentary with
challenging audio issues, has been much in decline since the early 90's.
There's still expertise needed for stereo (as opposed to multi channel)
location sound, but that requirement is nearly as rare as hens teeth.
Mostly this debate has an 'emperors new cloths' ring about it. I'd say
to anyone wanting a career in TV and Film today that dedicating ones
expertise and training exclusively in sound recording would be as unwise
as training to be a steam engine stoker. Like most of things we do these
day to make TV programmes, it's not rocket science. The hard bit is
creating programme ideas that someone else might be willing to put money
into. Making films is easy compared to getting the money and getting the
kit to work is even easier !.

--
John Lubran

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