September:
Job search.
One of the first places I tried, Falling Tree (a great immersive Sound Art adjacent radio production company with great ambient sound design, as well as really compelling stories) were unable to offer me any placements, however Alan Hall, one of the company’s directors offered to chat to me on the phone and give me some advice, which I welcomely obliged… I got some advice about places to apply. He spoke about how Falling Tree offered more individual, non-canonistic shows that were a little more bespoke and that they fell into a smaller type of company that would struggle to cover the cost of work placements/experience. Companies that tended to have bigger offices and more staff would do serial shows for BBC and have more steady streams of income. He recommended trying places like Reduced Listening, Rethink and some other companies that catered to more ‘serial’ audiences than they do.
He also recommended following ‘Short Cuts’ online, a show made up of audio contributions from aspiring producers – to look out for when the next season starts. I spoke to Jo about linking this in with a SIPS project. Which she said seemed like a good idea. Creating a small audio piece that I could then use as portfolio with the option to submit to Short Cuts or other radio shows.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001jc0d
I applied for Reduced Listening, heard back from Sarah that they don’t take on work placements anymore, but do take on paid placements sometimes through the Multitrack Fellowship, which aims to create pathways for people into the audio industry who may have historically struggled through race, class and disability. I felt it was disingenuous applying for this and respect the company for taking that stance. I asked if they had any advice other than that and Sarah very helpfully passed on a few lists of audio companies to try. I added these to my ‘hit list’.
Worked on my professional CV. Added in experiences at University, i.e The Exhibition at Gallery 46, where I installed my Sound Art piece, and also helped install others pieces. Spoke to Jo who recommended updating my CV, removing pointless jobs. Making sure that information is concise and useful to a potential employer. My CV was a little too broad in range and not specialist to the subject of Sound Design.
Jo gave me a contact information for Veronica who works through the University and was starting up a podcast, she lives in Brighton so Jo thought it was a good opportunity for me specifically. We also spoke about my CV and how I’d made it a little too long, needed to be punchier.
I emailed Frank about work placements and sent him an updated version of my CV, he works for Cup & Nuzzle.
I spoke to Ed Baxter who runs Resonance Radio who recommended Just Radio and Novel radio as potential studios that could offer placement opportunities and also said he could offer me some voluntary work – but I couldn’t do that because it was un-paid and I’d have been commuting.
I also spoke to Iain, one of the production assistants at Slack City radio and asked if I could get some work experience with them. He told me there was a live event I could oversee at The Green Door Store coming up.
Sent an email to Rethink Audio. Got a response from Matt saying to jog his memory mid-October.
Emailed Open Audio (no reply), Chalk & Blade (no reply), Just Radio (no reply) and Tim Harrison about Film projects. Prime Academy National Television School application (unsuccessful). Voluntary work with Carousel charity (training sessions next year) who run a radio show in Brighton with Radio Reverb.
Applied for NTS Radio job, inquired about Work Placements at the same time.
Frank passed me on to Rebecca from Cup & Nuzzle and I sent a few follow up emails after little response through September.
Had to get a summer job, so was working full-time at Evening Star this whole time. Meant it was tricky to find the time and energy for job applications and personal statements.
October:
Job search
Worked full time at the pub.
Worked on my 2nd year Audio Paper again, as I was learning about radio editing, I was trying to keep this up to date with my experience level.
Followed up with Matt Hill. Mid October had an online meeting Thursday 27th. He gave me templates and a bunch of trial episodes to get my template sounding as close to the show as possible. Which I started working on.
These are the Intros and Outros, You can hear the dates that change every time in the Intro, and the trail for the next episode in the Outro. This is the third draft that Matt was happy to sign off on, after I had replaced a ‘Next Time’ with tomorrow. I hadn’t realised that these things weren’t interchangeable initially. I put my own processing on the vocals and added a ‘vinyl crackle’ to the VO at the beginning to give it a slight retro vibe. Matt said these effects were too intense though so I ended up rolling them back.
Sent Rebecca from Cup & Nuzzle a couple of nudges throughout the month, no response.
November:
2nd November, had a few hours of work experience at Green Door Store with Slack City, learning about how they run their live show from the mixing desk for a festival venue set up as part of Mutations Festival in Brighton, a city-wide festival taking place across Brighton’s music venues. Slack City were set up in Green Door, airing everything out onto the radio live.
I found out that Slack City use 3 programs to function:
Radiodeck, which stores and can schedule all pre-recorded shows.
Sharp Stream, which they use for a live internet radio signal through a raspberry Pi
LibreTime, an open source radio automation system, which works as a scheduler that can switch between a live and pre-recorded broadcast automatically seemlessly connecting Radiodeck and Sharp Stream together. For the show at The Green Door Store. We ran two outs, one from the Mixing Desk in the venue for the live bands and one to the Decks in the Bar. These two signals went through a Mixing Desk so the signals could be faded between eachother and the Mixing Desk output into the Raspberry Pi. Which broadcast’s the signal to Sharp Stream, which is picked up by LibreTime.
Spoke to Cup & Nuzzle, got sent a message from Sara, she said she’d find some work for me working on Music documentaries in December. Told me to put aside two weeks and that I’d potentially be paid £800. Worked on Audio paper to send to her so she could get an idea of where I was at. The job would be from 24th of November to 16th December. It seems like a daunting job. eight 40-minute episodes, £100 per episode. Pay is a little steep. But it’s great experience and £800. I have a feeling an experience person may get paid nearly double that though. As finishing an episode in a day is tight and a standard day rate starts at about £150 for producer work. (blessing in disguise I didn’t get it potentially, as I don’t think I was ready). I have started working for Rethink. But have said yes to it and will have to work it out with my pub job, which I’m currently full time at.
Sent off first draft of The Retrospectors, spent a few days looking at Voice Over processing to make sure the sound was correct. Matt said it still needed some work. I had to set LUFs levels right. Read up on LUFs and mastering standards for all platforms. The Radio standard for volume.
Met the Cinema Museum crew on the 10th of November, we discussed the upcoming project, where we will meet Catherine, who is overseeing the advertisement we will make to attract property investors.
Spoke to Sara from Cup & Nuzzle on the same day by phone. We spoke about the projects in more detail. She told me to clear my schedule as it would be a lot of work.
Sent off a second draft to Matt on the 11th. More tweaks needed. Sent off an amended version. 14th of November – Matt is happy with the template.
Sent off amended audio paper to Sara 15th November.
21st November meeting about cinema museum visit with Beata.
22nd of November gave Sara a jog on listening to my Audio paper.
Had a meeting with Matt 25th about starting Retrospectors. He will send the rest of the templates for me to create, a Sunday template with a different outro, and a Friday template with a different outro. Once I have those templates done, he will put me on a week of episodes. He has given me another episode to edit in Descript, their editing software for producer and non-audio specialists which I will have to get to grips with to render the episode content before dropping it into the templates for final mastering before upload.
Sara apologised for not replying sooner, enjoyed the paper and the topic. Said the job had passed onto the in-house editor due to time constraints and her coming down with illness. She told me she would consider me for any future projects. Two days before the work was supposed to start. After telling me I’d be paid £800.
December:
Had issues learning new technology for Rethink Audio project The Retrospectors. Sent off another trial episode on 3rd December. Needed tweaking. Sent another version 7th December. Matt then sent me Templates for different days of the week. Started working on Templates for Rethink Audio.
Sent off Audio list ahead of first shoot to Jo, planned what equipment I would need.
Recorded Sound for first few interviews for Cinema Museum. Had issues with recorder not being booked, Nico wanted to go with a company rental, the recording devices I was after weren’t available, and my SD card didn’t work with the Zoom H5 Jo had brought. Thankfully it worked with my TASCAM, but my phantom power is broken, so I couldn’t power the shotgun microphone and had to conduct the interviews by holding the inbuilt microphones as closely as possible to the interviewee. This was less than Ideal but the sound should be salvageable.
I jogged Victoria about podcast through Jo. Said we’d speak after Christmas.
Worked a busy Christmas schedule at the pub, with these edits I was completing for Retrospectors and commuting for The Cinema Museum in the build up to Christmas, I couldn’t look for much other work.
Sent off my templates to Matt Hill on the 17th December, after a couple of weeks of getting distracted by other projects. He had already broken up for Christmas holidays.
I adjusted the LUFS setting on these, and mastered them. I think they are clearer than the last bunch. It took me a while of researching VO Processing. These are some videos I watched.
And here are the results, which I think are clearer than before.
No response from Matt yet.
January:
11th Cinema Museum Shoot for evening event. Meeting beforehand on Teams with Beata, Ariadna, Despina and Nico. B-roll In morning, no sound needed. Vox Pops 6.15-7.15 – we ended up not having permission to shoot during the film. So, 18th we went back again.
Got through another project with Beata and Ariadna, UAL advertisement for the DPS!
Had a day out in Cuckmere Haven following sound recordist Chris Sciacca.
It was unpaid, but a valuable experience, we shared tips and tricks for field recording and he gave me equipment to try out.
Victoria responded and tried to organise a meeting, asked for my CV. Didn’t respond when I sent it, I was too preoccupied balancing work, Retrospectors edits and the Cinema Museum to send a follow up message. So contact never resumed.
Met Matt on the 9th online. He offered me a job, not a placement. We agreed a fee for the episodes and the templates I’d been making the last month and a half. I sent off my first Invoice to Rethink and expect to start a weekly editing position with them from now on. 26th Jan. I would use Descript Audio, a programme I haven’t used before for the initial edits.
As you can see below, the audio is automatically rendered into script form. The radio editors can then highlight areas they want me to fix and I can edit the audio at the bottom of the screen in more detail. It’s a tricky piece of software to use, that plays up if you don’t have enough story space. Once I backed up my files it worked fine, I’m still getting used to some of the features and it doesn’t work well without internet, so I can’t do edits whilst on the move, which is quite frustrating.
February:
Met with Matt on the 1st. Established regular weekly work with Rethink Audio. 2/2 sent off my first whole week of episodes. Started uploading the episodes too as part of payment as they weren’t sure my pay grade was sustainable for just the edits, I decided it’s worth having the regular work so didn’t protest. Recorded interviews for DPF. Spoke to Rethink about the ‘De.coded’ project. A bigger more ambient sound recording project that would take a month to complete. Starting in March. Matt offered to take me off Retrospectors for the De.coded project but I decided to do both and drop shifts at the pub.
17th February had a meeting with Matt where he talked me through the uploads for The Retrospectors.
I upload the episodes on Apple Podcast Connect & Acast Network. This distributes the podcasts to every streaming service.
22nd-23rd February, Production calls for DPF. Spoke with Sound Team, delegated music elements to Yusuf. Ariadna and Beata called a meeting to discuss the recordings. I couldn’t commit to every recording. But Yusuf also being remote could only commit feasibly to doing the Soundtrack.
Went to Carousel volunteer meet up, expressed an interest in working on any sound projects they needed. Monday 6th Evening.
https://carousel.org.uk/whats-on/carousel-radio
27th & 28th Interviews Recorded in LCC – For the first recording on the 27th for Nicole & Jo, I forgot to pick up Room Tone for editing the interviews. I recorded with Sound Devices and Sennheiser Shotgun. There were some issues with some of the recordings I got and I had to try a few different boom positions to get rid of loud environments. There was a bit of a trail and error. No DPA clips – I didn’t have black tape either which would blend better with the clips. Some of the Microphone positioning exacerbated shuffling sounds, so will be careful with microphone placement going forward, and also getting the microphone as close as possible to the sound source, as I was worried about ruining the shot… which whilst it didn’t ruin the dialogue, made it much harder to use. Herietta and Stephanie.
March:
6th March Remote Interview Polina. Recorded on Zoom, I planned of time just to make sure things would work smoothly with Beata, we both recorded the sessions for back up. My internet connection was annoyingly slightly unstable which might have caused a bit of lag. But there wasn’t much I could do in a kind of avoidable scenario.
6th March Jaci Remote Interview. Same situation as Polina. It isn’t ideal, but we planned how we were going to record before and researched which video call was the best, and Zoom seemed to be the most straightforward, me and Beata recorded the interview with different viewers on Zoom (Speaker & Conference?) so we could see which looked best on video.
8th March Urte Interview, this interview went quite nicely, the fan for the projector was fairly loud, but I communicated the issue with camera and we set up the boom so it was as far away from the projector as possible. We needed the projector to be on for the backdrop. I remembered to collect Room Tone and learned from my previous mistakes.
13th March Cai Interview. This was by far the easiest interview too conduct. The studio was sound proofed and Cai spoke very clearly and articulately due to doing some voice acting in podcasts. The only issue I found was this was quite an exhausting shoot, going on for 40 minutes, so I was holding the boom for a considerable amount of time. It would be easier, for a longform interview to use a clip on microphone, so your arm doesn’t fall off. Whereas on set for a film, you only need to hold the boom for the length of the take and get a breaks in between.
14th March Beata & Ariadna, Leo interviews. By this point I was feeling in the swing of things, Beata and Ariadna were interviewed it quite an echoey room. But we had stopped packing the radiomics when we realised that the kit room didn’t have clips for them. As we didn’t want tape on the interviewees. I think in retrospect, perhaps this shoot in the echoey room and the shoot with Herietta and Stephanie in a loud Digital Space would’ve been best with a clip on microphone, so the interviewee is as close to the microphone as possible, eliminated the background noise a little more. Similarly the reverb of the voice bouncing back off the walls can slightly obstruct the dialogue that follows. Which can be as distracting and discernible.
Cinema Museum scrapped. No edits. Carried on uploading and mastering The Retrospectors for Rethink Audio. Mixed and mastered 101 unique pieces for Rethink Audio for De.coded. Which I will expand upon in a separate blog post.
April:
April 17th DPF Voice Over with Martha. Recorded in the Sound Arts Mixing Room and Foley Room, there was an issue with the microphone so we couldn’t run it through to the booth. This meant that Ariadna and Beata gave instructions to Martha in the booth with her. Which meant I was sort of left out of the producing element a little bit and to help run the session easier I just flat out recorded the whole thing. This meant my job for editing later was a lot more than It needed to be.
April 18-19th I edited Henrietta and Stephanie’s recordings because Beata, Ariadna and Polina said the background sound was distracting. Unfortunately there wasn’t a lot I could do the help, but I tried to EQ it a bit differently so the voice would come through, they were both being quite quiet in a noisy room though, so unfortunately there wasn’t a lot I could do. I sent over an edit for them to use, I asked them to try and be selective with what snippets they use based on the background sound and that I might be able to make it less abrasive with the room tone I got to fade the sound between cuts.
April 20th SIPS recording with Sam. I went to a water treatment facility in Barcombe with my friend Sam. We captured some field recordings around the treatment facility as I’m interested in doing a SIPS project about Water Treatment Facilities and Sewage Pollution. Unfortunately we couldn’t get inside the facility legally. So we ended up getting lots of ambient recordings around the outside. Some of which would be quite nice background sound for a documentary on the subject. Once I have the time to plot out what my SIPS could look like.
April 27th Meeting about Animated Sound UK
April 28th Uploaded Edited VO session for Martha down from 2 hours to 5 takes. This took me about 2 days.
Carried on regular work with Retrospectors. Started planning SIPS project.
Quit my Pub job because it was becoming quite a toxic environment to work in. Got a new job so was still working a lot.
May:
3rd May, Recorded sound for Animated UK project. Wasn’t a lot to do. Me and Constantine recorded a little bit whilst the break out groups were happening, but the UAL tech department were already covering the main presentation, so we just took over from them for a short period and asked if any students wanted to do some vox pops.
Got offered Table Reading project with Beata, did sound recording for two projects and started preliminary mix. Booked studios but had to use the new performance labs.
18th May – Cancelled Table Reading with Beata. Met Matt Hill in the Afternoon, we spoke about The Retrospectors, he had some notes for future uploads he’d like me to change. He has also given me more responsibility and wants me to arrange my own format for a new Saturday episode, which will be longer, has given me a lot of creative control and wants to see what I can come up with. I will be paid for the draft work and it’s quite an exciting prospect. The last version of the project I did in March has now been turned into a radio show too, which he would like me to listen to. Which is quite exciting.
22nd May Recorded First session in the recording studios at University with 4 Voice Actors. Set up the microphones, across the room and engineered the whole session. This one ran a lot more smoothly than the last VO session I did. I only wish we had got the actors in a bit later because there was a bit of standing around waiting for me to be ready. The timings can be quite tight for the music studio so made sure I was ready to jump out of the gates on the next session.
Met with Martha for lunch afterwards, she gave me some ideas for sound design. We are going to collaborate on creating something quite cinematic in the background of her piece.
26th May Recorded Second session of table reads, a little more challenging than the first I think because the cast weren’t trained actors. But I think with my combined editing experience from podcast editing, I should be able to make it work!
Still have to do a sound edit for the Cinema Museum, DPF, Animated Women UK and the table read. As well as work on my SIPS project, if I can find the time and draft this new episode format for the Retrospectors.