Category: Lectures

This weeks lecture was given by Hellen McCarron and Claire Butler from the University of Lincolns Career service. This lecture set out the world of freelancing and how to be successful as a freelance and how to freelance correctly so that you are paying the right amount of tax, national insurance etc. Being that i already freelance I understood most of the lecture, however, there were parts that I didn’t know such as the benefits that can come from hiring an accountant and the rates of tax that you need to pay for the amount of income that you receive.

Ultimately I found the lecture useful however I did understand most of the lecture and agree with them saying that freelancing is a viable way of entering the industry, i just personally believe that for me a full or part-time contract would be ideal and this is what i am aiming towards.

Lucy Mithcell is a post-production sound supervisor for a wide variety of clients from the BBC to commercial companies.  Her lecture was based on the concept of doing a mix for a TV drama or documentary which despite not being the most relevant for my project was interesting and there was still things that could be taken from this.

 

In terms of making sure that time isn’t wasted she emphasised the need for setting up the studio before the ‘talent’ hasn’t arrived so that time isn’t wasted and that no one is annoyed,  meaning that preamps, headphone levels and talkback are all checked , this also applies to us in the studio as we should not be wasting peoples time. The next relevant thing is the music, as she stressed that the music should be thought about carefully and the usage of it should only be applied when it is relevant and this also applies to the radio piece that I’m producing.  She also stressed the need for a paint by numbers approach of doing things in a logical order to ensure that everything is done and again I would say that this is relevant and can be easily applied to what we’re doing.

Finally, she spoke about how to get into the industry by building up relationships and in turn, this will build up trust and as a result, lead to more jobs coming your way,  she also stressed the importance of doing work experience in the relevant area and making the most of this by being likeable, knowing when to be quiet etc. She also said that is much easier to start out by working for a smaller company and then going freelance and that in the area of sound supervising runners are starting jobs

Lol Hammond is a music supervisor for Vertigo films and a composer for films. In terms of his music supervisor credits, he has worked on films such as Bronson, Its all gone Pete Tong and Monsters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First of all, he discussed the role of the music supervisor and explained that he was responsible for finding composer(s) for films and negotiating with them alongside sourcing tracks for particular scenes and overseeing the sound design.  He also stressed that there is a lot of negotiation between labels, artists and publishers to get to license a track and that to be good at being a music supervisor you need to have good negotiation skills and basic social skills.  He also explained the process of how he licenses a track by utilising a mixture of asking people and pitching to people and stressed that going directly to an artist can lead to a piece of music being much cheaper or actually agreeing for it to be used.  In terms of industry advice, he said that if you wanted to do anything in film both composition or music supervisor wise you should practice on short films as these are very easily watched by industry professionals, related to this is that you should know your stuff in regards to music and not box yourself into just one grenre of music that you just like as it would impact the potential jobs you may get in the future.

This week’s guest lecturer was Luke Pickering of the Church Studios in London, Luke also studied Audio production at Lincoln.

Despite Luke being from a different field of audio considering I want to go into radio it was still a valuable talk.  What I particularly drew upon was the fact that Luke described the creative industries as a service industry meaning that the work you do is to serve a client not to serve yourself, this means that money always comes first in any project, and this is relevant in any field of the audio industry. Luke also gave some interesting pointers on how to get work experience and what you should do once you get it, with me particularly taking note of him saying that you have to engineer your own luck and that then it is up to you try and make things happen rather than you relying on someone else to do it for you, he also stressed the importance of knowing when is and isn’t the right moment to talk to someone and how to make yourself ‘invisible’. The other thing he talked about was what industry professionals are looking for from someone, which he stated was the following: switched on, strong initiative, not annoying and  driven, this was really interesting to hear about as he said it was obvious if someone comes into the studio who hasn’t got these qualities they are simply not invited back.  The final thing i took was that you shouldn’t big yourself up on applications as again people can tell if you’re lying about something and are less likely to pick you over someone who is honest.

 

Today’s lecture was from the sound artist Jez Riley French.  He is regularly commissioned for work by exhibitions, performances and instillation’s alongside running workshops and lectures.His work has been displayed at the likes of the Tate Modern (UK), The Whitworth (UK), MoT – Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (Japan), Artisphere (USA), Harpa (Iceland), Mengi (Iceland), The Wired Lab (Australia), Mullae Art Space (Korea).

Jez’s website: https://jezrileyfrench.co.uk/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jez spoke in depth about contact microphones and how to go about using them and the potential sounds that they can unleash, for example putting them outside of buildings to capture the sound of what is going on inside and utilising hydrofoil contact microphones to put in water to capture the sound of the  inside of a lake or body of water.  He also talked in depth about how duration is a key fact to consider in the world of sound  and  that you should not rush a recording as you should be patient in getting an exciting sound and not have a preconception of what you are going to hear. Furthermore he stressed that you should be listening to things for over 15 minutes to allow you to get your ears to conceptualise what is going on  and fully take in the sound due to our ears being so used to listening to heavily compressed sound that alter the way we hear things due to the smaller frequency ranges. Another element of importance for him was that we should always use the entirety of the space that we are in, for example experimenting with mic placement in the studio rather than saying that it’ll do with what we have currently. Related to this is the element of exploration which he stressed heavily and said that you should always explore new things, for example listening to experimental work that will in turn influence you’re other work, so in this case we should listen to experimental radio.