Word of Mouth with Veteran Film Editor Mick Audsley

PB member, Guy Ducker, talks to veteran film editor, Mick Audsley, about the vast changes in editing from when he first entered the industry in the 70s, through the delights and perils of the digital age and with it job insecurity.

Mick Audsley has edited everything from My Beautiful Laundrette and Dangerous Liaisons to 12 Monkeys and Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire, but he’s concerned about the direction in which post-production is going. With the help of Hyperactive and Pivotal Post, he’s started an event called Sprocket Rocket, hosted by Soho’s De Lane Lea facility house, to get the industry talking. Having worked with Mick very briefly some years ago, I decided to see if I could lure him to the comfort of a West End club to find out more about his take on editing and where he thinks things are going wrong.

His first experience of cutting came when he edited a pitch to the BFI for a production of King Lear. The experience was revelatory: “I saw that this was where the power was in filmmaking.” The project was commissioned. I asked Mick what the atmosphere was like in the BFI cutting rooms when he was there in the 1970s. “Cutting rooms would all be working next to each other” he said. “We’d show each other work, we’d get excited about things, we’d ask advice, we’d ask friends to screenings ‘We’re going to run a reel today, will you come and have a look and give your notes?’ I too would be asked to come and see a film that Kevin Brownlow was making, and it was very exciting to see something like that and be asked your opinion. It was new to me to be given a voice.”

TV & Me with Nickelodeon’s Will Poole

This week we talk to Will Poole, Head of Production, Creative Services at Nickelodeon UK.

Where did your career in the industry begin, did you always want to work in TV?
Ever since childhood, watching Doctor Who from behind the couch and Star Wars 47 times, I’d wanted to work in film and TV. I moved to London following an MA in TV Production, naively expecting to coast directly into a Production Management role. Having sent out numerous CVs and pounded the streets, I got a break as a runner and then tape op, patching machines for duplication work. Whilst this wasn’t exactly my skill set it was great training and an excellent introduction to post-production.

What was the biggest hurdle you had to overcome whilst trying to make it in the TV industry?
I’d say that one of the largest hurdles is making those initial contacts. I think the TV industry is very much about relationships – the more people you know, the more opportunities are likely to come your way. Like many people, I entered the industry with no contacts. Let’s just say the media infrastructure around Harlech in North Wales is not as robust as in other locations. I joined The New Producers Alliance which was a great way to meet budding film-makers and greatly enabled me in producing my first short film. Sadly that institution is no longer with us. My advice to those starting out is to get out there, meet people and make stuff – join as many online film and TV networking groups as possible.

TV & Me with Producer/Director Paul Vanezis

This week we talk to freelance Producer/Director, Paul Vanezis.

Where did your career in the industry begin, did you always want to work in TV?
I had a fascination with television from as far back as I can remember. I used to love fantasy shows such as ‘The Tomorrow People’ and ‘Doctor Who’ and wondered how they managed to create the illusion of different planets and of course, I loved the monsters. So I managed to get onto the Film and TV course at Newport Film School in South Wales, before all the courses became ‘Media’. It was a practical course and we soon realised that we were learning by making our own mistakes.

In what ways has making TV changed in the time you’ve been in the industry?
The big change was the move to tape for location filming instead of film. Now it’s tapeless and HD and inevitably self-shooting. On top of that we have affordable desktop editing. We always had non-linear editing with film, but the post production process has been streamlined making true fast turnaround much easier.

The Lot of the Stay-at-Home Editor

More and more editors are working from home, but is this a good thing for the Editor, the Producer, the Director or the film? Freelance Editor and ProductionBase member, Guy Ducker, takes a look.

As I write, I’ve just had my first day’s work outside my flat in about four months (thank you to the good people of I-Motus). It’s not that I’ve been idle during these months: I’ve just had an unusually long run of jobs where I’ve been cutting from home on my trusty iMac. I’d joined the ranks of the stay-at-home editors (emendator domesticus). This phenomenon is comparatively recent. It’s been theoretically possible for some time: we’ve been able to run Final Cut Pro from a consumer Mac for many years and Avid Media Composer (my preferred weapon) released an affordable ‘software only’ version in 2006. But what has made the real difference is the sudden dominance over the last two or three years of cameras that record straight to hard drive. No longer do editors need hefty tape decks and expensive interfaces to get the pictures in and out of their editing machines. If you have a system set up at home, you hardly need to lift yourself from your chair. The material comes to you on a drive, and the finished cut can be returned on the same drive or via an FTP site. If you like, you can even avoid meeting the producer and director – uploading cuts direct to Vimeo or similar sites, so they can watch them without leaving their homes. Filmmakers might never need to leave the house again.

But is this a good thing?

TV & Me with Writer/Director Hugo Blick

This week, we catch up with 2012 BAFTA Television Craft Awards winner, Hugo Blick, as he discusses past success, Marion & Geoff, how he got his break starring in Batman, and winning that all important BAFTA for Director of BBC 2’s The Shadow Line, proudly sponsored by ProductionBase.

You’re career began as an actor and you famously starred in Tim Burton’s Batman, playing the young Jack Napier, who killed Bruce Wayne’s parents and later became the Joker. How did you’re career as an actor aid you in becoming a successful director?
Marshalling a film crew is quite a military sort of thing but acting in front of a camera and all those people is really quite delicate. If you haven’t experienced that exposure it’s easy to not recognise just how vulnerable an actor can feel.

Was it an easy transition to make, did people take you seriously?
A loaded question there! First thing, I take actors very seriously! But you’re right to the degree that acting and directing are very separate talents and one doesn’t necessitate ability in the other – although Clint Eastward appears to have made a pretty good fist of it!

TV & Me with UKTV’s Helen Cooke

This week we talk to Helen Cooke, UKTV Commissioning Editor, Entertainment.

Where did your career in the industry begin, did you always want to work in TV?
Even though I’ve always been a TV addict, media studies was not widely available at degree level when I was younger, so I never really considered it as a career option. I did Mechanical Engineering at university and thought I’d go into banking after university or similar, but that all changed when I first saw Channel 4’s Tourist Trap. I just thought it would be such a fun job to be able to make TV shows like that. So I set about researching the types of shows that I’d like to make, and who made them. During this time I sent my CV to a local weekly regional debate show called “Central Weekend Live” as I always enjoyed the late night punch ups. I got a try out as a researcher for 4 weeks and the rest is history!

You’ve worked on some landmark entertainment shows like XFactor and Come Dine with Me, what do you like most about working within the genre of entertainment?
All television genres are about telling stories. I think entertainment just does this in a more innovative and noisy way. Also, it’s great to handle the bigger scale budgets as it means you have more to play with as a producer and can attract bigger talent. What really excites me are brilliant, simple entertainment formats. Come Dine with Me is an example of this and it came out of ITV Studio’s Factual department, so it also shows how broad entertainment programming is – it’s a great place to be.

TV & Me with Self-Shooting Producer/Director Toral Dixit

This week we talk to freelancer Shooting Producer/Director, Toral Dixit.

Where did your career in the industry begin, did you always want to work in TV?
I started my working life as a photographer, then later trained as a journalist. I studied photography at Salisbury College of Art. I then began working as a photographer for the British Airports Authority, before becoming a freelance photographer and subsequently, a journalist. TV was so far from my mind – not remotely something I would have considered. Even being a professional photographer was, culturally, very different for an Asian woman.

My TV career began in hospital TV, which works a bit like hospital radio. Harefield Hospital, (then, the leading heart transplant hospital) had a traditional ‘hospital radio’ setup, plus a very innovative volunteer hospital TV arrangement. This ‘broadcast’ short docs and hospital news to the hospital wards via cable. It was staffed by some very dedicated TV professionals. They taught me loads and allowed me to write and direct. From there I managed to get a work experience placement at the BBC as a researcher on Open Space (a community program) and so started my long and illustrious (joking!) career in this industry.

What was the biggest hurdle you had to overcome whilst trying to make it in the TV industry?
I suppose the biggest hurdle for me was trying to get employers to see me beyond what my ‘Asian’ background brought. My BBC work experience wasn’t ‘Asian’ related, however the subsequent programmes I worked on needed someone with in-depth Asian knowledge – getting away from that into mainstream was hard. Plus, I was clear on the type of programming I didn’t want to do. This industry is so all consuming, that unless you love the work you are doing, it can be soul destroying. So, holding out for the right job brings its own challenges, especially in the early years when income as a researcher doesn’t stretch that far. I was able to perfect my waitressing and office temp skills during that period!

TV & Me With Executive Producer, Claire Farragher

TV & Me With Claire Farragher

This week we catch up again with freelance Executive Producer, Claire Faragher as she discusses watching TV upside down as a child to producing one of ITV’s most successful Reality TV shows. Claire explains her obsession with TV.

Where did your career in the industry begin? Did you always want to work in TV?

I started out as a print journalist and then became a chat show producer at Anglia Television after applying successfully for a job advertised in the Guardian Media Guide. I had been obsessed with television as long as I can remember – I even went through a phase of watching television upside down (don’t ask me why – I was a child and it added variety!). So when I thought about progressing from my job as a newspaper reporter, what appealed most was using my journalistic skills for television. At Anglia TV, I also made fly-on-the-wall docs and magazine shows for a number of different channels, before joining the BBC, where I downgraded and trained up eventually as a Producer/Director before moving onto being a Deputy Editor and Series Producer.

What was the biggest hurdle you had to overcome whilst trying to make it in the TV industry?

Possibly getting my first break as a director. I feel that strong producers or journalists can be viewed as one trick ponies who are not very visual or can’t work across different genres. When I finally got my chance to direct and then PD it was nice to thwart such views and also get stuck in in the edit, where even today it’s nice to still be surprised with what you can do.

The Only Way is (Succ)Essex

The phenomenal success of TOWIE shows no signs of abating, turning some of the cast into overnight celebrities, introducing us to the vajazzle and phrases such as ‘reem and ‘well jel’. It has spawned rival copycat scripted reality shows but TOWIE remains the firm favourite with viewers (and critics alike). Claire Faragher, Series Producer on Series 1 and Executive Producer on Series 2, discusses the reason for its success.

Why do you think TOWIE was such a big hit?

We had an incredible cast of colourful (orange) characters, a lot of laughs, relationship dramas, and a unique way of filming the show, which gives it a cartoonish, hyper-real style. And then there was the high-speed and high-quality editing and structuring. The production team got to know the characters inside out and they had enough trust in us to allow us to film some of their best and worst moments. And due to the speed of turnaround the show was more reactive than anything that has come before or since in this genre (it’s a 24/7 operation). The production team worked very hard and there were a lot of brilliant people who made it such a great series. Some of us worked double shifts or more throughout, came up with the structure pre and post pilot and basically pulled off what many thought was impossible, with between three and nine HD cameras filming every scene and with at most 3.5 days to film and cut each episode. Also, ITV Marketing & Publicity gave it a massive push and at our press launch night I’ll never forget the immediacy with which the tabloids embraced our show. Oh, and not forgetting the hard work and talent of the production team I employed…have I already mentioned that??!!!

A TX Experience With Accompanying Tweets

This week, award winning documentary film maker, Elizabeth Stopford, discusses how her latest C4 documentary ‘We Need to Talk About Dad’ was received on Twitter, and what a “real time” response means from a filmmaker’s perspective.

Watching my latest documentary ‘We Need to Talk About Dad’ go out on Channel 4 was a novel experience because its transmission was punctuated by an ongoing commentary – courtesy of twitter.

The ‘water cooler effect’ of people talking about your show afterwards has now been superseded by the immediacy of being able to ‘listen in’ on what people make of it in real time.

I’d spent over 6 months producing the documentary ‘We Need to Talk About Dad’ through Rare Day for Channel 4. The Johnsons had twenty years of happy marriage, professional success, a lovely home, blond-haired children. They were nicknamed the ‘Sunday Supplement family’ by locals, and appeared to have it all. Then one day, Nick Johnson, told his wife he had a surprise for her, led her blindfolded into the garden, and committed an awful act of violence.

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