Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1353865
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S I 55 Do you feel this journey was motivated by how you felt in your early years at Central (and your academic background at that point)? My early years in the industry at Central Television were an incredible opportunity for me to gain experience in all aspects of production and post-production sound. Central was a major contributor to the British ITV network, producing both dramas and documentaries shot on 16mm film and studio dramas and game shows recorded on video; and at that time—this was back in the early 1980s—we had as big a film department as we did for video. I got to assist, boom swing, and then record on film, on location, for those dramas and documentaries; I also worked in the studio operating Fisher booms, I played in sound effects as a 'grams op' on game shows and eventually, I started to mix things live-to-air, like the evening news programme. The film department very much kept themselves apart from the television broadcasting side of things; it was a very different culture, with corridors of cutting rooms equipped with mysterious, flatbed Steinbecks and we also had a wonderful small film mixing theatre with a Neve console. I was introduced to a fascinating array of visiting freelance directors, camera operators, editors, and sound recordists who all fuelled the folklore Dr. Neil Hillman, production mixer. Photo by Steve R. Lawson