Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1491103
C A S Q U A R T E R L Y I S P R I N G 2 0 2 3 21 And then the BBC posted you in Ireland? Yes. I was assigned to Belfast. And the great thing about working for the BBC in Belfast was that their output was across so many different things. They had, because of what was happening in Northern Ireland, a large news and current affairs staff. We were doing radio dramas, music, including orchestral, and light entertainment. I could be assigned as a trainee in all those different areas, but I knew that it was really drama that I was most interested in. I loved working in radio drama, I used to play in the sound effects. What I loved about working in the radio drama was that it was this small group of people that would get together for the course of a week and then we'd be all gone. It's similar to what we do today on films, go for a longer period with a much greater group of people, but I think that set the seeds for me loving drama. How did you start working on dramatic productions for television? At BBC Northern Ireland, there was a senior supervisor named Dixie Deane, who oversaw any Television Drama productions that came into Belfast. I think it was '82 when there was a television play, shot on three cameras, that was coming into Belfast. It was with an unknown up-and-coming actor originally from Belfast named Kenneth Branagh. I was lucky enough to be asked by Dixie to be part of his team. So I was the lowest on the totem pole there, but that was my first experience of television drama. How long did you work at the BBC? I worked at the BBC from 1981 to 1987. I was pretty ambitious, I really wanted to work in drama. But I also worked in news, I did a lot of news. The great thing was that I was able to work in all these different areas, and that opportunity to work in news was phenomenal. I would say Northern Ireland in the '70s and '80s, there was conflict there so there were a lot of stories. And I remember being at demonstrations and riots and you had to be very quick to detach from the camera operator if you had to run. You had to be quick on your feet. When was it that you started reaching out to people in productions overseas? I can remember writing to a production mixer in the UK who had done huge films, who never responded. So, what did that teach me? Well, perseverance, actually, that's what it taught me. So, I wrote to Warner Bros., I wrote to Universal Studios, I wrote to Disney. At the same time, I applied to the National Film and Television School and got invited to an interview there. So now it's a weird time because I'm working for the BBC, but I'm applying for the National Film and Television School, and when I went over for that interview, they were extremely puzzled. They said to me, "You're applying to this school, but people that graduate from this school want to be where you are," which is in the BBC. So they basically rejected me and said, "It doesn't make sense for you to come here." How funny. Yeah, but then they said to me, "If you want to work on student films, you can do that." So, I actually took a leave of absence from the BBC to work on a short film for nothing. And it was called By the Sea for a director named Morris Baker. During that six weeks' leave of absence, I went off to Cornwall with a group of students and made a short film using a Nagra on a drama. That was kind of my first credit; this was probably 1986. After that, I went back to Belfast to the regular job and continued my letter writing campaign. Around this time, Miami Vice was on the air and hugely popular. I can remember remarking to people just how good it was in terms of sound and music and effects. It just looked like a big-budget movie, but it was on TV. You've got Michael Mann, who's known for his feature film work and he's now producing this TV series that is huge in the States and becoming huge in the UK. I wrote to Michael Mann and I said, "Mr. Mann, would it be possible to visit the set of Miami Vice on location and spend time with the sound crew?" And I got a letter back from him, I'd say it was within a month! That's incredible! I can remember it coming into the crew room in Belfast with the Miami Vice logo and I was just anticipating this response where, "Thank you for your interest, but..." But no it wasn't, it was, "Dear Mr. Devlin, we would be happy to have you as an observer when we start production in the summertime in August."