Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1512183
Charles Maynes MPSE: Niall, can you describe how you got into sound editing? Niall Brady MPSE: After I graduated from secondary (high school) school in 1993, I studied for a degree in communication studies specialising in film and broadcast. The degree course had a very practical element and I gravitated toward the post- production jobs when crewing class productions and would always be on hand to do any additional sound work and tracklaying. Our class was one of the last years to be using Steenbecks and while I was there, the faculty moved to new premises which had four or five Avid Media Composer systems and an Avid AudioVision sound editing system. What was most advantageous during this course was access to kit and facilities, along with being part of a class that was actively shooting productions. When I graduated from college in 1997, I began to look for work. I would say the post-production sound industry for film and drama in Ireland was in its infancy at this point with most productions that shot in Ireland were then going to the UK or the US for post sound. However, the 1990s in Ireland saw the reestablishing of the state- supported Irish Film Board (now Screen Ireland) and around the same time, Paul Moore and some others established Ardmore Sound with the intention of servicing the post-production sound needs of both Irish and international productions. Ardmore Sound partnered with a state-training body and ran a course in post- production sound, which in my opinion, essentially marked the birth of post-production sound for film and TV drama in Ireland. Paul Moore and Ardmore Sound also attracted American sound supervisors and mixers like Douglas Murray, Patrick Drummond, Tom Johnson, and Leslie Shatz to work on productions in Ireland which gave the burgeoning field a huge shot in the arm. Their generous sharing of knowledge and experience gave the people working in sound then, a real insight into how 'Hollywood' sound worked. I didn't enroll in this course, but it did allow an industry to start. Around the same time this was happening, I left college and took whatever work was available and my first job was as an assistant picture editor at a post-production facility called Screen Scene, synching dailies and generally assisting the picture editors in the facility. "As a picture assistant, I always volunteered to do the track laying 92 M PS E . O R G "If there is anyone I would like to work with, I would say that I just like to work with collaboratively minded people who you hopefully get to build long-lasting working relationships with." for the editors, though this was in the 1990s and the Avid software sound module, which was rather rudimentary at this point, but the act of putting sounds against picture was very satisfying for me." I worked as a picture assistant up to 1999 before leaving Ireland to see some of the world. On my return in 2001, I was asked if I could use Pro Tools and would I like three weeks of work cutting sound for 3 one-hour documentaries for an American PBS show about Ireland's ancient history. I said yes and spent the first week trying to figure out Pro Tools, and the following two weeks actually cutting sound against picture. Since then, I haven't looked back and continue learning new things on every job from every picture editor, sound editor, sound mixer, and director that I have worked with. CM: Talking about the scale of the Irish film/TV post-production community, you had described how the community was fairly small— describing how specialising in a single area isn't possible or practical. NB: As I mentioned, my first 'official' sound editorial job was that PBS production called In Search of Ancient Ireland and I just stuck with post-production sound from that point on. Ireland is a small country with a population, in the early 2000s, of just under 4 million people (the population is now just over 5 million) and so by extension, the film and TV production industry is comparatively small, and then the post-production sound community servicing that industry is again comparatively tiny. To work in Ireland in sound post-production means working in all fields of post- production sound. There is really