entertainment & reality tv
sound supervising, systems guaranteeing, and crewing
Live, Studio, and Outside Broadcast Entertainment TV is a funny-old beast, and Reality TV is even more specialist! There's also no longer anywhere you can train in these disciplines, and many of the niche skills have become a bit of a dying art since the closure of TLS / London Weekend and the decimation of staff BBC audio teams.
Handling the challenges of these environments requires a broad range of experience both operationally and theoretically. Simple creative ideas can demand complex audio solutions to make them work seamlessly.
On the Reality end of things, I'm increibly lucky to have spent my first few years in Television under the wings of Peter Vasey, Julian Pasqua, Adam Rickets, and NEP UK, working on some of the biggest Reailty formats in the UK: Big Brother, Educating Yorkshire, 24hrs in A&E, and Love Island. These productions are each unique in their requiremements and techniques, and learning the reality-specific chops as an audio guarantee (their particular use of talkback, systems, processing, edit and ingest systems) gave me an incredible head start in the industry. Since then, I've been lucky to walk into a bajillion more new Reality projects as a supervisor, armed with these years of experience to get the project off the ground with ease.
Beyond Reality formats, studio entertainment formats also require hugely niche knowledge. You'll very quickly hear the difference between a studio show mixed by someone who has, and someone who hasn't had explicit experience and training in handling a lively and loud audience. Just listen to some standup specials; the performance can be incredible, but if it wasn't recorded by an engineer with audience experience, the audience reactions won't be quite right, and suddenly the 'vibe'sounds totally off!
"Shiny Floor" studio productions as a Sound Supervisor is perhaps the trickiest discipline to find opportunities to learn, but I'm incredibly lucky to have been given those chances. In the last three years alone, I have mixed over 1000hours of live network television. That's difficult to beat.
Nerdy solutions, fast-paced and dynamic shows, tricky mixes, guest band performances, big audiences, these are all the things that people like me LOVE to be challenged with! So whenever you've a reality format, a live audience show, or a stand-up special...I can help!
Have a look below for some projects I've looked after recently...
