Lucy J Sound - News

Long time no see!

10/5/2018

WOW, I cannot believe it has been almost an entire YEAR since I last posted on this blog! I've been up to so much, I can't put it all down here, it would be very boring. but here's a selection:

Chaired a panel at BVE on Storytelling Through Sound
Dialogue edit for feature film 'The Intent 2' which is currently playing in Cinemas nationwide
Spoke on Audio panel at the Media Production Show about Freelancing
Additional sound effects for Thomas and Friends: Big World! Big Adventures
Dialogue and effects for Urban Myths: Bandaid, and Freddie & Diana
Podcast interview for "Working Class Audio"
Foley edit for Plebs
Sound effects edit on Will Smith's 'One Strange Rock'
3 Weeks at Deluxe Media mixing Disney Channel Promos
'Best Sound' win for sci-short 'Pulsar' at Fear International - Horror Film Genre Awards. You can see the trailer here.
oh, and building started on my NEW HOME STUDIO!!

For those of you who are not aware, I am building a fully soundproofed studio in my garden, and starting my new company "LJ Studios"; A full-service Audio PostProduction and Music facility on the Surrey-London boarder with dedicated Music and Voice Reel departments. We will also have the facilities to record Foley, Voice Overs and ADR. We have currently 7 freelancers ready to be involved, to ensure expertise in every service we offer: Sound engineers, foley artists, composers, music supervisors, voice directors. We are still in the building stage, but watch this space! Full details will come, but if you would like to register your interest in our services, please visit www.LJstudios.co.uk. We look forward to hearing from you!

If you want to follow the progress of the studio build, you can find regular updates on our social media channels: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and my personal LinkedIn.

The Hungry - Feature Film at Twickenham Studios

10/25/2017

At the end of last year I worked on a Feature called The Hungry; a film based on Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus: Directed by Bornila Chatterjee and produced by Tanaji Dasgupta and Kurban Kassam, in association with Film London. I was called in for some addition sound effects and design, and music editing working closely with re-recording mixers Craig Irving and recent BAFTA and Oscar nominee (congrats btw!) Tim Cavagin at Twickenham Studios. The film premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, and I look forward to seeing how is does this year!

Dialogues for new Irish Comedy 'Derry Girls' for Channel 4

10/4/2017

I have recently finished editing the dialogues for all 6 episodes of the new Irish Comedy series Derry Girls, debuting on Channel 4 in December. The series was mixed by Paul Maynes (Line of Duty, The Fall) at Yellowmoon Post Production and I look forward to hearing the final result! Set in 1990's Londonderry, this series features Ian McElhinney (Game of Thrones), Tara Lynne O’Neill (EastEnders) and famous Irish comedian Tommy Tiernan. It was a really fun series to work on and I look forward to seeing its reception from the public in December!

Upload of Opening Sound Design Sequence from EastEnders

7/30/2017

I have recently uploaded a clip to YouTube of the opening sequence of an episode of EastEnders that I tracklayed, sound designed and mixed back in January. On the show, a bus driver had a heart attack and drove a bus through the square and market before crashing into a bridge. The below clip is from the episode that followed. As you can see, this was not normal epsiode of EastEnders. Directed by Toby Frow, this episode featured a lot of creative editing and camera shots including the use of GoPros for POV shots, and the sound needed to follow suit. As well as the detailed sound designed opening (described by the public as "very saving private ryan" - thanks, that's what we were going for!) the rest of the episode was pretty intricate mixing wise as I had to spend a lot of time panning and automating the volume and EQ of the hissing and idle engine coming from the bus, changing perspectives constantly, including inside and outside of the bus. We spent a lot of time finessing this episode, especially this opening sequence and the closing sequence, and I think the hard work paid off. I have recently mixed some more episodes of EastEnders which air on the week of the 31st July.

Lecturing at The University of Lincoln

7/28/2017

Last year I was asked by Chris Hainstock and David Mcsherry from The University of Lincoln to come and give a guest lecture on post production audio to their 3rd Year Audio Production students. I was nervous because I didn't do a tech degree myself so wasn't entirely sure what the students would know/would expect from me and I didn't want to teach them to suck eggs. Plus I'd never thought students in that sort of environment before - I usually just train juniors at work one-on-one.

I spoke about track laying for factual television and then spoke about getting into the industry and things to consider when venturing out into the world of audio. I wasn't sure how it went at the time, but David was very complimentary afterwards, and on the train home I was asked to come back the following term. One of the students from the second lecture wrote a review of my session on their University blog and you can read it here. I am going back in November, with a slightly tweaked lecture, and it will hopefully be of some use to the students!

Sound Effects Edit On Feature Film "You, Me and Him" Featuring David Tennant And Lucy Punch at LipSync Post

7/19/2017

Sorry for the weeks of radio silence, I got married and then went on honeymoon! I'm back in the swing of things now, just finished a week of mixing at EastEnders again, and realised that I hadn't posted about my last few jobs pre-wedding!

SO, as you can see from the title of this blog post, I worked as the Sound Effects Editor on the new Romantic Comedy You, Me and Him for 8 weeks. The film is directed by Daisy Aitken, produced by Georgia Tennant at Bad Penny Productions and features David Tennant (Doctor Who, Broadchurch), Lucy Punch (Into the Woods, Hot Fuzz), Faye Marsay (Game of Thrones, Pride), Simon Bird (The Inbetweeners, Friday Night Dinner), comedy legend Sally Philips (Smack The Pony, Bridget Jones' Diary), and the wonderful David Warner (Titanic, Wallander) and Gemma Jones (Bridget Jones' Diary, Sense and Sensibility).

I loved working on this film, as I was able to put in so much detail on the sound effects edit, had good communication with the foley team at Universal Sound (Simon Trundle and Phill Barrett) and then was able to work closely with the Re-recording mixers at Lipsync Post in the last two weeks to really bring everything together. I do often miss the human/personal side of my job when working from home so this was great for me. I sat with recent BAFTA Nominee Paul Cotterell as he premixed my effects, which felt truly collaborative as we would occassionally make creative decisions together and I could explain what sounds were coming from where or why etc (which was hopefully useful to him...!). I then went into the final mix with BAFTA winner Robert Farr where he brought it all together and created a great final product. He sat me down at the end of the mixing desk with my own protools system and fader pack (controlled remotely by his system of course) so I could quickly help him out tweaking the effects mix while he was tweaking the dialogues (sometimes music), which worked pretty well and was a good experience for me.

Daisy and Georgia took the film to Cannes Film Festival for some screenings with potential distributors, so watch this space! I genuinely think this is a really good film, very witty and a bit different. I can't imagine it not doing well, so I will let you know when and where you can watch it!

Online Publication - Interview on Dialogue

5/14/2017

So I've been a bit silent on here for a while as I've been so busy working on a film (we'll get to that another time) and planning a wedding! I will endeavour to update my website before I'm incapacitated due to the wedding and honeymoon. in the meantime, have a read of an interview I recently did for Graeme Hales and his new website dmande.com about Dialogue on Television programmes. Answer also from Ben Newth (Clear Cut), Andrew Swallow, and my ex-Envy colleague of joy Mary Walsh. (FYI he asked me to give lots of information, and I wasn't aware others were being interview... would have written much less if I had known!! :-/) You can read the interview here.

Just a Couple - Comedy for BBC3

3/18/2017

In February I had the pleasure of working with the wonderful team at Jumbuck on BBC3 comedy series Just a Couple by Big Talk Productions, directed and created by Sebastian Thiel. Of the 6-part series, I edited the sound effects for episodes 1-3 and both the dialogue and effects for episodes 4-6. Mixed by David Drake (Mr Selfridge, Friday Night Dinner, Fleabag), you can watch the latest episode here. I also attended the ADR session at Hackenbacker, engineered by Ollie Brierley and directed by dialogue extraordinaire Laura Lovejoy. It was a fun little series to work on, and I hope to be working with the teams at Hackenbacker and Jumbuck again soon. You can see the series trailer below.

Dialogue Cleanup for Computer Game 'Star Citizen'

1/25/2017

Before Christmas I worked about 4 weeks altogether for Foundry 42 on computer game Squadron 42 - A game within Cloud Imperium Games' "Star Citizen" by world renowned game developer Chris Roberts, featuring the voices of Gary Oldman and Mark Hamill. I worked on their dialogue recordings from some Performance Capture sessions, doing very detailed noise reduction on over 700 lines of script from 6 different characters. I managed to attend one of these sessions at Imaginarium at Ealing Studios (see earlier post) before I started on the Dialogue Edit and found the whole thing fascinating. I was shown the ropes by Dialogue Supervisor Bob Rissolo and dialogue editor & sound designer Phil Smallwood who were fantastic, and it was great to work with them over the 4 weeks of editing. Star Citizen is the highest Crowdfunded Computer Game EVER, originally through Kickstarter and now through their website, with the current total at just over $142 million (no that's not a typo!). I'm excited to be part of this project.

First Mix for EastEnders Available on iPlayer

1/8/2017

In before Christmas I mixed my first episode of EastEnders, which aired on 29th December. This wasn't your average EastEnders episode (no pressure then!) - director Toby Frow had a very specific vision, which you can hopefully tell by the sound during Lee's suicidal scenes, and Roxy's cocaine scenes. It is currently available on iPlayer and you can watch it here. I hope to do some more mixes for them in the future, so watch this space!