A three-job sound recording day yesterday, and a very interesting one. A long day shooting at the local NHS hospital, where we interviewed the inventors of the artificial pancreas, which monitors blood sugar and dispenses insulin for diabetics.

Also filmed in an intensive care unit, which is always strange, as you're aware that there are very distressed relatives of seriously injured people there, and you feel a bit bad about going on with your business while they're having such a horrible time. We've had someone's heart fail and the crash cart come racing in while we were filming two beds up on one occasion.

After that full day, I was off to one of the colleges to record a Cambridge Uni guest lecture by Mark Thompson, Director-General of the BBC.

I found Mark Thompson's address refreshing free of media and business jargon, and, reassuringly, he seems keen to make fewer higher budget, high quality programmes, rather than try to continue with the same number at lower budgets. Having seen what happens when the professional crew are replaced with graduates with a camcorder, I'm relieved. That's no way to differentiate the Beeb from the commercial competition, so that everyone pays the license fee happily.

Then back home after 12.5 hours of work to edit a Danish radio ad before bedtime! Not sure how great my jingle-writing was by that point, but it needed doing that night, so..!

It was a fifteen hour day by the time I was done. I've done longer, but usually on one job, so it's been much less manic than rebuilding equipment for the next task and travelling between locations and clients… Still, if I can keep that up five days a week, my bank manager will be very happy. But nobody wants that.

After around six weeks of shooting, it’s sad to be wrapping and leaving the company of The Roundabout’s cast and crew. Lots of really nice and extremely amusing people, and it was a pleasure to go to work with them every day.

It’s a comedy pastiche of films like The Omen, and however it turns out, the shooting was frequently a hoot. Hope to see any and all of that crew on other jobs in the future; not a bad egg among them.

However, after long days, 6-day weeks and a tiring chunk of night shoots with big commutes, I’m going to be very happy to see the family in daylight hours for a while before I do any other long jobs. And I imagine the schoolfriend who put me up for a good few nights of the shooting will be glad to see the back of me too.

I’ve done another couple of very pleasant directing jobs for BBC Magazines, interviewing editors of print and online services from Radio Times to Gardener’s World. All extremely interesting, and on the first shoot, before christmas, I was kindly donated some of the children’s magazines for my little daughter, which lasted us quite a while.

The second shoot was yesterday, and was calmer than December’s, despite also having iPad video material to cut on the same day, so my cameraman friend and I sat side by side in the Magazines office with our MacBook Pros, cutting away, and I switched attention from one job to the other a bit until we’d finished.

Very sad to hear that Pete Postlethwaite died early this month. Wasn’t my mate or anything, but I’d done a couple of films with him - Mary (daughter of Bill) Nighy’s “Player”, and Sean Crotty’s “Waving At Trains”. The picture above is one of Neill Phillips’ brilliant production stills from the latter film.

“Waving At Trains” was written by a friend of mine, and then coincidentally produced by another friend. We stayed in a hotel in Cromer, and I was in the room next to Pete. He was unfailingly friendly to me, and my main memory of that stay is when we emerged simultaneously at 4.30am one morning, and he had a pint of Guinness in his hand. That’s one way to cope with brutally early call times...

A generous bloke who did jobs on merit, not budget, as far as I saw, and a considerate team-spirited actor who’d always check everyone else had got what they wanted on a take. And obviously he was a bit good, acting-wise. Sad he’s gone.

Caught one of the BBC Young Talent of the Year episodes we shot in September - Andy and the camera boys from Bruizer made an old aircraft hangar look a lot more stylish than it did in reality :)

Some more shooting with a much older and wiser cameraman friend of mine this week - lots of people with great stories in this industry, but fewer and fewer who can say they started life projecting rushes for Hitchcock...

I was in a meeting in the BBC’s White City media centre this week, in the TARDIS meeting room, trying to play down my unreasonable level of excitement at being in a room with old cyberman heads from the 80s... Can’t imagine how people actually get work done in there.

Over the last three weeks, I’ve been travelling to a studio in Suffolk to join the Bruizer boys on BBC Young Talent of the Year 2010.

George Lamb presents, and over five shows, groups of young people compete to be best of their trade - this year it was plumbers, butchers, hairdressers, fishmongers and beauticians. It’s on in the autumn season.

It’s one of those jobs that, after rigging, settles into a routine for each show, so one can concentrate on the content a bit, and try to learn something. As each trade had long challenges to compete on, there was an opportunity to find out some of the technical ins and outs of the jobs, which was extremely interesting (especially the butcher and fishmonger shows, where I previously didn’t appreciate the difference between buying from a specialist or a supermarket).

Every time I work out in Suffolk, I’m reminded what lovely countryside there is out there, and what small roads. As the days ended quite late, I did lots of country lanes in darkness and rain, and narrowly avoided redecorating my car in deerskin on one occasion. At least, the deer strolled off quite happily, and apart from a bit of broken plastic on the headlight guard, the car was fine. Good job I was doing a sensible speed rather than the allowable limit...

Interesting morning’s work with a cameraman friend today - albeit starting at a slightly inhumane 4.45am. We were shooting a promo as part of a sustainability initiative; a photoshoot with giant wine and champagne corks, and wine expert Jilly Goolden at Speakers’ Corner.

The screengrab above is where my colleague’s cheekily got me in shot to make this interview by a wine magazine look like a TV interview.

We did our interview afterwards, with me scrabbling together some questions after eavesdropping on the previous questions and scanning the press release... Fortunately, interviewees who’re professional broadcasters do all the work for you in PR situations.

I’m recovering from the wrap party of the feature film “Dimensions”. Just completed a month’s work on this HG Wells-style period sci-fi story, and had a lovely time doing it.

Lots of familiar faces on the crew, as Emily of mad&bad helped the production to crew up, so there was the pleasure of catching up with some old friends, plus the boys from Bruizer rolling up with the camera crane one day.

It’s been very nice to meet all the new cast and crew, too - from producer and director to runners from the local uni’s film course, it was a particularly nice group.

The main location was close enough to home (and the days so impeccably run by the first assistant) that I got to read bedtime stories to Alice, or play in the morning before leaving, almost every day. That’s extremely unusual, and highlights what a cushy and enjoyable job film would be, if only the locations and hours didn’t keep one away from family so often.

When I’m sound mixing on a production, there’s the problem of being sat in a moderately comfy chair at the sound cart all day, waiting for things to be set up. That’s a problem because a month in a chair with runners offering you tea and chocolate buttons is a little bit unhealthy, but it also makes one do antisocial things like reading books and generally disengaging temporarily from the film.

This time, having bought a new camera earlier in the year, I resolved to do something more constructive, and had unexpected amounts of fun taking loads of photos. I’ll have to wait until the film’s released to show them off, but I got quite into it, and my eye got some much-needed practise. As there are proper photographers to take the publicity stills, I tend to go for candid snaps of the crew working. On this film, as everyone was so easy to get along with, I got some nice memories to take away of old and new friends working and mucking about. Will upload when the film’s out.

In the mean time, I’m going to look in on the edit from time to time, as an excuse to see the guys - and the editor’s very cute baby, who was born during the shoot...

After some transferring of stuff, I'm underway with a working computer, and sending Apple back a laptop with the network name "Carl's Buggered MacBook". Enjoy.



So it's been out with the EX1 again to shoot some customers of a bank that didn't do any naughty investing, and is thus fine. Nice testimonials on the roof of the bank's building in central London, with a view that was representatively varied between scenic and scaffolding.

More lectures, too - the editor of "Nature" magazine, with some very interesting perspectives on frictions between scientists' interests, the "story" and the truth, as reflected in the media. Also a talk on the way in which universities select students - admissions are not the same as when I went to uni, and I'd not really thought through how you sort from thousands of applicants who've all got four As at A level...

I've signed up for a low-budget feature in the summer, as it's shooting on my doorstep, and the director and writer seem really nice... as I get older and grumpier, money becomes less important than working with nice people and getting home in time to read bedtime stories from time to time.

Meeting with the Last B&B FX guys today - more fun evolving, though as the FX budget is zero, people are generously working on it in free moments, which, being bright and interesting chaps, they have in short supply.

Had some trouble with a faulty MacBook Pro that arrived last week, but I've managed to work around the lack of a reliable laptop for backing up rushes from the EX1, getting through a shoot in Bath that also involved 9 hours of driving on a Bank Holiday Friday... My ankles hurt after that.

So this week we headed to Bologna for a film about bilingual education. Very encouraging to meet some teenagers from a non-privileged background who've decided to double their schoolwork for the cosmopolitan benefits of being properly bilingual with specialist vocabulary for their subjects.

Bologna's very pretty - a nice city centre with duomo and lovely piazzas, and San Luca, a church overlooking the city from the hills. We cabbed it up to there to shoot some panoramas, and then walked four miles or so back to town down the steep hill road, which has an entirely covered walkway for pedestrians with 600-odd lovely old arches, little shrines, frescoes and everything. Scenic, and full of locals out for a run.

The school we filmed at was named after Galvani (who invented galvanising, and, I learned, started out trying to reanimate frogs with electricity...). Also learned that the reason English lasagne falls rather short of its original model - Bologna's native dish (as opposed to spaghetti bolognese, which the locals think is English, though they might give you tagliatelle with ragu) - is we don't cook it with an extra layer of pasta over the bechamel to stop it going rock-hard, then throw that layer away. Had some lovely food :)

Seems we just got back in time, as Bologna's about to be closed by volcano ash again. What happened to the government while we were away, though? Registered so Jo could proxy vote for me, but poor Nick actually lost seats. That's what happens if you went to Robinson; don't get your hopes up.

4 hours after returning from Italy, I was piled back into my car for a night shoot in a Rochester warehouse. The short, "Three", was all done in one night, and it was nice to meet the amusing and charming folks on it, even if I was so tired after 26 hours awake that my repartee wouldn't have been up to much.



After recording a very interesting lecture by Sir Ian Wilmut - who cloned Dolly the sheep - this week, I found myself trapped in the building by a big crowd (plus security) awaiting the next speaker, Richard Dawkins. Stayed to watch, as I'm a fan of his books (if not his rather pompous, public-school tone, though he can't help his breeding any more than the Galapagos tortoises, I suppose). Slightly dry overview of excellent "Greatest Show On Earth" (audiobook version read by him & wife Lalla Ward - this being Cambridge, someone asked him if he'd only married her cos she was a Dr Who companion...)

So we're not shooting in Bologna this week, for some mysterious and under-reported-on-telly reason. But I don't feel like I can moan, really, as we all know some stranded people who're being caused much more trouble. Volcanoes, eh? And some of the papers seem to have decided that we're saying "volcanologist" instead of "vulcanologist" these days. Hm.

What I did get to do this week was spend a couple of days shooting in our local maternity hospital again, and there's nothing to cheer you up like very small babies. Even the little ones in incubators don't distress me these days, knowing how most will have completely normal lives, are visited regularly by parents, and generally have it much better than their equivalents in El Salvador. Very nice to catch up with the director from the previous shoots again, too.

Been busily finishing off our NHS job recently, which remains an education and I still feel jammy to see so many different life-and-death jobs being done with such compassion and seriousness. I think you wouldn't get this overview of care, research and infrastructure if you worked in any capacity in a hospital - an exec wouldn't spend so much time looking at any one situation, a nurse only sees his ward, a porter only sees patients when they're on the move, a surgeon in theatre etc.

I was interested to learn more about the National Curriculum, and the direction in which it's headed, on another job last week, but apart from that my main educational experience for this week was actually attending lectures (something I didn't do much of at college). The first couple were at the Uni, recorded for Cambridge University Press. A talk on Women in Science contained a number of new (to me) names in the roster of neglected Victorian women of science, and a refreshing non-polemical discussion of Rosalind Franklin, who took the x-ray "pictures" which led Crick and Watson to their Nobel Prize for discovering DNA. A very nice talk on Why We Read Shakespeare was a bit less newsworthy for me, as my degree was in literature, but just as enjoyable.

There's such a thing as too much information, though, as my second set of lectures this week proved. The presentations of this year's junior doctors' research projects contained many illuminating gems, on subjects from the progress of alcoholism to end-of-life care. The discussion of gender reassignment surgery contained some overly informative photos of each step of the male-to-female operation, though. Interesting sociological commentary to go with it - the surgical problems are, if not solved, then surprisingly well worked-around. The social prejudice problems less so.

Perhaps most interesting to me was the research into health problems of the Cambridge homeless population, which corrected some ideas I had about how many people are in that situation locally, and what their daily circumstances are like, and uncovered some prejudice in the medical profession as well as problems from the patients' side.

This corridor of doom comes to you from the Four Seasons in Starnberg, which is actually a long way from being doomy. Maybe the least doomy hotel we've ever been put up in on a job, in fact. There's an espresso machine in each room, and the bathroom has a glass wall so you can enjoy the view from your room window when you're in the bath.

We spent a very pleasant day in a very posh international school, interviewing and shooting GVs. It was built around an old schloss in the Bavarian forest, and under 6 inches of snow, it all looked very idyllic. It's very different from my low-tech schooling; each student had a Macbook, and the teachers would scribble on a spreadsheet using the smartboard, then seamlessly email the exercise to the class's school email accounts for homework. All the scheduling was shared in a software package, and there was talk of online results for exams as well as marks for essays etc. I always thought OHPs were lame and primitive, but when I left high school, computers were still limited to around 10 PCs for the whole school, in the Computer Room. Now posh schools appear to have a better realised IT infrastructure than some internet companies I've worked at in the past...



Despite the snow closing the airport in the morning, we managed to cab it into the city to shoot some cheesy views of Marienplatz, and have some proper German kaffee und kuchen to relax. I fitted in a nice Wiener schnitzel, too, and a currywurst made with Bavarian white sausage. And had a German lager with a massive head. So overall, I feel like I crammed in an authentic Bavarian experience despite only being there for one night. Hard work, but we always appreciate the change of scenery enough to more than make up for the travel and long hours.



Finishing off the NHS film for the rest of the week, which is coming together nicely. Should be ready for the approvals and tweaks phase next week, hopefully. Hoping to get out and about with my new DSLR over the weekend, and just bought a new bit of equipment for upcoming projects, too, so I've got lots of new stuff to learn, and that's always fun.

The CUP job has continued to be very interesting - on Thursday we visited the British Antarctic Survey to interview a cartographer, and learned a lot about the bases, ships and planes owned by the British on the only continent without permanent human inhabitants.

Friday was a busy one, filming a local sculptor in the morning, and CUP's own chef in the afternoon. Tony Hillier's sculptures, apart from populating local schools, are very publicly visible from the main road. His front garden is a small forest of metal sculptures with a very strong style, and his house contains ceramics and paintings with similar exaggerated features and strong silhouettes. We watched Tony and his apprentice Jane cutting and welding, and heard about his idea of how art fits into a community - he doesn't sell any of his work; it's all donated free.



This morning, at half past eight, I stood at the top of the Gog Magog hills (the only thing that would appear different on a topographical map of Cambridge) watching a running club sprinting up the hill as part of their marathon training. It's not for me, I conclude. The poor interviewee sat, muscles cramping, in the freezing cold after his run, and talked for over an hour until his teeth chattered. All in the can, though, and hopefully it'll make a nice DVD to go with the upcoming book.

Another nicely varied week (starting with m'colleague Ray winning the Oscar for the sound on Hurt Locker - not sure he's got room for that and the BAFTA on his cistern :)

After a busy afternoon running around the local hospital's Intensive Care Unit, filming for our NHS job, I went to the Cambridge Union Society's debating chamber again to record a lecture by Joe Rospars, who ran all the online part of Barack Obama's election campaign. He was very West Wing, as you might expect, and it was heartening to hear that his company only takes on left-of-centre causes (in the UK they're working on the anti-BNP "Hope Not Hate" campaign). He showed lots of great mini-documentaries they made for Obama's web campaign - very supporter-focussed, rather than candidate centred.

Tuesday was the start of a week shooting for Cambridge University Press with some lovely people from a production company up north, who I've done a couple of jobs for in the past. It's a micro-documentary per day - Tuesday was about a barrister specialising in International Law who writes books and lectures at Cambridge about the United Nations. Very educational.

Today, by contrast, we interviewed a husband and wife team who run a hairdresser's in Cambridge. Lots of fun, and I'm only sorry I missed being the one to get a posh wet shave for the camera. The rest of the week's very varied too - off to the British Antarctic Survey in the morning!

Just got back from an incredibly busy short shoot in Rotterdam. Two of us ran round a school, interviewing students and teachers, then got a cab into town and tried to grab general shots of all the main tourist attractions (Erasmus Bridge, Hotel New York, SS Rotterdam, some old boats in the harbour, the Euromast...) all in a day. Very hard work lugging all the gear around and trying to keep our brains going, but nice, interesting people to talk to.

Flying from London City to Rotterdam means a small, propellor plane. Not keen, but as it wasn't too bumpy, and took under an hour, I'm not complaining - because of the time difference, we left the Netherlands at 18.40 and got into London at 18.30. That's efficient.

Rotterdam looked nice, anyway. Would drop in on the way past if I'm in the area again - I was surprised at the number of nice, old buildings, as the city centre was extensively remodelled by the Luftwaffe during the war. The modern stuff's good too, though there was rather a lot of neon near our hotel.

The rest of the week's been filming in the hospital, mostly. It's been fun sharing the writing for this NHS video, too. One learns a lot about the behind-the-scenes stuff; mostly it's very reassuring.

How lovely to see Ray Beckett winning a BAFTA for the sound on The Hurt Locker last night. He's often worked in the same studio in Cambridge where I also freelance, and after his last success (The Wind That Shakes the Barley, before it became that year's Palme D'Or winner) his anecdotes about the shoot largely involved the Irish mist getting into all the equipment and breaking it. When he got back from shooting The Hurt Locker in Jordan, his main remarks concerned the sand getting into all the equipment and breaking it. It's very nice to see such a modest and unpretentious chap get some more recognition for his experience and expertise. Even if the interviewer runs into a brick wall trying to flatter the sound department's work. She's impressed with the film's "sonicness". But I'd be just as screwed trying to think of something intelligent to say about everyone's awards night frocks, so...

BTW, update: he won the Oscar as well :)

At BAFTA Tuesday night for a screening of a Screen East film I worked on last year (location sound and dubbing mixer) - Things We Leave Behind. Turned out nice; lovely grade, pleased with how it sounded on a nice system, and speculating what famous behinds had graced the chairs in that BAFTA screening room... John Hurt was on my train again (which is so much better now I can catch it at a small village station, not compete for parking in town).



Spent Thursday in London, too, shooting an event at the British Academy. It was a debate about whether Critical Thinking should be a standalone subject, or incorporated into all A levels (if not GCSEs). A bit of a technical challenge on the day, but interesting subject matter.



A quick one-day short film job on Saturday, doing sound for Azeem Khan on "Disorder". Lovely crew assembled by m'colleague Becky Adams, including top bloke Gerry Vasbenter DoPing. Should be a nice, tense and atmospheric film, with a nice chase - Gerry broke out the rickshaw, which is always a bit of fun (and running :)

This week's Gates Scholars' lecture was by Professor Joshua Silver, inventor of some interesting eyewear - a pair of plastic glasses with two syringes on the arms, allowing you to feed a silicon-based liquid into the lenses using little control wheels, thus altering their strength in dioptres. The idea is that in developing countries, where they might have a handful of trained optometrists for millions of population, people can preform their own eye test by feeding the liquid into the glasses until each eye sees clearly, then cut the syringes off and have their own "prescription" specs.

The thing that strikes you about the Union Society in Cambridge - and I'd not been there since playing in the cellar with my band 20 years ago - is how the debating chamber, where the lecture was held, is a miniature House of Commons... obviously that's what the Society trains people for, but it feels oddly anachronistic anyway.

In other news, the subject matter of much of the last year's filming for the NHS has started to hit the papers - the cancer research side is in the local press, and the diabetes research has been published in the Lancet and featured by the BBC.

A very interesting day in Westminster today, listening to MPs, assorted Lords & Baronesses, and assessment people discussing A levels. To hugely oversimplify, seems they probably are easier these days, and maybe the increased participation in higher education justifies that.

Unsurprisingly, teaching for the test, rather than for a broad subject knowledge, is the worse problem. That's the reason grumpy old people like me think graduates all seem a bit slow these days; we're not discussing the specific things that were on their syllabus.

Interestingly, there was data demonstrating how all subjects aren't equal - headlines are that A level Chemistry's hardest, and Media Studies is easiest. Is that a bad thing, though, if Universities and employers took it into account?

The year is picking up again in the second half of January, after a slow start unpacking boxes in the new house.

There's been some more shooting for the NHS, and I recorded a very interesting lecture from Rupert Isaacson for the university. Rupert has written a book and made a documentary both called "The Horse Boy", about his autistic son, Rowan, and his adventures which resulted in a huge reduction in the negative aspects of his autism. Chatting to him afterwards, and comparing his experience to my comparatively minor, everyday experiences of what it's like when your child is in distress, I can only imagine how miserable life must often have been before they discovered Rowan's connection with horses.

Interestingly, the film also features contributions from Simon Baron Cohen (Ali G's cousin, thanks Tom W.), a Cambridge academic expert on autism, who I recorded lecturing at last year's Alumni Weekend, and found very interesting then.

Subterraneans played a gig at the 12 Bar on Denmark Street last night - not sure I played all the right notes in the right order, but people came up and said nice things afterwards, and the door did OK, so who's to complain? We made our first new recordings of the year a week or so ago, too. Hopefully there'll actually be a new record (figuratively speaking, these days, of course) soon. And, as always, it's nice to hang out with the boys; went out for a nice meal in Chinatown between soundcheck and gig.

Well, it's been a busy old year, with lots of time hanging around doctors, partly for another minor op on my arm, but mostly shooting for the NHS, which culminated in a day with Sir David Frost. Lots more interviews with researchers, hearing about the prospect of new treatments for cancers, type 2 diabetes and more. Always exciting and interesting to shoot with people at the leading edge of their field.

Also delivered the 5 training videos I was writing and directing for the University - on time and on budget, despite all the other stuff going on (like sudden trip to El Salvador in the middle of my edit time!) so I'm very pleased. The exceedingly bright people I was working for said they found the process of shaking all the ideas into tight scripts and then executing them exhausting but exhilarating. Which is a nice way to describe any good day at work, doing this job.

This last few weeks have been exaggeratedly hectic, as we've just moved house. It's a nice quiet cul-de-sac, just outside town and easy to get to, and it's hopefully the perfect spot to build a studio in 2010. We'll get things drawn up as soon as possible in January - hopefully a perfect, acoustically treated studio for film/video mixes and voice recording... and possibly we'll fit the band in at some point too.

Time to finish "Grace" for Screen East this week, now that the lead actor had recovered her health. It was an incredibly cold couple of days outdoors in Cambridge this week, but we kept going as it was nice to see everyone again - and as demonstrated by the entirely sensible Henry Garrett in the picture above, the new cast cheered things up a bit too.

As a bit of variety, today's corridor pic was taken in the national maternity hospital in San Salvador. It's been an amazing, eye-opening week filming for the NHS in El Salvador. The main impression one returns with is that we really take for granted our life of luxury at home. We understand that intellectually, in abstract, but maybe it's good to see it first-hand from time to time.



It's the poorest and most dangerous place I think I've been. We were cautioned strongly to only eat food that the doctors who accompanied us considered safe, and we brushed our teeth with bottled water etc, but that's not exceptional. What's odd is how quickly I went from feeling very uncomfortable around non-uniformed random people with shotguns hovering around, to feeling nervous unless there was someone armed nearby. We were told that leaving the hotel for a walk was likely a one-way trip, and that leaving the hospital in the city centre without several armed police (especially with a camera) was not a great idea. A bloke with a shotgun supervised our five paces from hotel to load the bus every morning, looking up and down the street.

The maternity hospital was surrounded by a razor wire fence and guarded by a man with a pump-action shotgun. We got the hotel to call us a taxi for dinner one night, and upon discovering this at the end of the meal, our hosts looked a bit disconcerted and rang a driver friend to take us home. We were the only foreigners I think I saw while we were there. By all accounts, a cab ride was likely to end down a dark alley next to a parked 4x4.

It's like this because when the ex-pats who left for the US during the war returned, they imported LA gang culture to San Salvador. It's a regular occurence, if you're in public office, to get a call telling you when and where your kids are after school, and that they'll be killed unless you pay $20k in a week. The busses - the main form of transport - were often robbed by gang members. One of our hosts had been on a held-up bus recently - if you don't look wealthy, you can just pay a dollar and get on with the journey. If you looked like us, they'd apparently kill you for $5. But an average annual salary in El Salvador might be $1400.



So in this context, the maternity hospital does amazing things. They're not well resourced compared to a UK hospital, but they don't only treat the rich, and they're up against tradition. Most women still deliver at home (a lot, as it's a catholic country) and don't attend prenatal scans etc. Mothers are often only admitted when a complication has already become evident. The maternal ICU can take 3 or 4 patients, and the baby ICU has incubators with three babies in each. They're this oversubscribed in a country where home delivery is the norm, and in rural places women go to witch doctors before hospitals. And the maternity hospital was damaged in eathquakes and hasn't been rebuilt, so some areas are abandoned, and some have iron braces propping up walls. So it's amazing to see how quiet, orderly and under control everything seemed, how compassionate the women seemed, changing 200 babies in a room for those kids whose mothers are still in care.

Our hosts were a UK doctor and the government health adviser. They made the whole experience very safe and pleasurable for us, educated us about the country and the issues, found us safe and fantastic food, and generally made it a very stimulating and eye-opening visit. In return, it seems the presence of a camera crew to film an agreement between the El Salvador government and our UK hospital catalysed some action. We met government ministers, filmed in the ministry, and after interviewing the incredibly sharp and energetic 87-year-old Health Minister, each received little goodwill presents with handwritten notes for our departure.

So quite an experience, and one that puts my little everyday problems on returning to England in perspective. As I thought while we stood on the volcano outside San Salvador, doing some landscape shots, I'm pretty lucky to be able to do this sort of thing for a job...

Amid the mad scramble to finish everything before the weekend this week, I had the pleasure of seeing Andy from Bruizer again, on a nice, straightforward little job for the NHS at the Duxford conference centre. Needless to say, had to dive out and take a picture of some planes even though I suspect that's not strictly allowed...

Busily trying to shoot the training videos I wrote last week at the moment. Finished a loooong shoot day in Cambridge, and I'm being sent to Coventry again tomorrow with m'colleague Neill to finish the "live-action" shoot. Bits of animation and screen-shots yet to grab.

It was also the screening of Wasted, the teen drugs and alcohol awareness film I did some work on earlier this year, this week at Cambridge's Arts Picturehouse. Pete had done a great job cutting it, and the kids in the cast and youth workers were all justifiably proud of themselves.

Out and about filming this week, starting in quite a nice hotel in exotic Coventry, then off to enjoy a Premier Lodge in Newbury (this week's corridor of doom above).

Finished up in the Gherkin again, with a spectacular view of London, recording a really interesting meeting about food production (bear with me, it's fascinating) between important folks from the government, NHS, horticultural industry, business and property sectors, supermarkets...

I was shocked at the research on how people actually shop, and how we split our interests in organic, fair trade or locally produced food in a totally illogical way. We're all idiots, statistically speaking. And we leave 40% of all salad produced to be chucked out by supermarkets, and then chuck another 40% of the remainder away ourselves. We're idiots. It's sobering.

Most people wander around the supermarket without even a list, let alone a menu to shop for, falling for every promotional tactic they use. We buy stuff based on pack price, not on price per 100g or whatever. We're idiots. I mean, we don't all do every one of these things wrong, of course, but I worry about the carbon/food miles of a fresh chicken, but don't think about the origin of the tinned or processed stuff. And I still buy "healthy eating" chocolate muffins or whatever. What's wrong with me? Healthy chocolate? Am I thick?

Sounds as though there's some hope of models that we idiot consumers can't break, though, such as M&S's co-op model with dairy farmers, and if more of that can be made to work, we might be able to get our food from supermarkets, but without bleeding the suppliers dry.

Anyway, more enforced education for me, which means a good week's work. Now to finish writing the scripts for some training films I'm directing next week! And at the end of next week, something interesting's coming up...

After a week to let our mix percolate, we returned to Things We Leave Behind for a few tweaks. The only problem was transferring the video file to me. Even at 3GB, we have 10mbps connections, file-sending services, and I've got unlimited webspace. How hard could it possibly be? And there's a 1.5GB version if uploading was taking too long. We had all of Saturday, after all. And you can do all this stuff very easily with these fast broadband connections.

So after four-hour uploads that the fileshare service then revealed I wasn't allowed to download without paying a joining fee, and various other attempts, I started in the evening. Finished at midnight. The new mix was uploaded by around 1-2am, though I'd flaked out by that point. Hope it all works for the online today!

Another edifying day at work today: a day of Tennyson readings at the Cambridge University English faculty building. The first reader of the morning was my Shakespeare supervisor when I was at college, and I'm currently enjoying a DJ doing "scratch Tennyson" - good in a KLF Chill Out way.
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Update: Just finished at 6.30pm - have been mixing with about four 5 minute breaks since 10am! A good day's work.

The last of this years UK Film Council/Screen East short films, Grace, shot last weekend in a freezing cold Cambridge. Turns out it was much of the same crew as Waving at Trains, so it was lovely to see the familiar faces again, and roll out the sound cart after a few weeks of editing and corporates. Unfortunately, amid some other bad luck, we lost the third day because the main actor got ill, so hopefully there'll be a remount soon.

Owing to a bit of brutal stabbing by my GP on the previous Friday, I wasn't feeling too good (and was trying to manage a dressing and a pharmathon of drug-taking around unpredictable mealtimes etc), so it was lucky that m'colleague Julian (who's booming for the film) had recovered his health well enough to provide some extra brains. We still froze outside for a couple of very long days, though.

What perked things up a lot for me was the most junior cast member - my friend Liz's youngest, Jamie. It was the first time I'd met him, and after missing my daughter entirely for a couple of days because of early starts and late finishes, it was very nice to have a sensible conversation with a baby amid all the adult gibbering.

Just finished shooting a part-time project for yoof drugs and alcohol awareness for my friend Pete. As with most worthy sources of funding, money's been a bit tight and so it's largely been the two of us plus brilliant youth workers, and the cast of teenagers.

I'm periodically reminded that stuff that seems like common sense to adults (punctuality, remembering your costume, not breaking your arm etc) is still untested theory for teens. I'm also reminded that you'll do some real and uninhibited acting, and risk looking a pillock, more readily when you're young. This is because, despite your self-consciousness, you think you're probably a genius. So some performances that would be hard to get from amateur adult actors. I think it'll be quite surprising.
The most dramatic bit so far has been shooting a car crash, aided by the real emergency services instead of some thesps dressed as rozzers. The ambulance crew, police and two fire and rescue crews were incredibly patient with the inevitable glacial pace of filming, and were actually pretty good at their lines! The Rescue Vehicle actually got called on a proper job halfway through, but we'd shot it arriving, so no problem.

Unlike filming an operation, which made me feel that I'd hate being in the anaesthetist's room beforehand etc, this was an oddly reassuring experience. Watching the crews cutting the actors out of a turned-over car, I was surprised by how slick, careful and compassionate they were.

Bloodythirsty, though. As the scene was at the end of the story, it had only definitely been decided in workshopping the script that the protagonist would survive, and that someone else should be killed in the accident. The emergency services chaps persuaded everyone that there should be lots of fatalities... I've seen a rough cut, though, and it looks great.
Looking forward to the premiere with the kids attending; hope they'll be chuffed at how good Pete's made them look.

Hugely enjoying a job recording lectures at the Cambridge Alumni weekend - autism, hadron colliders and stem cells so far. Have now been to more lectures today than I did during 3 years at Cambridge. Seriously.

Up to Bruizer in Suffolk to record some additional dialogue for "Things We Leave Behind". What a lovely spot - on an old RAF base, in the fire station, with room for gear and edit suites, and plenty of quiet, open space around.

Lovely to see the guys again, too!

To Notting Hill Gate today for some ADR at the PostFactory. First time there, though we've hired their RED cameras for jobs I've worked on before, and the DITs have been great. Nice people, anyway, and it was a pleasure to have one of those jobs in London that just requires a nice, quick train journey, instead of a car full of equipment and a parking headache.

Had a rather more civilised evening's work than is sometimes the case today, recording a string quartet performing the score for a short called Exit Strategy, which I did sound on a while ago.

Nice bit of variety to be in Christ's College with my recording kit, listening to music for the evening, rather than running around with a heavy soundbag round my neck :)

An ambitious week in the old Young's Brewery in Wandsworth just wrapped. Over 60 pages of dialogue recorded with striking visuals in the huge old warehouse. A few friends involved, some by coincidence and some not, so very nice to see them again.
I stayed with a generous old chum (during a fairly tumultuous week in his career), saving hours of commuting over the week, and giving us an opportunity to catch up. Popped in to see another friend from college and her lovely tiny baby; that took the edge off missing my family for a bit - nothing like some baby conversation :)

(Photo by Chris Harris)

It's the Screen East Digital Shorts season again, and this one was another short-notice job. "Things We Leave Behind" is Andrew Brand's film this year. It's a nice, slow-build atmospheric story. I'm doing half the location sound, some ADR and the mix at the end.

I've had to split this job with a friend, as it was so short notice that I already had work on a couple of the days. The last day, I worked 8am-4pm in Cambridge on a corporate, then drove to the wilds of Norfolk and shot until 2am with Andy and the gang. Felt a bit run-down the next day; I think I'm too old to hold down two jobs now :)


Anyway, I couldn't have hoped for a nicer bunch of people than this crew. Being a Screen East funded film, it turns out I already knew several of the crew from elsewhere, but the new faces were very friendly an down-to-earth, and it was lovely to arrive on the first day and effortlessly get shooting in the first hour. Doesn't often happen, especially on low budget!

The actor playing the lead impressed us all enormously on the last day. I won't blow the ending of the film, but he wakes up to find himself in a certain amount of trouble, and we turned over for a one minute shot and were still frozen five minutes later, so much had he drawn everyone in. Very uncomfortable and psychologically horrible. You know, in a good way.

Sounds commonplace, but the practicalities of shooting scenes like this (as with horror films, too) usually mean everyone's concentrating on not wobbling a crap prop, or squirting the fake blood in time, or whatever. And everyone can see that the scary thing isn't real, and in fact looks exceptionally pony other than the little bit the camera sees. This was no different - the "set" was propped up in a kitchen, and had art dept people balancing on it etc. So an actor managing to psychologically disturb a knackered crew despite all that has done well...

And by contrast, there were some top-notch kittens in the barn next to one location.

Not knowing anyone rich who's likely to get married soon, I'm unlikely to get invited to an event at the top of the Gherkin in London in the near future.

Consequently it was very interesting to be recording a lunch meeting in which luminaries of the property world discussed the economic recovery (and how one might go about getting such a thing) in a private dining room at the top of the Gherkin today. What a view. It does give you pause to see a thunderstorm coming, though, as you think, however irrationally, "I'm at roughly the same height as those lightning-filled clouds, and I'm in a big metal thing."

The NHS job is proving every bit as interesting as it looked, and this week we filmed an operation, between interviewing doctors, researchers, surgeons and patients.

The op we shot was a prostatectomy using a robot - surprisingly uninvasive, and we were interviewing the patient two hours later, sat in bed with tea and biscuits. It was amazing to see the dexterity of the surgeon at his control station replicated so precisely by the probes in the patient’s body which we could see on a big monitor.

Obviously, being in the theatre meant wearing scrubs, which, as you can see, do not flatter me. Along with starting to understand which colour piping on the dark blue nurses’ uniforms means a specialist or nurse practitioner etc, I learned on Wednesday that in operating theatres, qualified medical staff wear blue hats, whereas a white hat means “don’t ask me; I’m a numpty tourist”. One to look out for if you wake up on the operating table one day and want to know what’s going on.

Anyway, I’m certainly glad to live where I do, as our hospital seems to be the place to go for lots of things, and all the people we’ve interviewed have seemed both bright and compassionate.

Jo and I went to the Prince Charles cinema in Leicester Square for the cast & screw screening of Doghouse last night. It’s a feature I worked on late last summer, and it was great to see the crew again.

Apart from a Guardian review comparing it (I suspect rather inaccurately) with another recent spoof horror, I’d not read much about it. While we waited to go in, the make-up effects designer, Karl Derrick (who’s a jolly nice chap), told me that the reviews were “marmite”. Excellent expression. In any event, I laughed a lot during the film. It was lovely to see the people again, and a free drink or two took the edge off the stress of getting there in time during a tube strike...

Started a nice new bit of (sound) work this week on a film for the NHS to encourage support for biomedical research facilities in Cambridge. Looks to be another interesting and educational job.

Before getting to the main week of shooting later this month, we warmed up this week by interviewing a famous doctor and hospital patron. I saw the corridors underneath the public part of our large local hospital (voted best NHS hospital last year, I learned) for the first time - it’s a whole other world of zooming vehicles. Fascinating.

Coming up: filming an operation...

One of my least favourite things about jobs involving a bit of travel (apart from not being able to read Alice’s bedtime stories, of course) is nasty Travelodges.

M’colleague Neill and I have seen some prize ones, and they’re all identical squishy-floored Hotels of Doom. Neill’s got a few of these pics of me in Travelodges, looking like I’m in The Shining hotel.

However, my favourite thing about my job is that I experience a big range of stuff, which I wouldn’t in an office.

I wouldn’t have been in Westminster meetings - or seen the derelict BBC theatre in Alexandra Palace, found out how you train horses to fall over and butterflies to hit marks, learned more than I asked about model railways, or heard one of the UK’s nonagenarian computer pioneers enthuse about early vacuum tube computers - in my old internet job. And I’ve by no means done exotic shoots, on the scale of things.

In fact, it’s most often the corporate jobs, which a lot of film people moan about as a mortgage-paying necessity, which teach me something genuinely interesting.

In recent corporate jobs, I’ve learned quite a bit about how the UK’s education policy is influenced - or not - by experts. I’ve learned how filling little plastic recycling boxes with separate materials is much better for the environment (and the local govt. budget) than having one mixed recycling bin at home. And I’ve recorded some very affecting stories of recovering alcohol & drug users that made the job quite an eye-opener (and I wouldn’t describe my previous state as naive).

In fact, there have been lots of work days where some new stuff sneaked into my brain that I wouldn’t voluntary research. Finding out from a fire crew what their daily routine of waiting and risk is like is just as interesting as meeting the odd famous actor, ‘cos both have lives very unlike mine (which is fine by me in both cases, having heard what it’s like!)

So I’m just reminding myself that the seemingly prosaic corporate jobs are frequently a fascinating free education, which makes my calendar look much more exciting for the next couple of weeks :)

Unless you’re a sound recordist, it’s possible that you don’t realise how extremely, rivetingly interesting the pictured item is.

You may not care about hiding miniature microphones on actors at all, in fact. In this case, you should break the speakers on your telly and never watch a film with the sound on again, to teach you a lesson about how important this is.

You may also not know the barely-dull fact that a drac clip is so called because of its two needly teeth, which are for sticking into actors. Clothing. Actors’ clothing. Yes.

The Tram is a lovely mic with a drac clip that makes it great for pinning under actors’ T-shirts etc. But let’s be honest, it’s tubby, and the croc clip for in-vision mounting is rubbish. The COS11 is much easier to hide, and is great in-vision ‘cos if its clever and discreet croc clip.

But it doesn’t have a drac clip for stabbing actors and hiding mics easily and quickly... until now! Yes, stifle your yawns, you philistine, the COS11 drac clip has actually made my life easier. And you can get it from top chap Martyn at Soundkit.