Dear Robin,
I acknowledge with many thanks your recent mailing containing my Honorary Membership certificate and a copy of the Directory. Having for long professed indifference to the doings of the Association, I concede that it has reached maturity and I wish it every further success, together with recognition and support by the film and television business. It surely parallels the BSC.
My own personal position remains that of close, if slightly detached, interest. I was glad to be of some help at the outset because I felt that the profession of sound engineering for film needed an identifiable core. And what a strong core it has become!
However retirement brings about a change in one's perspective - a lack of day-to-day involvement. Consequently, the forward march of the technology and the ever-changing nature of the business which gives us our livelihood, leave one almost with gratitude that one can simply be an onlooker.
After six years of being a 'Gentleman of leisure', I have no regrets or yearnings. I remain busy in my own affairs seeing some more of the world, following hobbies, and glad to read about what the rest of you are up to! In short, I am happy to be an honorary member amongst my old friends and colleagues.
Sincerely
Geoff Labram
Dear Robin.
Thank you for my Honorary Membership. I am really thrilled to be remembered. My whole working life has been in the film business, that includes my camera operator son Neil and my dear wife, known as 'Binney Wardrobe' who died recently. She used to co-operate with floor mixers on noisy costume scenes. When making up her dress charts she would always find a way to satisfy the mixer regarding the very noisy rustle caused by satin materials and the like. In those days recording of all that rustle sounded dreadful.
I have many happy memories of my years in the business with some extraordinary stories to recall.
Best wishes
Frank Binney
We'd like to hear them Frank and how we wish more wardrobe people were as sound conscious as your dear 'Binney Wardrobe' was. Ed
Dear Robin.
Thank you for my Honorary Membership Certificate.
AMPS is an excellent move. I have so often been amazed at the ignorance of sound cutters of the difficulties of production mixers, particularly on location; or with an awkward director of lighting cameraman; likewise mixers who have little knowledge of what tracks a sound editor needs to prepare the film for mixing. Some years ago one mixer had clappers announce 'Guide Track' on each shot on location. The Americans said 'This sound guy is good - you hardly ever hear from him', but there was an awful lot of unusable sound.
Do you think sound is becoming too perfect and clinical, lacking atmosphere, such as stuffing a mic down the horn of each instruments compared with recordings made in a basilica or a building with good acoustics and bags of ambience. With new technology you sometimes gain a bit and lose a bit. I remember David Lean saying to a mixing crew during a bit of a crisis, 'We did some pretty good dubs when we had to go straight through the reel!'
Enough of these ramblings
Yours
Win Ryder
Dear Robin,
Very many thanks for your letter. I must apologise for the delay in my reply but I am still suffering from post operation pain. It is somewhat better but still disturbing. I am just able to write without too much trembling, so I hope you can read it OK.
Thank you for the enclosed references to The Small Back Room. I sure remember working on it. Michael Powell gave me quite a hard time. I was fairly young for a production sound mixer compared to others. It could be he didn't have confidence in me.
I must tell you that some years later in Australia I was once again with Powell on 'They're A Weird Mob' and expecting more trouble. But would you believe it he would never hear a word against me. If any problem should arise he would say 'If Alan wants it that way, so be it - he knows what he's doing'. He was pleasant to me throughout the production.
Yours faithfully
Alan Allen