The ever cheerful helpful Angie
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The ever cheerful helpful Angie |
My dad played the piano at the Ilford Electric Cinema in the 1920s, enhancing the dramatic background atmospheres for the silent movies. This must have been the key to my fate and a subliminal introduction to sound effects even long before I was born.
I started work in the Industry in 1958 with the script department on the Sir Francis Drake TV series at ABPC Studios in Borehamwood and then on the William Tell series at National Studios across the road. These were followed by the Invisible Man at MGM Studios just up the hill, working with scriptwriters of the ilk of Brian Clemens and Roger Marshall, also with the producer Ralph Smart and his then production manager, Aida Young, on the first series of Danger Man, with Patrick McGoohan. Then followed other series including BBC TV's Zero One with Nigel Patrick. When I became unemployed at the end of this one, the hand of fate moved in my direction.
In 1960, Sound Editors Dennis Rogers and Gordon Daniel and their assistants, Wilf Thompson and Roy Baker, became the founding directors of the Library. Its first location was in Dennis' garage, which held some two thousand sound effects stored on 35mm magnetic film. The directors had pooled their own sound tracks to form the beginning of a company which was to span almost forty years in the British Film Industry.
The library, like Topsy, grew, and soon became too bulky to run from the small garage space. New premises were sought. Dennis was introduced to Frank Lansdowne who owned nitrate film storage vaults in Maxwell Road, right next door to what were then called ABPC Studios. Cinesound remains on the same site in Borehamwood today. The directors were too busy dubbing pictures to continue running it themselves so they decided to employ someone to do it for them in its new location. In October 1962 I was employed for one week to hold the fort at the library until Gordon's wife could take over the task. Gordon had won an Oscar for sound editing The Green Helmet. It was a busy time in the industry; the other directors were working on films like The Cardinal and the Danger Man TV Series.
Frank Lansdowne rented a small room to the company located on the ground floor of a building which had an open-plan garage space and stairs leading to the first floor offices which comprised six rooms. The tiny room became the library's second home and has since become the gents' toilets! It was racked out with Dexion shelving holding rusting and silver 35mm cans which covered the walls: they contained sound-effects tracks which were on 35mm magnetic, 35mm optical acetate, and even some optical nitrate!
I was pushed in at the deep end, facing this unknown mountain, not having a clue what to do. I'd only worked on the script side of the industry, never on post-production. The huge 2000ft cans filled with small brown rolls of film had me puzzled, however I soon learned how to play them on an old black Hollywood Moviola: its picture head had been removed but it could play optical as well as magnetic tracks. I assisted the visiting sound editors with their selections and helped them delve into two hand-written catalogues for ideas. Their chosen effects were joined together making 1000ft reels and then hand-carried the short distance to the transfer bay at the Gate Recording Theatre for duping onto fresh 35mm mag.
The end of my first week came and went, and Dennis and Roy still wanted me to stay on, so with zero consideration I remained with the Company for the next thirty-four years!
The sound editors soon got used to me and I gradually understood the logic behind the selection process. They were always pushed for time (nothing changes!), so they would begin to trust me with the basic selection of their effects; obviously if it was a more difficult sequence they would come in to listen and then select.
In 1964 the tiny room became too small to operate the library. The Gate Recording Theatre was literally a stone's throw away from Frank Lansdowne's vaults and, built in their car park, was a three-roomed bungalow complex; it contained another library called Soundefex which was founded circa 1958 by Gerry Anderson, Peter Handford, Bert Bates and Dave Elliott. Gerry was having great success with his various TV puppet series amongst which were Four Feather Falls and Super Car. He was also heavily involved in preparation for Thunderbirds, and moving into premises on the Slough Trading Estate. His partners in Soundefex were also busy with other projects and they decided to sell Soundefex. Dennis Rogers being in the right place at the right time purchased the Library with the help of film editor Bert Bates, who moved from being a director of Soundefex to become a director of Cinesound. This move increased the Library stock by at least twelve thousand sound effects. These were stored on BASF analogue 1/4" tape, and many of those tracks, originally recorded by Peter Handford, still exist today.
Modernisation was very slow to follow. We would often shoot particular sound effects for various productions, mainly car tracks, and always late at night on deserted airfields. In the sixties these were mainly recorded with an old dark green yellow-striped case containing an EMI L2 battery-operated portable 1/4" tape machine, and later edited on Ferrograph reel-to-reel recorders. As time progressed we purchased mono Nagras for the purpose, and Leevers-Rich studio decks for playback and editing.
The Library expanded and soon outgrew the three rooms in the bungalow, so we travelled across the small divide once again. Frank Lansdowne was retiring and had offered the vaults site (just under one whole acre) freehold to Dennis, which Cinesound purchased. The one storey building on stilts became two floorswhen the garage space was transformed into six rooms.
We now had our own transfer suite with two bays designed by technical designer Michael Bradbury, then chief sound engineer at EMI Elstree (the newer name for ABPC), and operated by Robin Clare (from the Gate) and Frankie Fahy (from EMI). There were three listening rooms and a despatch room. All the library rooms had shelves of tapes from floor to ceiling while one room still retained tracks on 35mm; however optical tracks were banished to the film vaults (we all smoked at the time!). The cataloguing system was still manual and remained in several more extremely heavy hand-written tomes; these are still in use.
My interest in sound effects and knowledge of the most incidental of nuances grew. I could tell you the plot of the film just by the sound effects requested, and could find a single effect from the growing mountain of tapes and film as quickly as any modern computer.
An excellent young man, David Edwards, who had worked at MGM Studios just before it closed, joined the company as another librarian; he had just completed working with the documentary film editor Duncan Spence. David was enthusiastic about aeroplanes, cameras, cars and model aircraft; his hobbies and knowledge became a great asset in research for the library.
David and I always tried to be as accurate as possible in supplying genuine sounds for the editors' various requests. 1962 was the start of the James Bond films (incidentally, the Library has supplied sound effects to every one ever made - so far !). Some adventures have included a weekend on the Norfolk Broads, with Norman Wanstall recording power boats for one of the Bonds. We broke all the rules by belting up and down the waterways at high speed, but had terrific fun. These tracks have been used in numerous films ever since, including Puppet on a Chain. Some other experiences by Cinesound staff have included flying in a Lancaster bomber and a helicopter, deliberately crashing cars into walls, recording dinosaurs in caves, facing live snakes and wolves, and loads more just to get the 'right' sound.
In the seventies and early eighties, there was hardly a television programme, commercial or feature film that had not used sound effects supplied by Cinesound. We gradually absorbed other sound effects libraries under our banner, the most famous being Peter Musgrave's Magnetic Effects Library. Peter's library was beautifully catalogued and, partly through its connection with Columbia British, contained sound-effects from many famous movies including such titles as Lawrence Of Arabia, Lord Jim, The Odessa File and many more. He also had control over the old Pinewood Sound Effects Library which contained such titles as Conspiracy of Hearts, The Spanish Gardener, Northwest Frontier, the 1950's version of the Titanic and the original veteran car tracks from Genevieve, also the Bronston Library, with sounds all recorded in the 1960's from such films as 55 Days At Peking, El Cid and Circus World - many of the tracks being irreplaceable today.
Then we worked on, and obtained, the sound-effects shot for most of the ITC (Incorporated Television Company) productions including titles such as The Saint, The Prisoner, The Avengers series and many many more. We would record quite a few tracks specifically for these series ourselves and had fun trying to create suggestions for the most obscure of requests.
These included being asked to create a noise for "a black hole", "fairy's wings flapping", "a twelve foot high strawberry falling into a vat of yoghourt" and even the sound of a "Manchester dog barking", though I never did discover how you could tell a particular dog's accent, even to this day!
Many years followed, many films; we worked with superb sound editors, including Jonathan Bates, Gandhi and Flash Gordon, Ian Fuller, Killing Fields and Donnie Brascoe, Jimmy Shields, Alien and Thelma and Louise, Win Ryder, Doctor Zhivago and other great David Lean movies, the late Chris Greenham, Superman and Lord Jim, and Peter Horrocks, Tess Of The Durbevilles and D.a.r.y.l to name just a few . This list is endless, but each Sound Editor in his own right remains totally dedicated to perfection on each particular production whether it is great or small.
In 1990 David Edwards died unexpectedly, a great loss to the Industry and the Library. Peter Whybrow joined the transfer bay. He had worked at the Warwick Theatre in town, and helped to move the library to the first floor of the Lansdowne building.
As the years flowed the income had increased, but like all good ideas the day finally dawned when new technology arrived. The Library sadly did not update to the new CD and digital stereo systems until it was almost too late.
Sound editors, now working mainly on digital audio workstations, for speed and convenience bought their own sets of CDs, and on modern productions have no spare time to use traditional sound-effects libraries, though to me there is not enough variety and originality in their selections.
Cinesound is still used for period productions and, from it's shelves, can create a genuine 1950's/60's/70's ambience, though not digital or stereo. In my opinion the pre-digital quality is 'fuller' and not as clinically pristine as today's recordings, thus presenting a softer effect to the listening ear, which in reality hears individual sounds through a melange of audio distractions.
It is strange to visit the Library today: happily sometimes I'm recalled to 'dig out' some tracks, and Peter pops in to do the transfer. The place remains unchanged since I left in July 1996. The tapes are still on the shelves, though the 35mm tracks no longer remain. The Library has been updated and now uses the American Leonardo Library system on the computer and there are some CDs. Among this pile there are some fifty-five original CDs (Cinedisks) created by Peter Whybrow and myself during our last few years at Cinesound.
My dream for the Library would be to update, modernise, and transfer to CD all the tracks that can't be recreated in the 1990's because they just don't exist any more. To preserve the car recordings, the country atmospheres, the aircraft etc that all still exist in the approximately four million sound effects that are contained in the Cinesound Effects Library. They will certainly be needed by future film and TV makers.