In June 1999 we celebrated our 10th Anniversary and I hope those of you that were able to attend the dinner had a pleasant evening.

So AMPS has reached the grand old age of 10 years. That’s not very old when you consider that moving pictures have been around for about 100 years, though recorded sound with picture didn’t become common until about 1930. It’s interesting to consider that we have come full circle with the use of DTS discs, as some of those original systems used discs to replay the sound track!

I wonder what those early pioneers would have made of digital sound - sound recorded using only ones and zeros, and printed on the film as thousands and thousands of little dots. I’m sure that had anyone suggested this idea back in the 1930s they would have been considered mad, and yet this revolution in technology has been achieved in 60 years.

So what are the next 60 years going to bring? Already we are seeing the use of hard disks and solid state memory for production sound recording. It won’t be long before we can use recordable CD’s and even larger solid state memories (at a price we can afford) to record uncompressed audio in the field. So what next? Perhaps the recordist will relay the audio (along with the picture) via satellite back to a base station where the signal will be stored in a solid state memory and be instantly available. The editor will work with top quality pictures and original sound, and from this store the final edit and sound material could then be sent by satellite or fibre optic link to the post production house.

But these ideas still do not address the all too common difficulty of unwanted sound that faces the production sound mixer. If film stock becomes still faster or even more sensitive, and digital cameras are used, maybe the need for lights that whistle, buzz or hum will disappear and scenes can be lit with very small lights that make little or no noise. Maybe new types of digital microphones that scan the scenes with ultra sonic sound and reject unwanted noises will be developed, or actors might be implanted with a form of radio mic and recordists would tune into their transmitters to pick-up the dialogue and record separate atmosphere tracks.

So what is the future for AMPS in all this? I have a saying that ‘You should not allow the technology to get in the way of making the programme’. I believe that the members of AMPS, while embracing the advantages the new technology brings, should preserve and pass on to the next generation the creative excellence and craft skills that have been established over the past 60 years.

PSH