School of Sound

TUTORS

Those teaching on THE SOUNDTRACK include the following.

Masterclass speakers

MIKE FIGGIS, Film Director
Mike Figgis’s work has included significant critical and commercial successes, particularly Internal Affairs, Leaving Las Vegas, Liebestraum, and Mr Jones. His most notable experiment came in the use of digital cameras for Timecode, his satire on the movie business, which abandoned editing and split the screen into four quarters. He has maintained a relationship with Channel 4 with films on the fashion designer Vivienne Westwood (On Liberty); the avant-garde choreographer William Forsythe (Just Dancing Around) and his dramatic reconstruction Artangel: the Battle of Orgreave, set during the 1984-5 miners’ strike. Figgis has continued to cross borders, to experiment, and on occasions to extend the very language of film.

PHIL PARKER, Script Writer & Consultant
Phil Parker is one of the most highly rated teachers of screenwriting in the UK and Europe. Founder of the highly successful course at the London College of Communication (graduates have won the Palme D’Or and been Oscar nominated), he now works as a consultant with clients including Aardman Animation, The Mob Film Co. and the UK Film Council. He is author of The Art and Science of Screenwriting.

Other master classes to be announced.

Tutors

Editing

ROGER CRITTENDEN began his career as a trainee film editor in 1962, after which Roger enjoyed a distinguished career in the cutting rooms. Among his credits were three films for Ken Russell, including Song of Summer, the award winning film on Frederick Delius; three films in Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation series; dramatic films on George Eliot and John Milton directed by Don Taylor; biographies of Wagner and Schumann by Anthony Wilkinson; documentaries on Lenin and Paul Klee by Colin Nears; a serialisation of The Last of the Mohicans; a remembrance of Virginia Woolf and Love of a Kind by Lord Snowdon. Towards the end of his career at the BBC he was given an award for ‘Sustained excellence as a Film Editor’.

Roger was recruited to the National Film School (UK) as Head of Editing when it opened in 1971. He continued to edit whenever possible, including award-winning films on Indian Erotic Art and the ballet dancer Lynn Seymour. Subsequently appointed Assistant then Deputy Director, he was to become Director, Full-time Programme from 2001 until 2005, when he was invited by the Director to initiate a one-year course in Fiction direction, which ran successfully until 2007. In 2008 he was retained as a Curricular Consultant to the NFTS. During his time at the NFTS he has taught in places as varied as Copenhagen, Moscow, Manilla, Mexico and Cuba. In Britain he has lectured at The Royal College of Art, The Northern Film School and The Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology at Manchester University. He has also acted as a consultant to the Japanese Government regarding professional media education.

He is author of two books on the craft of editing. His book on Truffaut’s La Nuit americaine (Day for Night) was published in the British Film Institute’s Film Classic series. His latest book is Fine Cuts - The Art of European Film Editing.

Composition

STEPHEN DAVISMOON is Subject Group Leader (HoD) and Reader in Music at the Ian Tomlin School of Music, Napier University, Edinburgh. Joint BMus Programme Leader and Postgraduate Director of Studies. Module leader for 20th & 21st Century Music History, Music Analysis, Dissertations Electroacoustic Composition, Computer-Aided Composition, Live Electronic Music (which includes opportunities for sound installation/sculpture), all of which are at 3rd and 4th year undergraduate level. In 2001 he inaugurated the Postgraduate Research Student Programme in the School of Music and is currently supervisor to 7 such students (MPhil/PhD) including areas such as composition (with and without digital media), digital technology, psychology, and music analysis.

Stephen’s principal area of research is as a Composer, having composed for a variety of ensembles with and without digital media, and enjoyed many international performances (including Britain, France, Germany, Holland, Iceland, Italy, Lithuania, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine, and Uruguay). He has also carried out research projects related to issues of Contemporary Musicology (within the context of Critical Theory), including Luigi Nono and Italian music post-1945, Varèse, and ‘New Complexity’.

Composition

STEPHEN DEUTSCH has had his concert music performed by eminent artists, including the Medici Quartet, David Campbell, The Gaudier Ensemble, Andrew Ball, The London Mozart Players and many others. He has composed over thirty scores for film, theatre, radio & television. His many collaborations with the playwright Peter Barnes include Jubilee (2001), the Olivier Award winning play, Red Noses (1985) and the feature film Hard Times (1994). He has significant expertise in the fields of Electronic Music (including sampling & synthesis), 20th century music techniques; the composer in the marketplace; and issues having to do with film, TV, broadcasting and related subjects.

Prof. Deutsch was educated initially in the United States (initial training – Julliard Preparatory Division; BMus - SMU; MA - San Francisco State College). After settling in Britain he attended the Royal College of Music where he was engaged in electro-acoustic composition under the direction of Tristram Cary. In 1971 he and two partners established Synthesizer Music Services, Ltd., an electro-acoustic studio in London.

At Bournemouth University, he is Professor of Post-Production. In 1992 he founded the University's MA in Soundtrack Production: Composition for the Screen. This course, which was the first of its kind in Europe, is designed to equip post graduate professional composers with the skills necessary to engage in writing music for film, TV, radio, & other multi-media packages. He is also Visiting Tutor in Screen Composition at the National Film & Television School. Within both institutions he has trained over 60 composers, some of whom have since provided music for feature films, theatre, television and computer games.

Prof. Deutsch is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts for whom he recently gave the lecture, Music & Technology: the Composer in the Age of the Internet. He is editor of The Soundtrack, an academic journal which focuses its attention on all the aural elements which combine with moving images.

Music Composition & Sound

PETER HOWELL has always been involved in writing applied music, composing and producing scores for amateur theatrical performances in Sussex, UK. His professional career was to begin at Glyndebourne Festival Opera, where he was a member of the lighting and sound team. His interest in sound lead him to be employed by the BBC as a Studio Manager and subsequently as a composer at the Radiophonic Workshop, a department specialising in experimental sound and music. In due course, thanks to development in technology, he was able to broaden his output to include complete scores for BBC Television series in documentary and drama, such as Michael Palin's Full Circle series, Jonathan Miller's The Body in Question, and Dr Who, all of which are still being shown around the world.

Throughout his long association with BBC TV, he was able to develop an understanding of how all the disciplines involved in filmmaking are inter-related. This broad approach forms the basis of his work in music and sound at the National Film and Television School, where the benefits of collaboration across the disciplines are so highly regarded. At the film school, as well as running a series of 'Sound Awareness' lectures every year, he is responsible for teaching all aspects of music in film, including reading the film for the purposes of composition, scoring for sequenced or live music, the use of software in the realisation of film music, and the personal strategies necessary for the successful meeting of tight deadlines in demanding projects. As a tutor with Music for the Media, an online media composing course, he has appraised over a thousand assignments and assisted hundreds of composers break into film and TV composition. He was for a long time on the media committee of The British Academy of Songwriters and Composers.

Sound & Editing

PAT JACKSON has worked on major Hollywood productions as Supervising Sound Editor including Jarhead, K-19: The Widowmaker, The Talented Mr Ripley, The Newton Boys and The English Patient (for which she was nominated for a BAFTA Best Sound award), and Sound Effects Editor on productions such as Toy Story, Forrest Gump, Blue Velvet, A Bug’s Life and Hercules, being awarded several Golden Reel Best Sound Effects Editing awards. Pat was part of the teams which won the Academy Award for Best Sound on The Right Stuff, Apocalypse Now and The English Patient headed-up by Oscar-winning editor and sound editor Walter Murch. She is also a picture editor, most notably on Emiko Omori’s Rabbit in the Moon and as an associate editor on The English Patient and Jarhead. Since 2003 Pat has been Assistant Professor in the Department of Cinema at San Francisco State University where she teaches post-production sound, film editing and digital sound for film. She has a BA in Film and Broadcasting from Stanford University.

Composition & Sound

ANNABELLE PANGBORN studied singing and composition at the London College of Music and continued to train as an opera singer with English National Opera. Her work in experimental music led to her first film commission and her score for Simon Pummell’s award winning animation Secret Joy (Channel 4). Pursuing her work in film she went on to graduate from the Royal College of Art, specialising in Sound and Music for Screen.

She has worked extensively in film and television, creating soundtracks for award winning dramas, dance films and animation. Recent credits include The Truth, George Milton’s critically acclaimed British feature film; The Death of Klinghoffer, Penny Woolcock’s award-winning feature length film of the opera by John Adams; and Pleasureland, Channel 4’s confrontational feature length drama on teenage sex directed by Brian Percival. She has also worked with award winning directors Beeban Kidron, John Henderson, Ben Hopkins, John Dower and Sara Sugarman.

She has been awarded the Fuji Zonal Scholarship Award for her sound track for Ben Hopkins' film, The Holy Time, and the Kodak Short Film Award for her collaborative short film, Stung.

Sound & Editing

LARRY SIDER is Director of the School of Sound. He is a film editor and sound designer who has worked for 25 years in documentary, animation and fiction.

In the late 1970s he worked with several filmmakers at the British Film Institute including the Quay Brothers, Peter Wollen and Laura Mulvey. Larry continued to work as an editor and sound designer with the Quays on their productions through the 80s and 90s, including The Comb, Anamorphosis, Street of Crocodiles, Institute Benjamenta and, as Director of Sound on their latest feature, The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes. His other work includes films directed by Simon Pummell (Secret Joy, Butcher’s Hook, Blinded by Light), Ruth Lingford’s (Death and the Mother), Patrick Keiller (London, Robinson in Space) and Dave McKean’s feature animation, Mirrormask, made for Jim Henson Productions and Sony. From 2000-3, along with staff from IRCAM, the University of Vienna and AKG Electronics, he consulted on LISTEN, an EU-funded research project devising new software to create audio-augmented environments in gallery and museum spaces.

Larry has elevated the profile of sound in both screen education and production through the biennial symposium, the School of Sound, an international four-day event exploring the use of sound in film, multimedia and digital art. From these meetings came the book, Soundscape: The School of Sound Lectures 1998-2001.

From 2002-6, Larry was Head of Post-Production at the National Film and Television School (UK). He regularly gives seminars on post-production editing and sound for television and film professionals and teaches at various film schools including the International Film School (Köln), California Institute of the Arts, Surrey Institute of Art and Design, Netherlands Film Academy and Bournemouth Screen Academy. He has written articles for trade magazines and academic journals and is co-editor of The Soundtrack journal.

Sound & Mixing

GRAHAM HARTSTONE has had a 44-year career in sound, culminating as Head of Post-Production at Pinewood Studios. He was re-recording mixer on films that cover a wide range of styles and genres including Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise, Aliens, Eyes Wide Shut, Ae Fond Kiss and eight James Bond films. For The Soundtrack, Graham will advise participants on the sound mixing stage of the workshop.