School of Sound 1999

AUDIOROM are ten London-based designers, musicians, technicians and artists working at the cutting edge of the interactive audio-visual arena. Drawing on some of the present desires and infatuations of youth culture, AudioRom produce, publish, exhibit and perform highly innovative works, examining and exploring relationships between sound and image. ANDRE KTORI, producer, musician and interface designer, and SIMON SCHOFIELD, visual artist and software designer, demonstrate AudioRom’s latest CD Rom, ShiftControl. ShiftControl which won the first Interactive BAFTA award for Art Direction and Design. ShiftControl was also awarded the Milia D’Or Award at Milia Games 99, Cannes.

JOHN BROOMHALL gained extensive recording experience working on a diverse mix of commercial soundtrack and album projects as a session keyboard player, writer, and arranger before joining the legendary MicroProse in 1992, to write music for games. “It was around that time that my fascination with sound design and post production really kicked in. My focus shifted radically to seeing music as a key component of the soundtrack rather than necessarily the dominant factor”.

His passion for achieving the best possible results from limited hardware formats led John to becoming responsible for audio in all UK developed titles, and he now manages sound and music production for Hasbro Interactive in the UK. With seven years’ experience of producing game soundtracks, and some thirty releases under his belt, he is now actively exploring the use of the 3D audio and interactive digital music technologies alongside his colleagues at Hasbro’s other recording facilities on the West and East coasts of America.

MICHAEL CHANAN is a documentary film-maker, writer on film and music and Senior Lecturer at the London College of Printing Media School. He is the author of The Invention and Early Years of Cinema in Britain, Musica Practica: A Social History of Music from Gregorian Chant to Post Modernism, Repeated Takes: A Short History of Recording and its Effects on Music, From Handel to Hendrix: The Composer in the Public Sphere, and Cuban Image: Cinema and Cultural Politics in Cuba.

SHOMA A. CHATTERJI has been writing on cinema, television, theatre and gender studies for two decades. She was born and educated in Bombay, completing postgraduate degrees in Economics and Education from the University of Bombay and later completed a journalism diploma from the Somaiya Institute of Journalism and Mass Communications. After winning the Best Film Critic award at the National Film Awards in 1991, she moved from teaching Economics at Bombay College to full-time writing. Since 1989, she has contributed to international film meetings in Germany, Russia, Greece, Spain and Sri Lanka, serving on juries at the St. Petersburg and Mannheim-Heidelberg international festivals and the FIPRESCI Jury at several European festivals.

Shoma has lectured on cinema at the Institute of South Asian Studies at Heidelberg and at the Asian Film Centre in Colombo, Sri Lanka. She has written three books on gender issues: The Indian Woman’s Search for an Identity, The Indian Woman in Perspective and From Darkness to Light: Indian Women in Transition. Just released, Subject: Cinema, Object: Women—A Study of the Portrayal of Women in Indian Cinema, is the first book to offer a feminist critique of Indian cinema.

MICHEL CHION was born in 1947. He has been a composer of musique concrète since 1971 (Best Record Prize in 1978 for his Requiem), a director of films (Jean Vigo Short Prize for Eponine in 1985), of videos since 1975 and art video since 1990 (City of Locarno First Prize for La Messe de terre in 1996) and a writer of books about music, sound and cinema since 1978 (Best Cinema Book Prize for La Musique au cinéma in 1995). He has been a member of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales, the Service de la Recherches set up by Pierre Schaeffer (who acknowledged him as his leading heir) and a critic for Les Cahiers du Cinéma. His books have been translated into some fifteen languages. As a theorist and teacher of sound in general and the relationship between sound and vision in particular (a field for which he laid down the theory), he teaches in many schools and universities including Paris II (where he is an associate professor), the Esec and the Davi at Lausanne Cantonal Art School. He also leads seminars and gives lectures in numerous countries in Europe and North and South America.

Chion’s latest writings, Le Son and a monograph on Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, were recently published. His last musical composition was The Ringing Island (after Rabelais and Melville). Available in English are his books Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, David Lynch and The Films of Jacques Tati.

ANDREW CHITTY is Managing Director of Illumina Ltd., an independent production company devising and producing programming for convergent media, including ongoing productions for Sky TV, Film Four, BBC Knowledge and UK Arena. Prior to setting up Illumina, he was editor of BBC2’s digital culture magazine show, The Net, and Channel 4’s, Things To Come, and an award winning producer for Granada TV and Horizon. In other lives he delved into the brain to research human visual perception and attempted to create interactive documentaries for the Microsoft Network, probably.

MIKE FIGGIS is a writer, director and composer whose roots in experimental theatre and music have contributed to the creative vision that guides all of his feature films and documentaries. Born in Carlisle, he grew up in Nairobi until his family relocated back to Newcastle when he was eight. As a teenager, he played trumpet and guitar in various bands including Gas Board with Brian Ferry.

In the early 1970’s, Figgis joined the avant-garde theatre group, The People Show, originally as a musician but then as a performer. For the next ten years, The People Show toured the world with great success and acclaim. In 1980, he formed The Mike Figgis Group, and began to create productions known for their innovative blend of live action with music and film. This led to his first film, The House, for Channel 4. Next came his first full-length feature, Stormy Monday, set in Newcastle, it starred Melanie Griffith, Tommy Lee Jones and Sting, and featured a score by Figgis. Internal Affairs (with Richard Gere), Leibestraum (Kim Novak), Mr. Jones, and the Browning Version followed. In 1996, Figgis wrote, directed and scored Leaving Las Vegas. The film collected four Oscar nominations and a Best Actor award for star Nicholas Cage. That same year, One Night Stand was released, with Figgis again wearing three creative hats. His latest film, The Loss of Sexual Innocence, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. Figgis is currently filming Strindberg’s, Miss Julie.

Soon to be published by Faber & Faber is Figgis’ Hollywood Conversations, a compilation of interviews with people involved in the film industry.

ANGUS FINNEY has worked previously as a senior film consultant, conference moderator and specialist writer on the international film industry — not solely as a commentator but also a hands-on operator. Specifically, he was responsible for writing and co-ordinating the DNA Arts Council film franchise bid in 1997, which raised $50m of Lottery film finance for the producers of Trainspotting and Four Weddings and a Funeral. He oversaw the launch of the new London Premiere Screenings (an international film market) in 1997 — where he worked with the top film sales agents and distributors around the world; and he wrote the business plan for the London Film Commission in 1995. His work has been published across the UK national press, including ‘The Economist’, and he has written two books on the film industry including A New Dose of Reality: The State of European Cinema and The Egos Have Landed: The Rise and Fall of Palace Pictures. From 1998 Finney has worked as General Manager of Renaissance Films, the production company behind films including Wings of the Dove, The Madness of King George and Much Ado About Nothing.

KEITH GRIFFITHS of Koninck and Illuminations Films, has been producing independent films and television programmes for more than twenty years and in 1994 was awarded The Observer- Prudential/Arts Council Award for Film. His productions include works by Chris Petit (Radio On (remix), The Cardinal and the Corpse, The Falconer’s Tale), Peter Wollen and Laura Mulvey (Riddles of the Sphinx). Patrick Keiller (London, Robinson in Space) and Jan Svankmajer (Alice, Faust, Conspirators of Pleasure). He has produced the animated films of Simon Pummell (Secret Joy of Falling Angels, The Temptation of Sainthood, Butcher’s Hook) and the Brothers Quay (Street of Crocodiles, Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies, The Comb) as well as their live-action feature, Institute Benjamenta.

Currently, Keith is in pre-production on Svankmajer’s fourth feature, Otesanek. He is also developing Nightwatch, a feature length essay film by six international directors; The Mechanical Infanta, a live action/animation feature by the Brothers Quay; Carib’s Leap, a film installation by Steve McQueen; and Change of Heart, a feature film by G.F. Newman.

He has lectured at the Academy of Media Arts (Köln) and the Northern Media School in Sheffield.

MARK HALL graduated from the Manchester Regional College of Art in 1957. After completing his National Service he joined Granada TV in 1959 as a graphic designer, where he met his future business partner, Brian Cosgrove. In 1971 they formed Stop Frame Animations and became known for their commercials and pre-school TV programmes including Noddy, Sally and Jake and Same and His Magic Ball.

In 1976, Mark and Brian co-founded Cosgrove Hall Productions, a wholly owned subsidiary of Thames Television, latterly becoming Cosgrove Hall Films. Since then they have produced some 170 hours of animation, won 4 BAFTA awards, 2 Inetrnational Emmys and the prestigious Prix Jeunesse. His highly acclaimed productions include Wind in the Willows, The Pied Piper of Hamelin, Alias the Jester, and The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship. Mark is currently working on Discworld, a production for Channel 4 based on ‘Wyrd Sisters’ and ‘Soul Music’ by Terry Pratchett.

MANI KAUL is a filmmaker, musician and painter who, since making his first feature film in 1970, A Day’s Bread, has produced a very personal and innovative body of work fed by the two sources of eastern classical music and of art and aesthetics. These themes are particularly evident in the films Dhrupad and Siddeshwari and in films on art such as Mind of Clay. But, just as importantly, his approach has been enriched by a completely modern sensibility. Kaul has drawn from haiku poetry, the nouveau roman, Matisse, Bresson and Ozu. His later films — The Gaze and The Idiot — are from Dostoevsky.

In addition to his work in India, Kaul has made films internationally, including Desert of a Thousand Lines (ZDF); The Cloud Door (Erotikon), a German series of films by twelve filmmakers including Bob Rafelson, Susan Seidelman and Paul Cox; and, along with twenty other directors, he will take part in the Danish series, Danish Girls Show Everything. He is also completing his contribution to Nighnwatch, six short films to be filmed at the Boijmans-Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam.

At the end of 1997 he worked at the European Ceramic Work Centre in the Netherlands where he held an exhibition of his ceramics. In 2000, he will be honoured with a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Kaul teaches film and video at Duke University, North Carolina.

ADELE KELLETT is a sound designer at Electronic Arts. She studied Music at City University and after graduating she specialised in sound at the National Film and Television School (Beaconsfield). Work experience led to a job in film post- production company in Pinewood Film Studios where she worked as Music Editor and Assistant Sound Effects editor on Welcome to Sarajevo. Originally hired at Electronic Arts as a sound designer/editor to work on the Full Motion Video/animation sequences, she now also works on the interactive sound design for Bullfrog Productions and EA Sports titles. Her credits include Privateer 2:The Darkening, The FA. Premiere League Football Manager 99 and Populous: The Beginning.

PETER KUBELKA, born 1934 in Vienna, Austria, is one of the leading figures of the film avant-garde after the Second World War. His pioneering film Unsere Afrikareise (1966) brought a new dimension of articulation between image and sound. Kubelka is also well known as a theoretician. He has taught extensively in the United States and in various European countries. He is co-founder of Anthology Filmarchives in New York and the Austrian Filmmuseum in Vienna. He holds a professorship at the Staedelschule in Frankfurt am Main.

In 1967, the filmmaker began a process of ‘despecialization’, working also with music and cooking. By comparing the systems of articulation in various disciplines of art he developed his theoretical work on the uses of metaphor.

NICK LAVIERS is Head of Music at Electronic Arts/Bullfrog Productions. He wrote commercial music and programmed video games (pre-1989), looking for a way of reconciling music and technological interests. Having studied Digital Music Technology at Keele University (1989-90), specialising in C programming and Electroacoustic Music, he went on to work for the Composers Desktop Project in York (1990-91), optimising programs for their Atari-based digital audio workstation. He returned to Keele to complete a degree in Electronic Music and Computer Science (1991-95), while writing and performing Electroacoustic works around the UK and designing the software for a white light activated MIDI instrument. Due to a lack of funds, Laviers had to turn down a place to read a DPhil at Oxford. Instead he joined Electronic Arts as a technical specialist (1995) and became head of music in 1997. Since then he has worked on a number of video game titles in various roles including Privateer 2:The Darkening, FIFA Soccer Manger, F.A. Premiere League Football Manager 99 and Populous: The Beginning.

KIRSTY MALCOLM has over sixteen years experience in television and films, combining producing with research. She has worked extensively in documentaries and drama, specialising in co-productions. Her credits include the feature film Darkness Covers the Earth (Antenne 2/NDR/RTP); Round IX, coverage of the Documenta art event (Illuminations for Channel 4); The World of Geo (Bertelsmann for BBC/Discovery; for four years she chaired sessions for the European Association of Animation Film (CARTOON). Recently she co-produced The Score, a documentary directed by Michael Grigsby for BBC 2 and the Arts Council of England’s Sound on Film series. This is her second year overseeing the School of Sound event.

SIMON McBURNEY is Co-founder and Artistic Director of Theatre de Complicite. He studied at Cambridge and trained in Paris. Since 1983, he has devised, directed and acted in 23 productions with the Company which have toured all over the world and won numerous major international awards. His work ranges from ground-breaking devised projects including The Street of Crocodiles, The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol and Out of a house walked a man… to reinterpretations of classics such as The Caucasian Chalk Circle (RNT) for which he won a 1998 Laurence Olivier Award and in which he played the Judge Azdak. Most recently he directed The Chairs, which was seen on Broadway, and was nominated for six Drama Desk Awards and six Tonys, including best director. Simon is currently working on projects for the Swedish Stadsteater and the National Theatre of Japan. As an actor he has performed extensively for radio and television and in feature films including Kafka, Tom and Viv, Being Human, Mesmer, The Ogre and Cousin Bette and, most recently, Eugene Onegin with Ralph Fiennes due for 1999 release.

MIGUEL MERA is a composer and researcher. He read music at York University where he studied composition with Trevor Wishart and Roger Marsh and film composition with David Kershaw. Miguel is currently the Acting Pathway Leader for the MMus Composition for Screen course at the Royal College of Music. He was recently involved in ‘Playing to Pictures’, a joint project with the British Film Institute and MOMI Education that enabled school children to perform live musical accompaniments to extracts of silent film.

Miguel’s publications include: ‘An Interview with Julian Nott’, ‘Read My Lips: Re-evaluating Subtitling and Dubbing in Europe’, and “Towards a Better Soundscape’. He also composes music for film, television and theatre. Recent works include: Fugee Girl for Channel 4/Vicarious Productions; The Screaming Skull for the Regent’s Park Theatre; Under Milk Wood and, The Son-in-Law, for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Forthcoming projects include the feature film Three Days, the animated short Last Best Friend, and Ibsen’s Ghosts at the Theatre Royal, Plymouth.

JAKE MILTON spent his childhood in Nigeria where his father was working as a broadcast engineer, so his first influences were a mixture of African music and industrial morse on short wave radio. After training as a jazz musician he was contracted to Island Records and RCA, spending many years either touring or working in recording studios. Jake now has his own small studio and currently divides his time between composing music for records and television or performing live.

PHIL PARKER is a screenwriter, a consultant and Course Director of the MA screenwriting programme at the London College of Printing. A leading figure in the creation of a new generation of screenwriters in the UK, he has lectured at the Royal College of Art, Napier University, and Birkbeck College. His students have won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, an Oscar nomination, Best European Student Film, and festival awards, as well as writing for major UK television drama series such as Casualty, The Bill, East Enders, Berkeley Square, City Central and Coronation Street.

Currently involved in several new initiatives aimed at promoting new writers from ethnic and minority communities in the UK, he also provides a series of lectures and seminars for the Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television. His book on a new approach to screenwriting, The Art and Science of Screenwriting, was published in 1998, and will form the basis of a distance learning unit of the pan-European film school on the web, ‘Journeyman’. He is currently planning his first short film and working on a low budget feature.

NEIL PEPLOW decided to launch himself on the world of film- making by joining the underestimated ranks of runner. He worked on a host of commercials and films, and eventually joined Ealing Studios in 1994, where he acted as Studio Manager. There he met Richard Holmes and was later invited to join The Gruber Brothers as Development Executive under the Chrysalis Films umbrella. Whilst there, Neil raised money through the MEDIA project and successfully applied for a National Lottery grant from the Arts Council of England for £1,000,000.

Neil went on to co-produce Shooting Fish, starring Kate Beckinsale and Stuart Townsend in 1996 which has since been sold to Fox Searchlight and grossed £4.2 million in the UK alone. His most recent project was Waking Ned. Shot on the Isle of Man, Waking Ned was sold in Cannes to Fox Searchlight after a bidding frenzy. It was released through Fox Searchlight in the US and was released in the UK in March 1999.

Peplow is currently co-chair of the New Producer’s Alliance.

ROBERTO PERPIGNANI was born in Rome in 1941. Having studied Fine Art, in 1962 Roberto had an experience which redirected his ambitions toward the cinema, spending a whole year collaborating with Orson Welles on a series of films about Spain called In the Land of Don Quijote and on The Trial, both in Rome and Paris. Starting in 1963, he entered a long partnership with Bernardo Bertolucci on a number of films including The Spider’s Stratagem and Last Tango in Paris. Since 1968, he has also worked with the Taviani brothers on, amongst others, Under the Sign of the Scorpion, Allonsanfan, Padre Padrone, La Notte di San Lorenzo, Kaos, Good Morning Babylon. Roberto Perpignani has edited over 100 films working with, among many others, Michael Radford (Il Postino), Krzysztof Zanussi and Susan Sontag.

He has taught the Editing Course at the National Film School (now the Centro Sperimentale de Cinematografia) in Rome since 1977. He’s a member of the Instituto Cinematografico dell’ Acquila as well as lecturing at the Accademia Internazionale per le Arti e le Scienze dell’Imagine and teaching short courses across Italy and in most of the capitals of Europe. Perpignani has also written monographs on Greek philosophy

PIERS PLOWRIGHT was born in London in 1937 and spent a lot of his childhood listening to the radio and going to the near- by Everyman Cinema where he saw the classics of European, American and Asian cinema. After a time teaching in Borneo, Tran, and the Sudan, he joined the BBC in 1968, working first for the overseas service and then moving to the Radio Drama Department where he discovered the power of the radio documentary and feature. Since 1977 he has been making radio programmes about real people and events but which often make use of the techniques and structure of drama. He has also been much influenced by film and its use of sound.

Piers has won two Italia Prizes and a RAI prize for his radio documentaries and, most recently, a Gold Award for documentaries in the 1997 Sony Awards and ditto in 1998 for ‘Services to Radio’.

JOCELYN POOK studied violin and viola at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama after which she toured for three years with the Communards. She has appeared in A Place in Europe (Impact Theatre Co-op), Paradise (Lumiere and Son Theatre Company) and has composed music for several DV8 Physical Theatre productions (My Body, Your Body, Strange Fish, MSM). She has also composed scores for Insomniac Productions as well as contributing music on various Derek Jarman films including Caravaggio and Edward II, in which she also appeared.

In 1994, she was commissioned to write a three minute opera, The Alien, for a BBC TV series Mad About Music, and followed that with music for the Omnibus documentary about Keats. She has written pieces for Dance on Film (Mothers and Daughters) and her music for Strange Fish (DV8) won the Prix Italia Award in 1994. She recently collaborated with film-maker John Smith on the acclaimed BBC2 short, Blight.

Jocelyn co-founded Electra Strings who have performed with a range of artists including Peter Gabriel, PJ Harvey, Nick Cave, Paul Weller and the Manic Street Preachers. She also plays for Regular Music I and is a founding member of 3 or 4 Composers.

More recently, she has been commissioned to write the music for a documentary history of the Papacy, Saints and Sinners, and Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, starring Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise.

LARRY SIDER is the Director and co-founder of the School of Sound. He studied Radio-TV-Film at Northwestern University (Chicago) before coming to London in 1976 to work with Peter Wollen and Laura Mulvey on Riddles of the Sphinx, a relationship that continued through many of their features and documentaries. Since then he has worked extensively with Keith Griffiths and Koninck Studios, editing and sound designing with the Brothers Quay (Street of Crocodiles, The Comb, Anamorphosis, Institute Benjamenta), Patrick Keiller (London, Robinson in Space) and Simon Pummell (Secret Joy, Rose Red, Butchers Hook). His work crosses between documentary, drama and animation as evidenced in projects that include The Brother With Perfect Timing, interview and re- creation about the jazz pianist Abdullah Ibrahim (d. Chris Austen); Death and The Mother, the prize-winning animated short (d. Ruth Lingford) and My Mama Done Told Me, a documentary about romance and torch songs (d. Elizabeth Taylor-Mead). He is a regular lecturer at the Royal College of Art and the Surrey Institute of Art and Design, has taught seminars on post-production and contributed to the periodical ‘PIX’ and ‘Filmwaves’ magazine.

OWE SVENSSON, sound mixer, sound editor and location recordist, was born in 1944 and studied at the Swedish Film Institute’s Film School from 1967-69. Immediately after graduating, he worked with Roy Andersson on A Love Story and one year later he began his partnership with Ingmar Bergman on Cries and Whispers. Since then he has collaborated with Bo Widerberg (All Things Fair), Liv Ullmann (Kristin Lavransdotter), Lars Molin (Tattooed Widow), Jan Troell (A Frozen Dream) and Bergman (Fanny and Alexander). In 1986, Owe created the soundtrack for Andrei Tarkovsky’s last film, The Sacrifice.

RANDY THOM: “I began doing sound work in my early twenties. At first I recorded sounds for, and later produced, radio plays and documentaries for public radio. After five years of doing that kind of work, I decided to attempt to get into the business of doing sound for movies. A year and a half of banging my head against the apparently impervious walls set up to keep people out of the movie trades left me just about ready to give up, but I had one more phone call in me. I had heard about this guy named Walter Murch. The short version of the story is that he hired me to work on Apocalypse Now, and I’ve been doing sound (recording, editing, designing, mixing) for movies ever since. I’ve been nominated for eight Academy Awards, and received an Oscar for The Right Stuff. What is most important to me about my work these days is to develop and promote the idea that films have to be designed for sound, rather than sound designed for films. In my spare time I’m writing a book on Sound Design.”

Thom’s other credits include Contact, Starship Troopers, Mars Attacks, Jumanji, Forrest Gump and Wild at Heart.

PAUL WEBSTER is the Chief Executive of Film Four Ltd., overseeing the commissioning, production and financing of feature films for Channel Four. Paul was Managing Director of theatrical distribution company, Palace Pictures, for six years. In 1990 he relocated to Los Angeles to set up and run Working Title’s operation and then moved into production with his credits including four projects for PolyGram — The Tall Guy, Drop Dead Fred, Bob Roberts and Gridlock’d — as well as Little Odessa for Fine Line and The Pallbearer for Miramax. Most recently, he was Senior Executive V.P. for Worldwide Production at Miramax Films, supervising such productions as The English Patient, The Wings of the Dove, Welcome to Sarajevo and The Rise and Fall of Little Voice.

JON WOZENCROFT is the Managing Editor of the audiovisual publishers, Touch, for whom he designs, art directs, occasionally records and has the privilege of collaborating with some of the most adventurous music-makers of today. He is the author of The Graphic Language of Neville Brody 1 & 2, published by Thames & Hudson in 1988 and 1994. In 1990, he and Brody set up FUSE, a critical forum for the impact of digital media on typography. Other favourite projects in the last few years have been Vagabond (magazine co-edited with Jon Savage, 1992), The Hafler Trio, Stepping into the Dark and Scala (new music, 1988-98) and Joy Division’s Heart and Soul box set. Wozencroft is a tutor in the School of Communication Design at the Royal College of Art. He lectures extensively. Lives in London.

AMOS ZAMORSKI survived his days as an A&R man (where he committed the cultural crime of inflicting Sonia on an unsuspecting Europe) to become one of the most influential producers and remixers in the Manchester dance scene working with, amongst others, PWL, Factory and Duritti Column. With DJ Dave Kendrick, he is one-half of the Latin trip-disco outfit, Castro, whose first single topped the dance charts in the UK. As well as working extensively in television (BBC, Granada, Channel 4, BSkyB), Amos sound designs for a variety of multimedia projects and lectures on sampling and remixing. He is currently Musical Director of Illumina Ltd. on a number of projects exploring the potential for live remixing of video and music.