Benji Clifford - Wired for Sound // Doctor Who : The Sirens of Audio Episode 75

0:00 hello this is nicholas briggs and you're listening to the sirens of audio message from cybercontrol you must subscribe to the sirens of audio on youtube today or you will be deleted [Music]

0:54 good day audio files you are listening to the sirens of audio the doctor who podcast that explores doctor who in the audio media my name is dwayne and my name is philip g'day dwayne good day audiophiles and we are privileged today to be joined by the legendary podcast and sound dyn sound design extraordinaire uh benji clifford absolute pleasure to be here gentlemen thank you for having me on it yeah welcome benji great to have you here now absolutely benji there's been a bit of sad news this week that i've discovered over the last couple of days the um the benji and nick show is coming to an end in a few weeks what's happening yes it's it's a real it's a real shame um we've been doing the benjin nick show which is a vintage tv podcast where we talk about tv from the

1:40 past we've been doing that for quite a few years now and um we've just found recently really in the past kind of six months to a year that our workload has just increased so much we're doing loads of exciting work not just big finish work we're working for other companies like anderson entertainment and stuff like that and so we've just found that our time and as you know that our need for utilizing that time has gone up and so we had to sort of make a sacrifice and unfortunately the benjamin nick show seemed like the the only thing really we could do to to give ourselves some more time um which is a shame i'm you know i'm really sad to stop doing it we've built up such a lovely community of people and vintage tv fans and uh and that and so it would be sad to

2:27 say goodbye to that but um we'll still be doing the uh the um the big finish podcast so there'll still be a bit of podcast madness every week that's good but i mean the audience just never came back after nick uh ripped into the tripods did they well it's funny you should say that actually because i got a phone call from my friend robin uh robin hater who was in uh the tripod series two and he played fritz uh and he phoned me up and he said what's all this i heard about you you snagging off the tripods and i said well hold on i said you listen to it i'm defending the tripod it's nick that's going against it um but yeah i think we the audience was very split on that one i think 50

3:13 absolutely agree with everything that nick said and the other 50 like myself will fight to the death to defend the tripods absolutely or i want to talk to you um about your sound design but before we do that do you know what i see up ahead phillip do you know what i say oh no it's a rabbit hole here we go alright so go with me on this fellas go with me um i was watching the other day uh abbott and costello with my kids so i bet you don't know where this is going to go it's i am going to tie it into audio

3:58 stuff eventually but what i found i was thinking was that with the slapstick humor i was hearing little gasps of intake of breath with my kids with the with the violence that was going on on screen and i suddenly realized that my kids don't see that kind of violence even in a comedic sense portrayed on tv these days and it got me thinking about doctor who as well particularly episodes like the mind of evil you've got you've got people getting shot on screen dropping dead remember the seeds of doom with tom baker snapping that guy's neck and well not snapping his neck but sort of twisting his neck and you heard the creak noise and

4:44 there's there seems to be a a heck of a lot of violence in the olden days that we don't get today um have you have you noticed um what is it are we are we not as resilient teaching our kids resilience anymore or is it a good thing that we've left those things behind what do you think about that benji i think there's pros and cons to this sort of thing really i mean do you know first and foremost it's you do you want your kids to be exposed to violence uh ideally i i don't think i'd want my kids to to be watching violent things i've been i've not got kids so you know uh to be watching violent things if i don't know about it but equally it's important to see things and and be exposed to these things i mean

5:32 for me growing up i never thought about things in such a deep way i sometimes think that they think too much of kids it's like you know when i was a kid i remember one of my earliest memories actually was coming downstairs um it was past my bedtime i couldn't sleep for whatever reason i came downstairs and my parents were watching the spy who loved me and it was the end of that film uh with you know the bit where they're all the people are storming through the underground the water base with the submarines there's explosions and guns and you know punch-ups and all this sort of stuff and i didn't sit there and think you know they're firing guns this is all for this is really scary i was just captivated by what i was seeing and in a non-kind of i don't know it never distressed me in

6:19 that way so but i do think there's you know there's definitely a lack of it television and film as well as mostly television is a lot sort of more protected i think for kids so who knows particularly the gun violence you just don't see in in the revived series of doctor who you don't see those uh on-screen deaths like even that we did in in the old series it's like uh i think mary whitehouse would be very happy that we've come so far [Laughter] what are your thoughts on that phillip well it's interesting i mean as you talk about avid costello and their slapstick um violence which is you know it's it's huge actually my earliest memories of aberdeen costello was actually in london

7:04 at my grandfather's house he had aberd castello films in the on the old projectors and he used to pull out a projector which i know i now own and i actually got the i've got one of the films still and pull out the old abbott and castello movies and he actually put them through the projector and set them all up and we used to watch them on a wall and so that was my first experience with avid because they were totally silent because it was just a silent projector so it was just the images but i just remember it being so funny and so hilarious in this so i think there is still violence in some areas so if you go to the marvel universe that is all violence it's all punching hitting and carrying on um and a lot of computer games that my kids are playing are very violent as well i can't stand them um but you're right doctor who bases the show came back stepped back

7:51 and so you can shoot people with guns you can you know dalek raised and things are all okay i guess i think some of the cyberman's shock when the submarine first returned was the fact they used to they touched and electrocuted so i actually think it was actually that physical touch which actually made that death very compelling but by the time they came back at the end of season two they had their guns which actually in some ways made the death less real um i do remember talking about the fact that the trouble with war now being more technological is you don't get to look in the person's eyes of the person you're killing because when you look in their eyes it's hard to go through with it so i think as we've moved further away from that actual seeing the violence hurt the ease is to become more violent but yeah i think i think it depends on the world you move on do you think

8:36 doctor who has moved away from the physical violent stuff the 50 coffees that tom baker used to occasionally get up to but there's they can find in other places and other universes still have it quite a bit i think i think doctor who as well is is made to be an export as well and so in order to to export something like that to other countries you've got to make sure that it's not too controversial you know because in even back then bits of doctor who thank goodness they were cut now because they're some of the only existing clips we've got we come to bits are straight when it rolled australia we cut we cut it up to like to buggery kept all the best bits but you know it's it's so i can see i can see the logic behind making it slightly less uh violent and and terrifying

9:24 because then you can sell it on to other countries and they can watch it they don't have to worry it's good family entertainment you can put it on whenever you like in the day yeah it's funny you talk about the cuts philip i when uh when i eventually saw the uncut version of the case of andrazani i couldn't recognize it it was totally different there was so much cut from that it was incredible that last episode just jumped and it's like what what has just happened like yeah because they cut the whole unmasking and everything so you sort of yeah there's about three characters who died you don't even see on screen die and so you got to the end what happened to all these people because they were just gone and that was quite late i mean william hartnell and travis got cut to pieces that was but you know peter davis much later on he was standing with these to cut out so benji how does that translate to

10:09 to audio what what are we allowed to hear as far as violence goes on audio do the bbc have rules on on what we can what we can hear or how much we can hear portrayed or is it because we don't see it is it no holds barred i mean everything that we produce has to go through the bbc you know ultimately to get clearance um and it's very i mean we've got such a you know we've been working with bbc for such a long time now that you know we know what they expect and what they don't expect i have actually worked on releases where um we've had to cut things back because it's been too frightening or it's been too graphic and sometimes it's a simple thing as well sometimes this is a really interesting thing from

10:54 a sound effects perspective you can actually we've had productions before where for example the villains are using guns guns as in the guns that we have that you know firing ammunition and bullets and it's amazing how uh we've had moments where we say well let's swap those guns out for laser sounds instead you know science fiction weapons and you can change dramatically change your production from being graphically violent to sort of fantastically violent in a different way and so it's more accepting for people and we have done that on a multitude of different occasions actually and it's just helped something to be a little bit less uh frightening for people but yeah you know it's about being mindful really def definitely but there's yeah we we

11:40 have cut plenty of stuff but you know in my time working there definitely it was just making me think of one of the most scary scenes in the whole big finish catalog was not from doctor who obviously um because you've got scarier stuff out there but um nick nick briggs doing uh he did a he did some kind of monologue in frankenstein when he was doing frank i don't know if you remember the what i'm referring to exactly but there was a scene there towards the end where he was just talking about what he was doing to his victims and it was just absolutely horrific and he was just doing it with words and the tone of voice it was just incredible and that was that was very scary very very scary so frankenstein though isn't it a little bit of it is spine chilling action yeah

12:27 yeah it's really good now interesting conversation guys let's get out of the rabbit hole and we'll uh let's let's talk to you uh benji about uh about some of your audio work but first how did have you have you always been a doctor who fan always yeah a doctor who is responsible for so many things including a career before uh you know working for big finish was was the end result of years of just being a doctor who fan and making doctor who things on my own for fun so yeah i've always loved doctor who my first memory of doctor who was when i was young and i went into this age me so i went into blockbusters which don't exist anymore video rentals bring them back i say um i went into there and

13:14 there was a collection of vhs tapes you know the old dock there's only about four i think death to the daleks genesis of the daleks and sometimes experiment revenge of the sideburn wasn't there actually it wasn't there i know i was i was surprised i know you know years later there's the double one there was also the spiders um planet the spiders and i think that might be it maybe the peter cushing films time warrior said no no i wish time warrior was there that's one of my favorite stories um but when i watched them i you know i saw them i think my mum at the time she said oh i remember that's doctor who i watched that when i was younger so he got it out and i just fell in love with it and those things i mean they might as well have belonged to me because i just kept re-renting them i just wanted to watch them again and again and started a

14:01 lifetime so how old were you then oh gosh i would have been probably about i don't know maybe six or seven i would say so because doctor who wasn't on when i was when i was younger i i grew up in the wilderness years so a lot of my doctors are fan film doctors and fan audio doctors you know people like chris hoyle and uh you know matthew chambers and uh people like that who are you know lovely people they they were making fan films and fan audios that was my doctor who was watching these people on the very early listening to these people in the early internet would be allowed now well that's different a different world now it was a really you know back then you typed doctor who into um into google and you just get a couple of pages you

14:46 know i remember there was um s hill pages which is stephen hill who um i ended up meeting at a convention i think he was slightly baffled when i said are you the guy that runs the website with the doctor who pictures on he said well i did about a million years ago yes and i said i remember that website so yeah you know i've always loved it for as long as i can really remember how did you get into um audio design it was a an interesting thing so obviously um big finish has been around for a lot of my life i'm 29 at the moment so big finish has been around for a lot of that and so i've been listening to big finish from quite a young age um and as well as like i said uh you

15:31 know a lot of the fan audios as well and so i started just playing around you know inviting friends over getting behind microphones cameras um i started then it moved on to another stage where on like message boards on online you'd say looking for any actors or anybody who wants to get involved and you get other doctor who fans writing in with their computer microphones you know we record just on our own and then i piece them together and do some post-production work on which is kind of weird because that's essentially what i've been doing for the past two years with coronavirus is doing it the old-fashioned way so it's not really been much of a shock because i've it just feels very how i started you know and so i started doing that and that was kind of my my interest in production

16:17 came through from working on you know these fan audios and that i ended up um sending one in somebody told me uh to just go for it and see you know and i didn't think anything of it i was working uh at a at a hospital at the time a mother and baby hospital um and i just sent one off to big finish and said you know um if you've got any work experience or anything i'd love to just be able to you know do something with you guys got reply back from ian who said i'm not you know i don't think we've got any work experience stuff i'm really sorry you know and i thought okay well whatever so thank you so much and then i got an email back about a minute later said actually can i just

17:02 send this on to nick so i thought yeah be my guest nick heard it and you know i had to do a small audition piece and then ever since then back to back i've been working for big finish so it's just been years of great fun so it all goes back to that same sort of couple of friends huddling around a microphone being doctor who so if you meet someone in the pub and they ask you what you do how do you describe what you do it's a good question that's a very good question uh i i tend to tell people um i'd usually say i make sound effects and write music and then that usually is a good way to lead into conversation because if i say uh you know i make audio drama people kind of they don't

17:48 think what podcasts or you know so by saying i do that that opens up questions what type of sound effects do you do and i say well i do a lot of things like doctor who and stuff like that and it leads on to conversation but yeah i mean it's it's a wacky job so it's definitely not the job i expected to be doing and i as you can hear i make all my own sound effects i've got people downstairs building a bathroom i expected to be in a studio um but the guy building it broke his hand or certainly hurt his hand so i'm at home and i've got a bathroom being built underneath me so i'm so sorry to everybody watching and listening for the the noises will it update later the pictures of the bathroom yeah oh definitely i'll make sure they're there so do you remember your first job with big finish yes it was counter measures series four

18:35 um and i was really excited because i love um remembrance of the daleks anyway with those characters and so to and i love the past as you know you know vintage tv podcast i love anything set in the past so it's a marriage you know made in heaven really for me to work with these great characters in the 1960s setting i was absolutely terrified beyond belief uh to do the job uh because you know you go from being in kind of you know anything goes you're your own your own boss with this one you know you're writing you're directing your own stuff you're just playing around it doesn't really matter so suddenly people are going to buy these things i've got a director and a producer and they've got actors in it who are well-known actors who are very good you know and so

19:21 yeah i was i was terrified but i had so much fun with that one and i think you know every audio you do you kind of learn a little bit more and so i'm too scared to listen back to it now in case i'm not happy with it but i said it's worth the time it's very cool thank you yeah it really is wonderful thank you so much and of course you know i was absolutely awestruck as well because nick was doing the music and i didn't know nick at all then i'd never met him i only knew the legends that was you know nick briggs big finish daleks so i was scared and i wanted to make sure it was right and i thought he'll be listening to it you know you can't get you can't get more uh you know you can't get more up against it when you've got that kind of guy in charge listening to it all so it was yeah i loved it it's a great series i'm so glad we're still doing

20:06 bits and bobs of counter measures here and there coming soon from big finish productions counter measures series 4 box set there was a moment back there at new horizons it was as if i remembered something something terrible actions have consequences if anyone should know that it's youth what do i do just keep driving look out the gun alison rachel stay back how many people have died because of your blundering yeah no it's a dead man

20:53 switch what this is going to blow everybody up countermeasures is to cease any and all investigations into new horizons in short back off or else five four three two one one [Music] boom come on professor few more sleeping beauties out to the count i'm going to get us out they're a threat to the nation sergeant

21:39 and i order you to shoot them big finish we love stories where did you get involved do you go to were you at studio or do you just get delivered here's all the recordings go for it what point do you get involved so um i mean sometimes we go up to the studio just to hang out really or or to offer some tips if if if something's very specific they might want a sound designer there just to be able to say maybe we need a bit of this recorded but a lot of the time it gets recorded and we've got a multitude of different recording studios and then we it gets sent to me and i'm kind of just left to my own devices i might get uh some you know uh a sort of briefing from a director about what they

22:25 want but a lot of the time i'm left to my own devices and it's really up to the sound designers judgment to kind of deliver it to a director and hopefully be you know something that you think the director will like and is right for the script uh so it's a bit of judgment there but yeah it's it's scary how much freedom we get at the start actually to just you know hear the sounds hear the actors go for it so you so you're just told to come up with these sounds and you virtually from scratch yeah so a lot of it is it's just you know we read the scripts and it's it's down to the the art of the sound designer really is to interpret how you're going to do something and how it should sound because there are so many ways you can do a sound effect you can you know it's like they're they're it's

23:10 like throwing a punch is a really great example because you can do you can do the over-the-top hollywood punch which is like a sort of a whoosh and a slap and a power you know and it sounds like you've been punched in the face by superman or batman you can do a realistic one which is bit hardly any sound at all you know just a sort of little knock or you could go the other way and have a really gory you know punch i've just taken out two teeth and broken a nose um but it's all about the judgment for what you're doing and you think you know what where do i take this how do we want to do it you know there's a huge difference between sound design for doctor who and sound design for like survivors you know one is absolutely miserable end of the world stuff and the other is fun science fiction so it's it's so it's all about the judgment really and how you

23:56 approach it do different directors have more or less to say to you about what they want i we we spoke with ken bentley early in the year and he seems to be very much trusting people just handing everything over and say you know i'll do this part you just do with that and he seems to be more hands-off other directors seem to be a bit more directive have you found some directors of the one much more direction because what they want you to do or not every director is different because every director's studied in different ways and and comes from different backgrounds and has you know as we all do with doctor who um everybody's kind of got their own idea of what doctor who is and what it should be and so working with directors i mean i've worked with quite a few different directors now and i've never had a i've never had a time at big finish where i've thought

24:42 you know i can't get on with this person a lot of it is about you know i mean i would say the director i work the most with is ken actually and ken was my first director and so i've very quickly adapted the way that he likes working but you know it's it's different i've had phone calls before with different directors have said this is how i'd like to do things and others just say you know get on with it i'll just hear it in the end i think the other thing is people are so busy so a lot of the time it is a case of you know it's not like one director directing one thing it's the directors and producers are just making so much that there is an element of trust there to just say you know go for it see what happens so it's it's honestly it's a really personal thing it's just down to the different directors but they're always fab and

25:27 they're always lovely what's been your most challenging release oh most challenging release it's really difficult i often get asked that and people say you know what's the what's i mean ah it's a really difficult one i'd say a lot of the time i mean i can tell you the sort of genres that i find harder to do if that makes sense so like i find that the science fiction stuff is actually harder to do than that realistic stuff um which is really weird because you ask any other sound designer and they will say the absolute opposite i find a lot of the kind of science fiction stuff difficult because i it's very specific it has to sound a certain way to reflect what you're talking about and so you know it's for real life things we kind of

26:13 know what that sounds like you know what a door sounds like you just have to make it sound like the most dory door of all the doors but in science fiction stuff it's it's a lot more difficult i mean examples of things in doc you know i've had i think eight-legged camels which is surprisingly hard to get right in terms of how they walk around um that's that's a real challenge um and i've had other things which are surprisingly easy like the doctor eating his way through a gingerbread house that was the easiest sound effects job of my life you've got to sit and eat gingerbread all day that's marvellous so but it's really hard for me to think on the spot kind of what are difficult things because i've just done so so many things and what's once what's the challenge at the time you sort of forget because at the end it's all done it's a really weird sort of thing

26:58 you did stranded didn't you i certainly did yeah so philip was was stranded the um the set that i remember you saying once that you were distracted by someone making a cup of tea it wasn't that good yeah i think it's i think it's box set one and since there's a second episode um there's a couple the doctors there's something a cup of tea and i was yeah the whole focus was this rotten cup of tea being made because it's it's every bit of the sound happening there and i remember just liberty and the kettle boiling and the the teaspoon around the cup and it was just yeah i had to go back into the scene again because mr dialogue sorry it was too good i mean with with that that's that's a you know with stranded actually that

27:44 that was a sort of brief within itself is is to kind of because we're taking doctor who from its science fiction roots of spaceships and you know extravagant historical places and then taking it down to a you know a house on baker street live where the doctors living a normal life things like making a cup of tea are actually really important in kind of grounding people to the to where you're at because it's we all know how long a cup of tea takes to to make and actually ken bentley was a really you know great factor when we worked on survivors um his brief on that was you know when the characters here there's no electricity when they're making a cup of coffee or whatever they've got to boil the water we've got to have all this going on it can't be instant it can't be fast it's

28:30 real life and i've kind of carried that over to to stranded actually to to do that interesting just boring fact here when it comes to making a tea did you know that cold water and hot water sound completely different and it's important to use hot water actually when you're doing hot water things there we go okay really they really do honestly next time next time you've got next time you're in the kitchen right yep boil the boil the kettle pour some cork you know pour some cold water into a cup and pour it into a cup and then in another cup pour the hot water in and you will notice a different sound i guarantee it i wonder if it's got to do with this the steam or the reaction of the cold porcelain on hot water i don't know well the atoms would be further apart with the hot water but i

29:15 don't know let's break this right down boys science talk it's a weird thing from big finish productions doctor who the eighth doctor adventures stranded volume one she used every ounce of her strength to escape the crucible no control no navigation instinct brought her to a second home earth and she gave up the ghost you're saying you own a house oh this place isn't this baker street expensive area number 107 i made the investment a long time ago hello can i help you yes what are you doing in my house the past few days everyone's becoming more paranoid that there could be someone or something else in the house the idea of

30:03 spending the rest of my life here there are worse places to live in planet earth the tardis isn't responding at all well we knew it'd be difficult i really think i might not get her back dr liv's been shot i thought it was safe here but we've lived our lives so dangerously for so long that we've forgotten death lurks everywhere driving a car walking the street working in a shop a police box on cameron road i'm old enough to remember what this was really useful big finish we love stories but if we're going to be stuck here a while we might as well give the walls a lack of pain i'm a time lord i don't do up kitchens one of your recent releases so you're probably working on this last

30:48 year um was the the unzil incursion so you did half of the box set the the last third doctor box set was were you working on that this year or was that a last year job that was this year yeah only a few months ago yeah okay that was a great fun i you know it's my favorite time in doctor who is purchaser of stuff so why is that your favorite time i don't know i i think partly just growing up and watching it i think obviously you when you're exposed to your first kind of doctor who stuff you have a soft spot for it but i like the i love the 70s as a time and i like that grounded nature of it and you know i think there's something you're just sure you weren't born for that's all yeah yeah well i mean is that a good thing maybe it is i don't know you know so a lot of people say oh you can like

31:34 it from a nostalgic perspective but when you live through it it's different and it probably is so techy everything everybody says it's tacky it was horrible everything was you know rubbish but i i like this i like this time with doctor who i love john pertwee is the third doctor i love his mixture of wisdom comedy and you know and action actually in there there's that wonderful level of he can do it all and i i really love that and also you know the companions we had so many you know great companions in that time this show you know joe grant and sarah jane smith it's like oh it's just it's just a pocket in time that i love and so being able to work on that timing doctor who was something that i'd wanted to do for such a long time and i was just so happy to be able to do it

32:22 so so here in australia i still remember the year 1984 the third doctor was being shown from from the very beginning i had my cassette recorder pressed up against the tv recording a couple of episodes of doctor who and the salurians so because of the regular repeats we had we had doctor repeating every day through through the 80s to the late 80s um i i always see the third doctor as my doctor even though i was born the year that katie manning left because it was showing i still feel like the third doctor was my doctor strangely enough because he was on the tv in the 80s here in australia it's that exposure isn't it the exposure that you're used to and it becomes something that's very it's doctor who's such a personal thing

33:08 you know this is what i say everybody's idea and everybody's memories are so different you know i have people who who swear blind that you know 80s doctor who is the only doctor who and anything before it is just not it's not the same show and you know some people doctor who stopped when william arnold left it's a very weird thing so no shows quite like that i don't think yeah what i loved about the unzell incursion was your attention to detail in getting it to sound exactly like it was from from that era right down to the to the opening sting of ambassadors of death style sting of the theme and i i really love that and i guess with you and nick working on that

33:53 together there would have been lots and lots of attention to detail yeah i mean if you know this is the type of stuff that we're talking about even when we're not working on it you know it's it's we we just we love doctor whom we love this particular time as well um and we're also you know we're into the detail we love that details the little bits of stuff that really does it for us and and it's important you know for me it's a responsibility as a as a creator and as a fan of doctor to get it right because the people that listen to doctor who are people that love doctor who and people that have re-watched those vhs tapes and dvds a million times over you know and so if something doesn't sound right our fans are gonna know and that you know they'll still appreciate a good story but they'll it'll take them out of what's going on

34:40 and so the process for that was you know i was delving in um i've digitized all my dvds for this purpose of going in and nipping sound effects when i need them and part of that was you know going through doctor's lab sound effects and and making it a complete clear background so we've got that noise in there it's just all little bits like that which just help because subliminally when you listen to it you just know where you are because you you know where those places are it's just for me i just like the details you know so i remember i did a story once where the dot whether tardis power levels are down and i added in the little noise from death to the daleks where you know and he goes like that and all that wow wow that stuff with the engines inside added all this stuff in

35:26 do people notice it i don't know probably not but i notice it and i really like it and i know it's there and that for me is what it's all about from big finish productions doctor who the third doctor adventures volume seven all personnel stand by for satellite response efficiency test grab your weapon i'm an old soldier it's very difficult to teach me new tricks doctor activate receptor coils activating receptor coils you against the machine i think you'd find the results enlightening good work sergeant they reckon you're a space wizard or something do they indeed the doctor is dangerous he's just one man well let's

36:12 just say i'm a scientist without portfolio what the devil do you think you're doing international pressure points are being neutralized excellent by the way hey whoa doctor the door hold on as if your life depends on it because it does doctor the doctor and unit will be in no position to stand in our way [Music] the gulf look at the light of the moons the way it skims the waves it makes them look like mouse

36:59 maybe the brigade left the taps running you need to leave them running for an awfully long time sarah this is an ocean world just think of the water bill it's lovely to see you is it of course it is such a delight to see new faces i may be able to help we don't need any help doctor i hope not i'm sorry no ships no radio you may be self-sufficient madam but if something goes wrong you're very much on your own out here it's coming inside the sea screams at night what are they sirens mermaids but they're worse than that are those tendrils tentacles one falsehood is going to collapse i know it hurts

37:44 but i can ease the pain i focus all my mental strength i break away from this diameter big finish we love stories recently we reviewed um on the podcast the feast of axos and i can't remember who the sound designer was for that one but the attention to detail was so good uh on that it just it took me right back uh because clause of axos doesn't get a lot of love from fandom in general but um but i certainly do love that one and um it's a great story i i absolutely love the claws of axos and uh so the music was by jamie robertson and the sound designers by jay robertson but there you go you know the guy is growing i love jamie uh he's a he's a genius

38:30 um i've got very good close work in relation with him because we work together on the eighth doctor stuff which is kind of my main doctor who range but he's great he's a details guy and again he's somebody that he loves he loves doing the work he loves he you know he'll get a kick out of making a sound and listening to it back and thinking oh that's great it sounds really good it's that passion you know that that we all kind of really enjoy making noise yeah so do you um you mentioned before that you you digitized the episode so you can go on and get sound so you actually lift the sounds from from the series don't create them from scratch it it depends entirely on what it is and how clean it is and if it's needed you know i like to stick there are some

39:15 things that you just simply can't ignore says things like you know tardis sound effects that are very specific to a time in doctor who it's very difficult you know you have to make sure that you get them right and you know i mean here's an example of something actually that kind of marries them both together so for example if you look at the doors in the third doctor um tardis console room on the inside when they open you've got that very familiar noise now obviously what what you get is the sound effect on top of the on you know with with an image of a door opening so you know very clearly that the door is opening but in audio you might not know that there's a door that's opening you just hear a weird noise so part of that is taking these sound effects and then what i do is add in some noises of maybe the hinges of the door you know the

40:01 doors creaking open you know might even add in the door whacking onto the set which they are pinging back but yeah it's taking these sounds and modifying them a little bit making them a little bit clearer for audio for people to know so that people don't have to necessarily think about what it is because they know what it is rather than if you don't come from a doctor who background and you've been given it for the first time you might just be thinking what on earth is that yeah so it's it's a mixture it's a mixture but i i like to i'd like to surprise fans and reward fans for listening keenly by putting things in that they might hear and think oh that was we're doing a dalek story and there's a really obscure you know dalek sound effect in there i think it just you know so i i always use the um

40:46 original dalek city door sound effects from uh the first episode again same technique adding in some metal sort of lift noise sounds so it sounds like you can hear the the corrugated metal sweeping up um and i add that in because i think you know if it one fan notices that listen saying god that's the original it just adds it adds a bit of extra excitement you think great you know we're really they're as nerdy as we are you know i love those details yeah you didn't work on this one but um return to scar last year just blew me away that was how it wasn't at howard carter that would have been yeah i believe so i think i did did i do the trailer for that i might have done some sound effects for the trailer um but yeah yeah he's again he's

41:31 fantastic he's such a nice man as well musical genius do you do much music yourself sometimes you know i've been doing non-stop music recently um i've for two jerry anderson releases i've just done the music for five star five which is out this week uh and i've also been doing some music for stingray uh but i don't do as much music as some of the others um mainly because you know a lot of the musical posts have kind of established for various ranges but to be honest i'm actually really happy doing the sound effects i actually enjoy that all the others will say they like doing music more but i honestly i really enjoy the sound effects side of things a lot more so i'm happy not doing as much music but if i'm wanted for music i'll always do it i do enjoy it

42:18 when it comes up one piece of music that you did work on this year that i was actually on a walk when i listened to it for the first time and gave me goosebumps it was the the space 1999 theme oh yeah so what what did you do with that you revamped that how did you go about that so that was uh that was i i one of the things i like doing is kind of decomposing things so sitting listening working out all the individual layers for that going through it and yeah rebuilding it from the ground up the reason we redo these themes is largely down to licensing and so it's a lot easier for us to actually remake them rather than license out the original recordings but obviously when you're handling these things you know it's become a weird um

43:05 sort of sub thing for me is that i've ended up remaking a lot of older themes with space 1999 adam adam and stingray um with something like that it's just important to get it right i mean part of me is always really apprehensive because you just can't how can you replace real brass bands and huge orchestras and especially recorded with all the gusto or somebody like barry gray who's a genius and you replace that with you know computer-based sounds it's not the same but you just have to make the best of what you do and i just try to to get it as real as possible and then the geeky side comes through so i actually a lot of them i've got a friend who has a tape player like a proper quarter-inch

43:50 tapes analog studio so i often run these old themes through that just to give it a little bit of an extra kind of analog feel just makes it it helps to blend these cold digital sounds because whilst it may be recorded in you know the top you know you know top studios in the world it's still just coming through a computer and played by a guy at home so putting it through a tape just gives that little bit of warmth to it which i think helps bond it together so space 1999 was yeah all of that we had chris thompson recently watching his talk about his movies that he's made and we played both both the movies and both because that theme is just spectacular and the merge of that with his visuals just very powerful

44:50 [Music] [Applause] are you here [Music] green [Music]

45:54 [Applause] [Music] thank [Music] he's great isn't he his stuff is so fantastic he's he's i tell you he's an art he's got an eye for detail when it comes to things i think this week he was making something and going slightly insane by the amount of buttons that he was having to 3d design into the frame but yeah you know it's about getting things right isn't it and just trying to please the people that care about it because there's always going to be people where you know if you if you turn on space 1999 the first thing you hear is the theme tune so you want it to at least sound like the theme tune rather than you turn

46:40 i think oh this is this is rubbish doesn't sound anything like it i'm not gonna bother with that well it's probably it's probably better than the original theme tune the mix is just amazing oh i don't know about that but certainly there's a few little elements in there we've added to just kind of make it a little bit i tried to contemporise it a little bit just to give it a bit of i think i added as kind of extra drum beat in there and a few little yeah a few little oomphie and bangs and bushes and things to get it going but you know largely it's just it's the same piece just just reproduced does did jamie um does does he have a say in what goes on with space 1999 or is that fully licensed you can do what you like with it um or is it someone else in the estate or how does that work

47:27 i think i think largely jamie has a lot of say with what they're doing i can't speak whole you know i can't speak for that really because i don't actually know a lot of the inner workings but i know that jamie is incredibly hands-on with with the you know and nick they both really care about these shows as well and so i mean i have to say you know when it comes to not just big finish but also anderson entertainment there's such a body of hard-working like-minded individuals you know that i've worked on quite a few different productions and these people it's the same sort of thing with doctor who really they really care about it and they know it inside out i think they know again they know where they can go and where they can't go and and so they don't need it doesn't need to become a sort of process of well i don't know if we were able to do that

48:13 because they the boundaries are very very obvious to them and so but that yeah i mean so exciting what we're doing with you know space 1999 it's great can um you talk us through um what the process in terms of what you do so actors turn up at the studio for a day or two they deliver all their lines they all get put digitally down does your job start when you get handed the script the director with his notes and the digital then what do you do from there so yep so i get all this stuff and i think blimey okay i've got a big job in my hands obviously read the script first things first make any notes yourself start planning it out so what i tend to do is i have a spreadsheet where i take every scene number and every location and i map it

49:00 down so that then i can work in what i call blocks so if you've got four four scenes set in the tardis i can use one kind of session for all of that and so i work out what needs doing what are the things that might need me to record some extra bits and bobs and other stuff that i've got in the library or i've already recorded myself um then it's down to cutting the dialogue so making sure that you use all the correct takes cut anything that's you know not working flag up any problems if you've got you know if the recording's garbled or something which can happen does the director tell you does the director tell you which takes he wants you to use or do you have a bit of say there too um it's so

49:46 the director lists down on the script to say you know take one take two usually it's default to the last take so if there's three takes of something you would go and use the third take on unless it specifies otherwise because that is the kind of the last take where the director is happy and says that's brilliant you know let's move on um but then in the script they might say use take two or for one line they might say use you know from take one um and even then we can use it but then it is our discretion at the same time we can say i use take two but it doesn't work or the recording's different or there could be miles away from the microphone and it sounds completely different and and so it's about getting that flow in place there um it's a collaborative process

50:33 and yeah after that it's just give some time so can we have a time frame so how long does it take you to break down the script originally how long to put the dialogue together okay so break i mean breaking down the script and and doing that that's you know you can do that in an hour that's just you know depending on how long the script is read through just write notes as you go a dialogue edit that can really vary on again the complexity of what you're working with if you've just got four actors in a room you can cut to dialogue edit together in about one or two days probably about two days if you've got something like that you know the kovid 19 style are working which is four different sources of audio recorded at different you know different places different then that's you know it could take you a week because you've got to go

51:19 through and find it and cut it and put it all together so it's kind of it really varies project to project um for that one and it's the same with productions really you know sometimes it's smooth sailing you're just in there and working and and it's easy and other times it can just go on forever so after you do the first dialogue cut does the director listen to that occasionally it depends on firstly what what the director wants to do whether they've got the time because a lot of them are really busy there's you know normally there's a level of trust there um so that can vary other times it's just you know crack on and so immediately you dive into doing the sound and you kind of just left your own devices and really then you if you have

52:06 things that you think are going to be problematic then you might send over a clip so like if i've got a monster voice i tend to send over like four or five different variations of what can be done and then say you know what do you think because then it's easier for me to establish some monster rather than do the whole thing and then they turn around and say don't like it you know do it again so but a lot that's probably the only collaborative aspect you get when you're in pro you know in production once you've finished something then you send it over and you await their notes and if they're merciful you'll get a few and if they're not merciful you'll get a lot um varies treatment of voices you always do in

52:52 this you do it later not done in studio at all very rare i think the daleks get done as in studio nick as his ring modulator occasionally the same is done for davoros i think we sometimes record davros on his own as well uh as two separate feeds um i think pretty much everything else is done in post yeah we don't we don't get any effects added on in studio what's the rationale behind that for nick why does he why why isn't it done post-production i think yeah i think there are various different reasons i think first and foremost it helps it helps with the uh performance to be able to be a dalek be a professional seems to love it when they hear it

53:38 well that's the other thing if you're an actor coming in you want to you know you're doing a dalek story you think great i'm doing a dialect story you want to act against a dalek you don't just want you know the experience of just a shouty man um but also i think from nick's perspective it's probably just down to the fact that he knows daleks very very well and he knows how to make them sound good and so it's probably easier for him to to just do them send them over and then he knows the sound designer doesn't need to get it wrong or do something that sounds weird it's kind of it's all you know all done for them basically is there anything that's been announced that uh you're working you've worked on that's coming out in the next couple of months or you just don't know what the schedules are um so

54:24 i've i mean out this week is sherlock holmes so that's that's on its way that's how very proud of that my first sherlock holmes uh love doing that completely different to anything i've done before um and then in terms of coming out in the next few months i mean i'm working on just starter work on stranded the new stranded stranded three and also um i'm going to be working on more survivors which is great because we we'd finished that and it's been revived uh and and so there's more of that so they're the two things i'm working on at the moment um and as well as that stingray and five star five so i've been i've been quite busy um that but yeah i mean i tend to just

55:10 mainly work on the eighth doctor stuff for doctor who really um i've been doing that for so long now so it's sort of it'd be weird not doing it i think so will you be working on the the new ranges that have been announced for next year too um if they want me yeah i think so i mean i i imagine so i tend to i have a great situation with big finish in that it's just kind of you know they'll just say you're doing this next it's not like even though i'm a freelancer so technically you know it's it's kind of like you know are you able to do this because a lot of the time it's like right you know we've got another eight doctor coming up blah blah blah so okay cool so you know i i don't i tend to just find out as and when i'm doing something and then i'm doing it and sometimes it's

55:55 a case of you know with sherlock holmes where it's like we've got sherlock holmes we're recording it this week you're able to do it but you know i told them they were in session recording it and they they messaged me and said you know you're able to do it and they're in session ken's there going great you know good to have you on board but they're recording it so sometimes i've got a lot of time and other times i haven't it really varies to be honest so did we just get a time frame in terms of from the day you get it to the day you finish how long you're trying to pin him down on this yes yes i don't understand how it's a person i understand i want to know how long do you get weeks months again it varies you know we try to get things done ideally uh and sent off

56:41 sort of you know at least a month or two before the cd pressing uh it can just vary some jobs are very swift sometimes you have to work on things very quickly to get them done and it's a lot of you know long days and late nights and other times it can be a breeze and you've got you know you can work at something in your leisure and just do it in the evenings if you want and do other things in the day um you know the unzil incursion that was a pretty swift one to do actually to get that one down that was you know that was really you know there wasn't a lot of time and there was a lot to do and there was loads of sequences of planes taking off and you know explosions and time craziness and so to get all that done in a short amount of time was a real challenge and other things here it's just incredibly relaxed so honestly

57:28 i wish i could just say like we are given this time to do things but often it's just as and when it comes in and what we're doing and how because as well so a lot of our work comes down to when we finish other jobs as well so you can be given three jobs and they're all kind of relying upon the other projects that you're doing not to be delayed or not to be held up or things because things do go wrong all the time things go wrong so it's yeah it's it's a weird sort of very process happy with that filler yeah well i was really after an exact number of hours he won't give me that but never mind um i don't know i i don't know yeah i believe you i believe you um yeah i should say what are you working on right at the moment but i'm sure you won't

58:13 tell us that either um now in terms of there's some amazing actors that you're working with their voices at the time did you get to meet anyone ever or you just always stuck at home in your sound studio i do get to meet people yes so they often get uh you know we get opportunities to go up to the recordings and just kind of have a bit of time just to to hang out and and talk to the team that we work with every day through email and other things um i often have you know when ken's working on something i'll be up in the studio sometimes and we'll be hanging out and we usually prep each other on the project and what we're doing or what he would like from it yeah i get to meet plenty of people um you know have the great big finished lunches have some lovely chats you know always have a good chat with paul mcgowan over lunch uh people like that you know it's always

59:01 a joy going up because you always end up meeting somebody you've never met before or hearing great stories from people and you know for me it's just lovely watching actors doing their thing because it's just so it's so cool you know to see them especially people that you've watched for years you know doctor who just to be able to see them being doctor who in front of your face is just so it's mind-blowing really you you have a huge range of voices that i've you put on all the time how come you don't do more with yourself i don't know i've just never you know i i think part of it comes down to um you know actors study they study to to be an actor and so for me to go in and have not studied or do anything i don't know it just feels like

59:46 not disrespectful but like you know give them give them the work i'm doing i'm doing the sound stuff and i you know i've got some things up my sleeve for my own productions of things which i might do which i might do some voice stuff in myself and enjoy and that's one of my things i've kind of set myself to do this year is to produce one solo production uh but whether i get the time i don't know because i'm so busy but um but i would love to do a bit of you know there's so many different things i'd like to do and try stuff that's not just sound but it's just a case of finding the time to do it really you could be the al pacino of big finish can you imagine can you i'd like you know it would be it would be great it would be great fun to do something definitely i'm sure it happened one day

1:00:31 i've always said i'd like to play a vicar that would be fun like over you know when you've got soap operas there's always some bloke who if you meet him in the pub and somebody says i was an actor once uh what did you do well i played i played a vicar in coronation street once but i'd like to be that guy yeah i was a victor vicar and doctor who that'll do give us your best vicar oh gosh my best vic i mean the thing about vicars is they talk in such a way you see you know the father the son and the holy spirit are men you know they're very measured like that you see and say yeah i love it so so what was that spark that um that you had with uh with with nick

1:01:17 briggs that got you two guys in in such what seems to seems to me to be a really uh really strong friendship apart from anything else but you guys have a good chemistry on the podcasts and um how did that all begin so i mean the first time i met nick we dispute this because we can't fully he can't remember and i can remember is i met him when we were i came to he used to do a lot of work at the big finish conventions just kind of used to come down help out really just hang out with people because it's just a chance to meet and talk to people that you work with really and um and we started just messing around and you know he'll say the odd thing from the quote from doctor who then i'd say

1:02:02 one back you know don't be a full man you know and things like that and you end up we ended up kind of just laughing with each other really and you know we've got a great friendship which is just built upon laughter he invited me in to do a bit of podcast work just a guest star on a podcast with him just for a laugh really and we just sort of realized we have loads of things in common we love we love old telly things from the past you know we've got a very similar sense of humor both don't take ourselves too seriously and so you know this bathroom being made is so sorry it's so funny it feels i feel like the the floor above below me is going to crash through um but you know we're always laughing and we're just you know we we find that you know one of our favorite things to do in the evening is just take photos of

1:02:49 what we're watching because we're always watching some old rubbish you know what was i what was i watching yesterday i was watching zodiac from uh from 19 i think it's about 1978 or something yeah the serial killer thing that's good it's no it's not that one this is this is a it's a different zodiac it's um it's this it's this weird show that was only only around for one series and it's about um it's about a sort of astrologer and a policeman who solved crimes together and it's very seventies and very a bit naff um but you know it's the type of thing we both actually thought it was gonna be rubbish and then we we actually really enjoyed it but you know we're always watching things he he's always watching a good old war film or just doctor who to be honest and we often just message

1:03:34 and say yeah you know what you're watching oh i got this on this guy's great in that oh he's terrible oh my god the plot and that's dreadful so yeah just a relationship built on the same interest i think reading humor so so what's something that nick has introduced you to that stands out in your mind as something you never would have heard of if it wasn't for him introducing you to it do you know there was actually a really obscure thing that he introduced me to which um which i really enjoyed which is called an englishman's castle and um it was this he actually he lent me the dvd uh it's this um i think it's the last everything that kenneth moore did and it's like this weird thing about this guy who it's in a sort of alternative

1:04:20 uh reality where the germans won the second world war and they're occupying the uk and there's a chat played by ken kenneth moore who's making a um he's making a soap opera and he realizes that he's kind of producing like propaganda for the germans in the sense that he's saying how you know we didn't stand a chance in the war and how we should just kind of accept being occupied and eventually he begins to like question it all and starts then thinking you know i must stand up and do something about this you know i've just and it's a really obscure thing and he introduced me to it and i remember messaging him saying no i can't stop watching this i was on a train after i was doing something up in london i said look i've had to i've had to stop what i'm doing go into i think it was itsu or

1:05:05 somewhere to get some food and just sit and finish this because i can't i won't be able to function unless i i knew how it ended but a lot of shows you know i only have to look on my plex uh where i digitize my dvd collection to see you know the sandbaggers is something special branch you know loads of things heaps of programs that that show sounds eerily like the man in the high castle was that was it's interesting they both got castle in the title yeah yeah so that's a good series the man in high castle i think the novel came out in 61 or something like that so well maybe there's a link there you know it's interesting the man in high castle is great in terms of i love all the cg

1:05:52 work they've done in that to make it

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