SOUND RECORDING IN EXTREME ENVIRONMENTS

Today we welcome Darrell Briggs. Darrell's experience is extensive, working on a wide variety of productions from documentary to film and drama. We find out what documentary work is like when a pride of lions unexpectedly share his campsite in the Serengeti and the challenges of filming inside a live volcano in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Darrell Briggs Production Sound Mixer

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Tell us a little about yourself.

Where are you based, what do you do? My name is Darrell Briggs, I'm a sound mixer, sound recordist and sound supervisor. I've been working in the sound industry for 22 years now. I originally started in music, playing the guitar very badly! A lot of my friends in school and college were a lot better than me, so it quickly fell upon me to record them, rather than play. That was my introduction into the world of audio, and I always knew that I wanted to do something with sound. I finished college and started a multi-track recording course, at that point my full ambition was to work in a music studio. As part of the course we had to complete a Film and Television module, I hadn't considered anything other than music before then and it provided a new avenue of interest.

After I graduated, I began sending out hundreds of CVs to music studios and production companies. To cut a long story short I ended up getting a trainee sound recordist job at a small company in Soho. I worked for them for 5 years before making a move and going freelance, and I've been freelance for 17 years now.

I'm based in London, but I rarely seem to work in London. A lot of my work has been abroad, with some far-away assignments that involve a lot of travelling. I am trying to settle-down' a little bit and I'm not doing quite so much travelling now. Unfortunately, I still never seem to get home every night, I'm always away in one form or another.

Over twenty odd years I've worked on a wide variety of productions, historically a lot of documentary work but that part of the industry has really changed now.

Can you tell us about some of the productions you have worked on? Over twenty odd years I've worked on a wide variety of productions, historically a lot of documentary work but that part of the industry has really changed now. In the last ten years I've done much less documentary work if any these days. Currently I'm doing drama and a lot of big multi-camera format Discovery' type productions, a lot of American productions. That's what's keeping me busy at the moment.

This year started with three films back-to-back about 1970's American serial killers, Angel Of Decay', The Chameleon' and The Headhunter'. I've just finished something called Obsession Dark Desires', which is a series of ten one-hour dramas, all for American TV. These were true-life stories and, as the name would suggest, were stalking stories' basically, about someone who has developed an obsession or had an obsession developed by someone else. These were dramatised as a TV series. These took up most of the year for me.

Between the films and Obsession' I slotted in a show called Mygrations which was billed as a sort of natural history meets survival' show. Again this was for American television, and was, essentially, about 20 survivalists and ultra-marathon runners, walking the migration route of the wildebeest through the Serengeti, in Tanzania. That was a multi-camera and multi-radio mic affair, and there were about 8 crews working on that. So that's what has made up my year so far.

What is a typical day like as a sound production mixer? Well, that varies massively depending on what the job is. On a drama a typical day' is something that is much more quantifiable, on wilderness based shows, almost anything can happen. Shooting Mygrations' in the Serengeti, we arrived at camp one night to find our local guides looking-up at lions on a rock, they were probably about 50ft away from us. We discovered that we were sleeping underneath them all night, in the middle of the Serengeti. So, there was a certain amount of trepidation with that! I remember thinking I've not knowingly signed up for this'. That's why it's often difficult to quantify what a normal' or typical' day is like.

I've used Rycote products a long, long time. Almost like clothing is to a person in these hostile environments; the Windjammer is the microphone's first line of defence.' Darrell Briggs

You have had to deal with some tricky environments, in the Serengeti for example, was there any particular issue there with heat, dryness or sand? How do you look after the kit in these hostile environments? In the same way as for humans, exposure can be a problem and it's an equal problem for equipment too. In lots of places I've filmed it can be blisteringly hot and dry one minute and then there's a torrential downpour and it's actually quite cold the next. Again, it's being prepared for anything, and the fact that the weather and climate can throw anything at you. If you are in the middle of nowhere, there aren't any options to say oh, that bit of kit has just failed because I haven't looked after it properly, we'll just source a replacement from a local hire company!

The technical challenge is keeping yourself and all of that equipment going in quite difficult environments, there is something very satisfying about that. It can be very hard and miserable if you get it wrong! These locations are very different from filming in a sound studio, not that that doesn't present its own technical challenges but there aren't many unexpected technical challenges to do with the environment. In a howling gale and torrential rain, wading through a

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