LoveLove Films’ in-house writer Oliver Selby recently sat down to chat with sound mixer and boom operator Shaun Mills, who has been working in the industry for over 30 years.

Sound-extraordinaire Shaun Mills has been working within the sound department in film and TV for over two decades. Some of his most well known ventures include films such as The Bourne Identity, Shakespeare in Love and A Monster Calls, and TV shows like Call The Midwife, Taboo and Him & Her. Shaun is often found on a multitude of LoveLove Films’ shoots, most recently for Martin Clunes: Riding Therapy for Horse & Country TV.

Shaun was excellent to talk to, very informative and enthusiastic. He had a lot of great tips for people wanting to pursue a career in sound and also spoke about the challenges he has faced as a freelancer over his career.

Trailer for A Monster Calls, which Shaun worked on last year:

Oliver: Tell me about how you first got started in the industry?

Shaun: It was many, many years ago. My father who recently passed away was also a sound recordist. And he, once I finished school, through his contacts got me a week’s work experience at a rental company over the summer holidays. The rental company basically had hired out all the camera and sound equipment, and were based in North London. I must’ve pressed the right buttons because they offered me a job. I had the rest of the summer holiday and I went back there. It was considered a Launchpad into the industry. So I spent five, five and a half years there. Got my Union Ticket, which you needed if you were a freelancer then. You got the Union Ticket from the Association of Cinematograph, Television and Allied Technicians (ACTT). But you had to have a ticket before you could go freelance – you had to have an unrestricted ticket which meant you had to be working for a company for a minimum of, I think it was about two, maybe three years. You had to be under full time employment. It was to stop it going wild really. So then when I got that I stayed there for a while and then I got a call from my old man who was then working for London Weekend Television. Saying they were looking for somebody to go as an assistant on a TV show for two and a half months. I sort of umm’d and ahh’d very quickly and thought, well – why not? I took the plunge. That was back in the 80’s and ever since then I’ve been freelance. It’s been quite a while. So that was it, my first year there was a TV show, then a feature film and another TV show, a big sort of American one-off show as it were. It carried on from then.

Oliver: Year by year?

Shaun: Yeah, exactly. Because the industry is very, even now, a case of who you know. You’ve got to be good at what you do, competent at the very least. But it is a case of who you know because that’ll lead to your name being passed on to somebody else and somebody else and so on and so forth. That happens in what ever grade you’re in. Because even now when I’m sound mixing, sound recording – that is still passed on by people you work with whether it be a director or producer or just another member of the crew. There was a guy I used to work with; I was his assistant for over 20 years. We did a lot of feature films. It was when he decided to hang up his headphones, as you call it, and I carried on. It is very much word of mouth.

When we were doing ‘A Portrait of a Lady’ and things like that, not dropping names or anything, Jane Campion couldn’t do a thing wrong. She had already done ‘The Piano’; she was a high-flying director. Somehow we managed to get the ‘Portrait of a Lady’. We’re filming out in Italy and Peter got a phone call from somebody in the production office for ‘The Ghost in the Darkness’. Anyway, they sort of said they’re just finding out the availability and he said, “I’m away on location at the moment, as soon as I’m back I’ll send you some details.” And he asked “Oh what are you doing?” and Peter turned round and said well were filming ‘Portrait of a Lady” with Jane Campion. Initially in the moment there was silence. They came back and said don’t worry about the CV, we want you to do the job. Simple as that.

Oliver: What would you say is your biggest achievement in the industry?

Shaun: I think just longevity more than anything else. It’s a case of still being able to do the job and still being able to get on with everybody because it is very sociable. And it has to be, especially if you’re away for long periods of time on location. If you’re not that sort of person, and there are a few, you can make enemies in the industry.

Oliver: As a freelancer, how do you go about choosing projects, or is it more they choose you?

Shaun: There’s a bit of both I suppose, I mean, it depends. I’ve been mixing now for about three to four years. Prior to that I could almost pick and choose depending, but I would always work with the same recordists. Now it’s a case of trying to get up to a higher level in mixing. I am fortunately in the situation whereby I do have a few contacts so if I need to have time off, like recently for the sake of bereavement, I was able to say ‘no’ to a couple of things. But they were only short term, not long term or anything. But then knowing that I will be kept and contacted if I can fill in for anything. So as far as choosing jobs, yes, there are certain jobs where you think “I don’t want to do that one” because you know it’s going to be hard and other ones where you will want to try because you know it will test you.

Oliver: Something that’s challenging?

Shaun: Well just push your boundaries a little bit sometimes. It will make life interesting, especially in dramas. I’ve always known either TV or feature film dramas, that’s my thing. I get more of a buzz out of doing drama, although it’s nice doing documentaries. There’s a certain amount of satisfaction of seeing the end product and seeing whether they’ve mucked it up or enhanced it so it’s even better. It could get recognised as something that’s great!

Oliver: Which do you prefer – film or TV drama?

Shaun: Both can be good, the thing about film I suppose it’s a shorter period of time. Normally TV dramas tend to go on much longer because there are episodes. Whereas film is a one off and you see the end product much quicker. I think TV dramas have become more complicated now than they used to be, and again like films, they are pushing the boundaries more. There’s more technical shots than there used to be, they’re trying to make them more cinematic so the shots that are generally reserved for feature films, like ones with big cranes, are now on TV.

Last year I worked on TV shows like ‘Call the Midwife’ and ‘Lucky Man’, to feature films like the new Liam Neeson film ‘The Commuter’. And ‘Taboo’, which was shot very much in a feature film vein with Tom Hardy as the producer so he’s going to want to do it all big. It’s quite nice to mix it up. The difference is between a small feature film and a TV show is how much you get paid. The big feature films you get more money and chances are you turn in less usable sound sometimes. It’s not because of your choice it’s because of the circumstances.

Recently I’ve been doing some work on the new ‘Murder on the Orient Express’, but the second unit is mainly shooting effects stuff and guide-tracks for what they need to replace because it’s more running and jumping stuff. It’s still technical, it still needs to be there but they need to know what they’ve got to replace. You’ve got big wind machines and generators all over the place because you need it for hydraulics. All sorts of noises that you wouldn’t necessarily associate with what you’re trying to shoot. You have to take it as it comes. You can get good or bad on all shoots, the thing about TV, unlike feature films, is they expected you to get usable sounds. So that’s what makes it sometimes more technically challenging on TV because you get less chances at it and they haven’t got the budget to redo everything. So they want you to try and get everything usable. Whereas feature films say don’t worry as they can do it in post. They’re all interesting in their own ways.

Oliver: Do you have any advice for up and coming sound enthusiasts?

Shaun: It’s a hard industry to get into. There are a lot of people who try. There’s an old expression “don’t run before you can walk”. A lot of people may get bored initially; they think they can go straight from an assistant to a recordist. If you want to go and do documentaries and things like that you can, you can learn on the job and you may have the skills to do that. If you want to go and do dramas, you must go through the ranks. You learn so much through doing that, through other people that are experienced and watching how they do it. Getting experience on the next grade up i.e. assistant to boom operator, to recording. Even things like putting radio mics on, if they’re not applied properly, they’re absolutely useless to you. Assistants are being relied on more and more now. Take it slow, try and put as many CV’s out to anyone you can. Be very gracious in your emails because there are a lot of emails that go out.

If it’s what you really want to do, just stick with it. But like I said, just take it slowly, don’t be in too much of a hurry because people have done that and they’ve crashed and burned. Get as much experience as you can in each level because it will serve you at the next stage. Also, just in general, be polite. Just get on with people because everybody from the caterers who serve you and keep you going, to the drivers, to the electricians to wardrobe, everybody will help you. It’s a big family. Just be very amenable and you will get back what you put in. If you need someone from another department to help you, they will because they like you. I’ve had that on a job before, they said “are you on this shoot?” and I said “yeah” and they said “oh good, we haven’t got to worry about where the mics go now”. Things like that, it’s just a case of learning your craft, being polite and trying to get on with people because it makes your life so much easier.

Oliver: What are you doing now?

Shaun: I have been doing some dailies on ‘The Orient Express’ feature film. I’m now about to focus on the rest of the year. There’s a few people I know who are talking about maybe a small film here or there, but as the saying in the business goes; “Unless I’m eating the first bacon roll, I’m not on the job.”

Oliver: Thanks, that was excellent!

Shaun: Thank you!

We look forward to working with Shaun Mills on many more projects in the future.

To read more about Shaun, here’s an interview he did for BAFTA Guru:

http://guru.bafta.org/giving-up-the-day-job-boom-operator-shaun-mills

To see the long list of projects Shaun has worked on, check out his IMDb:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0590186/

To check out our first Industry Insights piece on TV writer and novelist James Andrew Hall, click the following:

Industry Insights #1: TV writer, novelist and BAFTA judge James Andrew Hall