Sound Technician

Dave: I do sound design for film and started off doing sound editing. I guess the thing is when you're working in sound it covers music, it covers sound effects, it covers that sort of thing.

I actually started doing theatre sound first, so making sound effects for little theatre productions and then writing music for little children's-pantomimes, and things like that, so it was pretty basic stuff.

Prior to that I was actually playing in bands, the school band, so being in the music room, trying to record a track, you know, so putting down a guitar, putting down a drum track in the music rooms at school, so really utilising what they had.

And then I went to a careers guys and he told me about theatre and television and that sort of thing. So it was actually my guidance counsellor at school who told me to head down that path.

Anyway, so theatre soundtracks, doing sound effects, and then started doing short films. Now the thing is if anyone really wants to get into doing pretty much anything in film, I would say start with a short film and there are people at the polytechnics, there are people at universities, people at film schools that need sound, or that need art department, or that need people who are creative to come in and work on those projects and make them great.

And so the thing is look at short films, because they are the building blocks, and I've done maybe 30 or 40 and I still do them now, and I'm about to shoot my own first one, so it's like things move from one thing to the other.

But start small and I think it's a better thing... I'm mean feature films are huge and if you work on a short film and it gets noticed by someone who works on a feature film, or the director that you did the short film for becomes famous and has a feature film, all of a sudden you're in a different ball park and you will have a career that might open up into feature films.

There's a lot of times where you don't have incoming money, so it's good to be diverse. So the thing is the film industry there might be a film shooting for four, five, six months and then it will... be a break of a couple of months where you've got to hopefully store your pennies, but it is a good industry to be in so don't be dismayed by that whole thing, but there might be times when you have to borrow some food money from your parents, but it's a good career.

Sound design, sound effects editing, dialogue editing, foli artist, music producer - all of those things, they're all in the same sort of park and all of them just require you to sort of, chip away at your skill sets.

So start small - play your guitar, get it sounding good. If you're shooting a little film on a hand-held video, just put a little fluffy thing on the end of your microphone so that it doesn't all sound horrible.

Look online at advice from people such as myself or other people and use that as your resource to try and move your career ahead, but just small steps, small steps. Do something every day to get to what you want.

It's okay to be scared of what you're going to do. Like it's actually a prerequisite to doing some creative job. But embrace that fear of what you're going to do because you don't know if you're going to be able to pull it off and you've got to try and pull something out of thin air to make something work, but that's part of the process, it's part of that whole kiwi ingenuity thing - if someone from overseas is watching this, it's the the same thing as well - where ever you are, use what ever you have within in your grasp to try and propel yourself forward. To get to the top of what you do...I don't know if there is a top, you know, and I don't think you're striving to do that. What you're trying to do is try and get your voice out there, because your voice is important, you know, it's important for anyone to hear what you have to say, because it might be what we all need to hear.