Graham Hartstone

Forename/s: 
Graham
Family name: 
Hartstone
Work area/craft/role: 
Company: 
Industry: 
Interview Number: 
658
Interview Date(s): 
10 Sep 2013
Interviewer/s: 
Production Media: 
Duration (mins): 
97

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Interview
Transcript

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Graham Hartstone Interview

Jim Betteridge  0:00  

Okay, well, I'm here on the 29th of September 2011, talking to Graham Hartstone. about his life in sound. And we're going back to 1961.

Graham Hartstone  0:13  

 1961. Yes. 

Jim Betteridge  0:14  

When you when you entered the industry.

Graham Hartstone  0:16  

Yes. 

Jim Betteridge  0:17  

So how old were you at that point?

Graham Hartstone  0:19  

17

When I was at school, I wanted to be an architect. My dad was a surveyor for an insurance company. And I was always interested in the plans and buildings. And so I thought I'd like to be an architect. I went to Slough Technical School, which at the time was the biggest and newest technical school part of Harold Wilson's white heat of technical whatever. And it was very well equipped. And I took the building courses, I did brick work, I did plumbing, electrics ,wood work, as well as the technical drawing and the building construction subjects. And then before I, in the last year that I was there, all that had started to peel away and they stopped doing building construction and building drawing. So I and a small group of about four others had to go one day a week to Slough Technical College in, which is now South Bucks University or something. Where we had a really, really good teacher and obviously being five in a class, you know, that's, we all excelled there. However, when the last, the next summer holiday came and I was 17.

I looked at the future, and obviously I was going to have to go on from here a lot more studying ,a lot more learning. And probably maybe summer holiday. I don't know, I was not too keen. My other interests at the time,through my family, largely were amateur theatricals. My uncle and aunt ran a musical society North London Musical Society. And I used to get involved, there doing lighting, to begin with just doing a spotlights follow for follow spots from the back of the hall. And later on lighting. And in our little in our where I lived in Denham ,High Denham. We had a little amateur dramatic group that put on there were plays farces and things and I would be involved backstage there. And in that, in that group were a couple of people in the sound department. One was Ken Rawkins, who was the boom operator in theatre five, the ADR effects theatre at Pinewood. And another was Arthur Smith. Both of them lived in my road and Arthur Smith was, not sure exactly what he was, but he was in Sound Department at Ealing Studios, for many years. So I said one day , doing as I was the lighting I said," I don't know if I want to be an architect. Maybe I'll go to the studio and be an electrician." And they said, "No, no, no, you don't want to be an electrician. Go in the sound department" because I thought an electrician would do the lighting. But of course it's the camera man that does the lighting.

So I applied, I applied to Pinewood and to Beaconsfield  film studios, which was active studio at that time. And I got a very quick response back from Pinewood saying, Yes, could I go in for an interview? I went in for an interview. Cyril Crowhurst was the head of sound at that point, and he was away. So his his first deputy ,deputy head was Alan Whatley who also lived on my estate in Denham. And I used to knock about with his son Alan Alan Jr. Anyway, I guess looking back on it, the interview was probably a bit of a formality. So low and behold, I've got a job. starting in I think it was September 61 as a boom operator's assistant at the princely sum of seven pounds a week. And I started on a film called "Waltz of the Toreadors". The mixer was John Mitchell. The boom operator was is Tony Cripps, and the sound camera operator was Roy Charman. So, I couldn't believe it. You know, I was on actually I remember I visited the set on on the interview day and was a crane swooping in over the bed with Jimmy Bawden, the camera operator on on. AndJohn Guillermin. was the Director. And it  just looked so glamorous and so exciting. 

So I started on there and Roy Charman actually showed me the ropes he said, What do you come in you do you come in early, you get the microphones out, put them on the boom. And the cables ,run the mixer out .The mixer was a box about three feet tall and about 18 inches square. It  took two men to lift it ,all valve and had three large six gold cables to connect to it. High level and low level and 110 and the first thing I was told, make sure you don't plug the 110 in the wrong one. These are run from the wall which went back,were all cabled back to the sound department A 4 and the camera six quart cable was on back to the sound department ,sixth foor.  Ran the camera from the distributor room which were sales in distributors that locked up anything you plugged into that particular distributor, which would of course be in the 35 mirror quarter upstairs in the sound department and a camera on the set and could also have been a projector for back projection and you had to run them up to speed and then lock them so as well as getting the mics and and cables out on the mixer. I had to plug up the camera make sure there was no film in it, make sure the focus puller had  got his fingers out and stopped  cleaning the gate and run the camera up for about 10 -15 minutes to warm it up before the shoot. At 8.30 the rest of the crew arrived and we went through the rigmarole of checking the mics for phase and quality so I'd put the two mics together. We had to D 25 mics at the time. But the two mics together and do the usual 1234 and sister Susie and the mixer would listen to them make sure they were both sounding okay much other rune phrase every morning this was and then we would find out where the first setup was.

 I had to locate the the mixer somewhere where the recording mixer could see the set. Sometimes this was on a rostrum which involves getting a rigger with a tackle for lift the mixer onto a rostrum. Cable it all up, cable the mic, the boom, big Mole Richardson  blue boom to the mixer , and  the camera cable and track it if it was a tracking shot. I had to sit thereand  hold on to it make sure the cable didn't go under the wheels of the dolly. When the when the shot was set up, it would sometimes involve me sitting on the lighting rail with a long pole , like a 14 foot pole with a mic on the end which I would wave around the top of the set. Or I might have to track a boom in and out if it's a tracking shot. So the first thing we used to do key lights on that side, boom on the other side. Can we have a top chopper ?  Yes put top chopper.  That done the boom operator would be up there with his script on the boom the no other assisant  no no headphones, no video assist anything and the mixer would be sitting at his console and the sound camera operator would be way off in the sound department. And I would be looking after all of them. When the tea time, when the tea trolley arrived. It was considered my duty to race to beat the cat,  the clapper loader so that we got the best slices of bread and dripping for my crew.

Jim Betteridge  9:08  

Not pastries or

Graham Hartstone  9:09  

No it was rolls and bread and dripping in the morning with brown bits on it. And then we'd smother it in salt , white bread. Anyway, that was my day really until we moved the set around, moved everything to walk from one stage to another and then wrapped it all up in the evening and on each stage at Pinewood there were monitor rooms which were hangover from an early day. There was high in the wall there was a with a staircase up to it from the outside and access from the cord or power cord on the inside. on which it says private sound stuff only and I think it still does when I looked and in there. I Think I'm not sure what they used to do there, maybe it was record. Not sure. Anyway, there was a window a double glazed window out to a book that we just used as a store to keep our microphones and, and our personal lives through the day. If we went on location, or on the lot, or in the gardens, it could have been using one of the ancient soundtracks, which were enormous trucks, one of them were called the asperous, because it was a bit of a wreck. And very often wouldn't start bearing in mind that we also had soundtrack driver anytime that usually when we have if we were going out of the studio, the hospice had all sorts of cupboards and magazine racks and a darkroom and big cable hooks in cupboards. And on there, we would have a Western rx 500 channel, which was an optical channel that had had a magnetic head put in it. And instead of where the magazine went, there were two spool holders. And we would run 35 mil on that. Also, my duties out there, especially on a big backlots set was to look after the PA which were enormous loudspeakers running on 110 volts and big amplifiers, run with an inverter and run the microphone around for the assistant tractor, follow him around or give it to him whenever he needed it. I remember one day we were shooting on the lockdown this big open tank. And I was supposed to put all these normal speakers away in the evening. And one evening I thought Oh, that one over there by the tank. On nevermind, it'll be alright. Anyway, in the middle of the night, there was this ferocious storm. So I got in extra early and sure enough, there was the speaker will stand at the bottles tank.

I fished it out. Got it standing up, right and Simon Kay was the sound cannon writer on that picture. And I said Simon, there's not one went in the water when I can come out. Can you just go over and see if it's working right? So I rigged it all up. And I'm spoken to the microphone. And I said Time went anyway, in fact it was all right. It had a bit of a dent in it which I hammered out with a brick that went on to be used for many more productions.

Jim Betteridge  12:26  

What were you recording to Were you always recording money or

Graham Hartstone  12:29  

want to always mine? Oh, the the the roles were reused. We used to wrote record up and down so when we got to the end of one side, we've turned it over and record on the other side

Jim Betteridge  12:40  

was a mix of more than one microphone sometimes

Graham Hartstone  12:42  

Yes, it was Yes, it was the mixer had only two inputs, memory and with very limited equalisation, which they were encouraged not to use probably just a base cup. Now compression or anything like that, the old fast acting westex metre which and then listened on headphones. That film with the with the big set on the lot was a Disney production called the horse without a head. And the horizon outside the village that was built was a small scale Railway, which ran on top of a bank that built up so that all you could see above it was the sky. And that just used to chunk up backwards or forwards as part of the background. And on top of the sound department was an enormous enormous glass mat where it was quite fascinating to go up and see the artist painting in the rest of the world. So they would have an establishing shot through the glass mat. Jumping to a bit later that when they had did a similar thing on the last days of Pompei, I think it was the artist was told to paint the picture of with shadows for about 11am. And invariably, this got delayed and delayed and the poor guy was frantically moving on. But it was a commonly used special effect in the glass Mac.

Jim Betteridge  14:08  

So how big was this class man,

Graham Hartstone  14:09  

it would have been up probably about a 15 foot across by six or eight feet high. And the cat there was a camera body up there which to which the artist could refer to look through.

Jim Betteridge  14:24  

So it sounds like at that point the sound department was well respected and given enough time space and

Graham Hartstone  14:30  

yes, generally we were I think there were camera men who were more cooperative than others. They were under a great deal of pressure to light quickly and quickly doesn't always mean avoiding the mic shadows. I was boom operator on the artists tests for From Russia with love. I forget the name of the character but it was a girl in bed with nothing on but a black ribbon round. And neck 17 years old, I couldn't believe I was doing this anyway. So I put up with my big old mobile man and put the microphone where it should be. And Ted Moore, the lighting camera, my hand was lighting for I don't know how many hours. And being young and green, I didn't know there was shadows. And I thought we'd get round to that in a minute. So all of a sudden, Ted says, Okay, ready, and he looked at me and he said, you can get that fucking thing out. And I just had to wheel it back about six feet, you know, I'm not sure if it mattered. But I was trying to be key in the way I've been taught, pop it in right on the edge of frame. And another boom approaching. So Jimmy Borden bless him. We were halfway through a long take. And I was obviously slowly dipping into frame because I could see Jimmy looking at me with a straight look, as he gradually tilted.

Jim Betteridge  16:06  

Do you think it was competitive in those days? I mean, you obviously just in the right place at the right I was.

Graham Hartstone  16:11  

And bearing in mind that that was in what we're now considered to be very, super near me. And we had a fifth member of the crew. The one I forgot to mention, of course, is on location which took a maintenance man who looked after the sound equipment and the camera crew. That was where I learned on the job being the second boom when I when I got the chance, and certainly having the disciplines instilled into me by the boom operator and the mixer. just jumping back, I got to the end of my first week and Roy challen, bless him, he said, Oh, I put you a quarter of an hour a day on your timesheet in the morning. I was fine time and a half. Not only that, but that week the Union had awarded attention or had negotiated attention links week rise. So my first pay packet in spite of not being seven pounds, which I thought it was going to be where my my colleagues from school have gone into the post office and stuff at five pounds was not just seven pounds, it was probably about eight pound 50.

So I was rich.

Jim Betteridge  17:23  

You're still on the floor and you're still Yeah,

Graham Hartstone  17:25  

I'm still on the floor. competitive. We had fixed permanent crews at Pinewood of mixers, boom operators, maintenance men and boom operators as assistants and sound camera operators. And that was aside from the permanent crews manning the post production department theatre five, and three to six, and the dubbing theatres one and two, and preview theatres three and four. So there was a big team of projectionists and re recording mixers, W mixes as we called them, and the associated sound camera operators upstairs who also had to look up to the optical camera in mono and maintenance men who were really they had their workshop in the sound department are only called out if there's a problem in the studio. But they did come on location with us because they had to charge the batteries. The cameras around 96 volt batteries and the sound equipment were car batteries 12 volt batteries that were in an aluminium case. So on the on location, I also had to control the camera speed, which was once I started running it up. Sound ran up separately. Of course, once I started running it up, there was a read metre that had 24 frames per second in the middle. And it ran up and down from there like 22 2018 is run it up and you'd hope one of these reads start vibrating and it would be around 24. And you would adjust the power to the camera to get it onto 24. And if it started creeping you would adjust to keep the camera guy at 24. But it was actually was always fluctuating. And sometimes they don't stop all together. And you didn't know which way it was gone, where they go. They're going up or down. So it was all very inexact science. 

There was another hazard and as much as there was an old camera tracking Rolls Royce very early Rolls Royce because it had the red RR on the front and all the back have been taken off and been replaced by a platform for camera. So first time I went on there, everything's rehearsed and everything cameras on the drilling and I'm on that on there as well. With my read metre turnover. I turn over and I look for which ones vibrate and of course as soon as some anyway Somehow or other everything came out, right? I guess what what? The maintenance man, Austin parches, then did he see put in line but the read metre, just an ordinary needle metre, which just went one way or the other, so you had a reasonable chance of getting on the map. As well as the converted 500 channel for local locations we used to drive it or back down to the sound apart at night, so we didn't have to carry the battery so far. And sometimes it didn't start in the morning. Now Pinewood had an electric trolley, which was quite ancient and was the sort of thing that porters used on large railway stations, stand up on the back of it and steer it with a lever. Very useful tool we in the gardens, we would just stick our recorders and stuff on that and drive that around the gardens. And I can remember times when when the Hasbro's wouldn't start and I used to push it up onto the lot with the selection gas Lloyd would steer it and I get in the trolley and get it up against the back step and just slowly but surely, it will push it up to the to the location. So as well as the sometimes 500 channel we also recorded on leavers rich quarter inch machine pilot, which recorded the sync pulse on track two on seven inch quarter inch tape. It was on it was in two boxes one was the recorder and next to it was the mixer which were both put sort of Nexium frame that you could pick up at the handle at both ends. Or you could box them up and put their covers on and carry them on your shoulder. heavy stuff. No, we

didn't. We never really got involved with editing. Anything that stuff the the tapes were sent or taken back to the student to the transfer by there was a leavers rich quarter inch sort of a desk machine in the transfer Bay with a with a Scylla scope. And you would start the chosen take and just manually adjust the speed to keep the display that you started with in and if it went you had to count how many are gone and get them back again. I was in the transfer by for fundable when Thunderbolt was in Jamaica and they were shooting it seemed to be shoot. Rate long takes and I don't know whether it was the heat or what but this thing's this this these tapes would go so man he out when they disappeared off the screen he had to count them and then get them all back again. How they ever managed to stay in sync I don't know but I don't think any of it was usable sounds when you the in the transfer Bay were a 35 minute recorder a 35 minute play off and this leave is rich to people operating the transfer by the player offer if it was 35 mil did all the control he just ran through the takes you could go at double speed for the head the sheets in front of you might go double speed for the unwanted tapes and when it got to take that you wanted you would put it back to normal speed at the appropriate moment run up the recorder. When the two were in sync. In other words, the selsun lights went on you'd flick them into the lock and you'd punch the recorder in and then you'd stop at the end you could get quite fast at it actually because you had a lot to do every morning and the quarter inch similarly you would run up the 35 mil and the other guy just loaded the machine and listened off the playoff head as as the Czech Charlie tasco who was a mixer and we're used to saying that silent days but he was of a good age and he was the looking after the recording side there and hits and he was pretty deaf and he would sit there with his headphones on seemingly oblivious to everything and as young bucks being a bit I used to go around the back of the of the thing when we were recording just lift the back of the rack i'd lift his headphone jack connection and put people piece of paper in it and then we get to the end of the day.

All right Charlie. Well, it

were it was fun in those days. There were lots of practical jokes. Lots of lots of fun had on the set Bye everybody. Money oh well. Yeah, we recorded Yeah, I'm in the stage or there was over the magnetic report sheets of for which you just listed the takes and circled the chosen takes. But the mixers especially the concessions was like Dudley messenger kept a log of every take with his notes of could use this for that line. And this these the delegated as found valuable, they would go through well that they would hand over his notebook. And bearing in mind that nearly every picture had somebody who knew because it wasn't very long since that they were permanent cell editors, they're found in pictures, editors and they will the same guy, lesbians dawn sharp. We all knew each other, a very small community. So Dudley would pass his notebook over and they found that invaluable for for finding alternative takes. But the actors I have to say, were, to my memory. So much more professional. They know they didn't really didn't. But they hit their marks they said the line. They said the same line, probably usually pointing the same direction towards where you put your microphone. I was a boom operator on the artists test for Gordon of Khartoum and they were not they were being tested. But I think they were they must have been playing opposite other parts, but the likes of Laurence Olivier. And again, it's, you know, it was just absolute heaven because they went up to their mark they said they're nine loud and clear, in the same direction every time.

No, it was cool. We call it post sinking of course in those days it was done on loops and the mixer instead of five john Dennis had a lot more say in the in the sound, then he was one of the first to review the film and say what they needed to add a loop when they needed to post sync and, and any special things that they needed to do the sound effects. When the time came.

All the way

did some of that I worked with on a mana film with my wish to do with geometry daanish I had to lagers always ready for that, and so did Tony door. And if we had a problem, we would just literally straight away to a wall track where the scene again, very, very effectively

Jim Betteridge  27:26  

the director would be

Graham Hartstone  27:27  

they would be providing, you know, the precious hadn't got too much if the if at all they could or depends again on the director john glenn when the Bond films that he directed, especially having been an editor, he was a great one for wall tracks. And in those earlier bonds. We used wall tracks enormously for special effects shots and things because he would let them shoot a wall track on it. The likes of Peter mash Musgrave would cut it into sync and they would work that and shooting alternatives for expletives for which I've always tried to encourage because somewhere along the line, there's gonna be an airline version or a TV version. And it's nothing worse than you know the voice or like doing your complete armpit.

I should get back to working with john Michell at the end of my stint on water tornadoes. JOHN said, well, I've got your application for bekins field studios. He said, Well, I'd certainly give you the job. But I'll have a go and have a word with seracote to see if he thinks you have a career here because obviously he wouldn't poach he said. He went to see Cyril and Cyril said no, he's got a job here. So that was where I stayed probably just as well because bekins field folded up not long afterwards. But I went on to spend 12 months with john Michell on most magnificent men in their flying machines, mostly on location at Booker aerodrome, High Wycombe, and other places. And later 66 seven, I spent 12 months with him on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. And the foot the circle is completed when we were both nominated for an Oscar for a passage to India, which he was out with recording with David Lee and he and I mixed and had we won I would have obviously have a nice speech to say. As it happened. There was an academy tribute to David lean, which they asked for the contributions from obviously couldn't go there. So I recorded a contribution much along those lines about how the circular being completed with john Mitchell. Yes, we were on the stage at Primus studios and the remains of the Cleopatra set, we're still on the lot at Pinewood. And they must have been doing some pickup shots in D stage because there was a sort of a half a set built down one end of the stage on Ross drums. And the camera was some way back. So, cc Stevens, the mixer sent me down with just a three foot stick with a mic on the end of it below the rostrum to pick up the sound. And I'm not sure maybe it was supposed to be glad like maybe there wasn't even a dialogue. I don't know. Anyway, these two are rounding they were started an argument with the most awful profanities and the most vile Rao going on in front of me. So I'm cowering down under this rostrum of my microphone. And all of a sudden in mid profanity, Richard Burton sees me Who is this boy, he and I looked back to the dark end where the camera was right in the light sun in my eyes, I couldn't see a soul. At the other end. I think when this route started, they all slunk off into the shadows. But eventually, Steve, cc Stevens came forward and explained the necessity for me being there. I was, I was probably 1718 then and looking quite young.

And obviously, he was the consummate professional, not not the funny guy you'd imagine all the time. But so often, comedians aren't he was very serious. On my earlier breaks as a boom operator was man I'm very grateful to Peter Davis for this because he Cyril Crowhurst went to him when Danny Daniels had to take his two weeks annual leave and said, Do you think Graham could do the boom? And Peter said yes, which was fine because I was really quite green, but I managed okay. Again, they were professional artists. So they did deliver their lines with a reasonable outer level in the right place. So I was boom operator on there for a couple of weeks. And then actually I went on with Peter to do and a couple of low budget movies as boom operator one called Live it up on one called farewell performance. They were quite enlightening and enjoyable times with all that responsibility and an enormous jump in wages of course for the two weeks you know, when a boom operator was probably paid about 1920 pounds a week sometimes as much as my dad only very small way. Much as I was wheeled into be a boom operator on artists tests and things. I was production mixture on various artists tests and nothing spectacular. What was interesting was I was the production mixture on the artists test when they tested Bob Geldof put pink and Pink Floyd the warm. He was great. He was supposed to smash up the set. And he did.

The more Yeah, certainly some accuracy and more and more and you can't the mixer can't make a record a good track if the mics not in the right place. But they had their tricks. Dudley messenger was a great one for hiding mics. And he had this lovely array of small mic stands. One I remember was the central three spokes of Morris County steering wheel, which you know, would stand the microphone down behind a vase or and we would hide mics all over the place. I remember learning a trick from Dicky bird, the mixer, where somebody started the scene talking into a mirror and then turned around and walked into the room. And he said, Get up as close as you can, you know on the side, but keep it on the side and gradually favourite back to a full mic so that it's not a big change when they turn around and more games. So you know all those little subtle details all of which I learned at the feet of these masters. On the quiller memorandum we had we played a scene in the Olympia Stadium in Berlin, which we did on personales partly because the British army were practising the Queen's Day Parade. Not far away, just outside the stadium. Anyway, so we put personal mics on Alec Kunis and George Segal. And they weren't though the we tried radios. We tried everything we could with radios, but there was just so much RF around in Berlin in 1966, that it was useless. So we wound up running the cable down that trousers and they would walk into short I would be lying on the floor and plug them up.

Jim Betteridge  34:59  

I Up

Graham Hartstone  35:00  

there trouser legs. I couldn't speak until there was a rubber band around their ankle. Yeah, so I had fish up that towel like poke out the cannon and plug them up. The microphones we were using think were perhaps probably RCA and we used to wrap them in Shammi leather to avoid clothing noise. We used to make a little Shammi leather pouch for them

Jim Betteridge  35:27  

that say wanted to be like the things that they they would have been kind of lavallee A

Graham Hartstone  35:30  

Yes, they were probably about three and a half inches long and nearly three quarters of an inch round, I guess. Then we wrapped them in Shammi leather and attach them usually away as best we could but probably by cord around the neck. Especially if I pulled on the trouser leg. Another fun thing we used to do, and then we spent a lot of nights suiting, just walking and sometimes fighting scenes in Berlin. And it was usually done with an aeroflex open aeroflex. So we would we would run a mic out about 100 yards to the side and the boom operator would wood would try and sync the footsteps

Unknown Speaker  36:17  

or the fight

Graham Hartstone  36:18  

you know slap back just just so it looks more interesting and rushes. Because you know there was no point no chance of recording anything usable. So we'd run in like outside ways and

within eyesight.

The mic was the D 25. JOHN Mitchell. The tail end was using a 10,001. And then we went into electro voices the early GM mics before the sennheisers and john Mitchell's great toy was the Powerball he had the plastering department or whatever makeup parabola which had an STD 630 on the focus point. And that was amazingly useful. You could you could pick up you know from a great distance we used a lot for recording the aeroplanes whereas they flew on flying machines but you could also pick up very very good guy track if not our usual track from distance. How big was the it was about three foot six across and the big giant Keith pamplin would stand with holding it up at his arm's length. And I'm pointed at the artist also actually very useful used to record on the side side of the soundtrack and eavesdrop on people's conversation.

Jim Betteridge  37:47  

So Hayley Mills, please greet

Graham Hartstone  37:52  

Disney, Disney another serial criers went to Austin Partridge and said do you think ground could be sound camera proton SUV and manage it? And Austin reputedly made a motion of turning onto record and back off again. Of course. So I went off there with a leavers Rich Dad the messenger Danny Daniel, and asked him Partridge to Crete. We were on the village of as Nikolaos. Firstly, we flew out, we went to the vanguard, nothing that bigger, never landed on Creek for a start. So they took two thirds of the seats out and we put some took our equipment in and we we flew off to to create with big top reps, you know, they used to look after us very well. And as we came into land, they of course, they slammed on all the brakes and reverse that possible on this thing because the runway wasn't very long. Anyway, we stopped and my first impression, I stepped out of the plane at 60 degrees into onto the tarmac at 170 degrees. It was like stepping into an oven. And we coached all the way down to a US Nicolay ostrich is now quite a tourist town, but then it had one little hotel, which had cabins and and nothing else. Hardly any restaurants. The one the one restaurant was run by manoli I think was the hole in the wall literally was a cave with a terrorist outside. And we were billeted in houses, private houses, a sound crew all in one house in the village, which was owned by a doctor who's in Athens, I think breakfast was served at the in the local Hall by Phil hops was the caterer and so we had it we started off with a big breakfast because us Brits always used to get gypped Tell me whatever we did if we had the grapes that had been washed in the local water, so that was a big breakfast and trying to stick to something safe after that they do calm or enter via form was, was freely passed around. So we lived in this house, which is very nice. We had a sound truck driver, he had driven out all the way from England with this Volkswagen bus with Austin and all the equipment. Hayley mills and I were the youngest people on the unit really. And so we used to sort of not hang out but we've done swimming sometimes at lunchtime and that sort of thing. When I had one of the gap, Tommy things she sent me some a nice little note with some of her tablets. And then we had a very honoured I don't know his book public because he'd never been then we had a visit from Walt Disney himself a big event, and he was shown around the location and while we were shooting, and he sat down in Dudley seat next to me with the believers rich put the headphones on told me all about the latest thing he'd got in Disney Land in America, which was an animatronic Abraham Lincoln delivering the speech, which was controlled by a 13 magnetic track. He was very, very enthusiastic, like a kid was enthusiastic about, they took a few photos of him sitting there. And I asked the salesman afterwards as any chance I hit, print and want to know now he put a red cross through all of those, because he was smoking. Not only was he smoking, he was holding the dog and like you do finger and thumb, about half inch long dog end. And so they were all they were all redlined and then cut to I don't know how many years later when as a studio prime Masuda executive on one of my trips to Los Angeles. And during the studio rounds, I was in the Disney studio, and it is absolutely full of old photos roll down the corridors, a norm alignments of all these old black and white and sepia pictures. I mentioned this to the guy that was showing Israel I saw I had some pictures taken the Walt Disney told him when he said Oh, tell me exactly. Maybe we can find them. And I told him exactly. Thinking That's the last time I hear that. But about two months later, three or four prints arrived of me sitting at the lever switch to the waters night.

Jim Betteridge  42:48  

So how old were you then so 2018 8880

Graham Hartstone  42:50  

or 99? I guess. In those days, I would be up and down graded. Starting as you've heard from quite young, when I was when I was upgraded to a sound cavalry or a boom operator, I was paid the rate for those days only. And if it was more than three days, I think you've got the week. And then back down again. That went on for quite a number of years, gradually getting upgraded more than downgraded. But when I was upgraded to sound camera operator and I was stuck up in the in the recording room, just waiting for communication. You'd hear the mic Come on, and you hear them rehearsing. And then the communication was done by bizarre because I ran the camera on the sound from out there. So I think it was either three buzzes for turnover. And I would buzz back for speed. But it was so boring waiting for that to happen. So I would warm I'd go down to the set. And occasionally I nearly got caught out when they suddenly said Okay, Let's rehearse. No, let's not rehearse. Let's go for a take. So I had to bounce it back up to the recording room to get up there in time for them to say turnover. And the other the other big fear was running out. You know, when you got to the end of the roll, yeah, another take a go do another one and then they do a short one and then cut it off with a couple probably do another one. And then they do another one. They say don't cut

go.

But I don't think I've ever run out. This tape literally was used over and over again on the front of the can. We're all the dates that this has been used on before and that most Bulker raised once it was transcribed is bouncing around and talking of tape. When john Mitchell was down to do Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Hollywood was still doing musicals from disc playback. We had been doing tape playback at Pinewood for quite some time. I think Alan Watley introduced it very successfully never had any problems. But the Americans said no, you can't do it on A little stretch in saying, so john Michell arranged with Aqua to have some super superduper great, heavy duty tape put onto five inch rolls for use on the on the Naga because he did playback from a Reeboks. And from the nagaraj when I joined him, I had to spend two weeks just fast finding stop and going back on this new tape just to prove to the Americans that it wasn't gonna stretch or do anything. Yeah. And those costs it was fine. And we did it with tape. We had the music editor with us all time, or Robin Clark, who was there only to observe lip sync. And we had to get vast arrays of loudspeakers as close to the artist at all times because of the time delay of distance. Yeah. So we had big rows of columns, speakers, and big Lancaster speakers. And on the car we had a little Tannoy horn inside it. We had Tannoy horns that were gone at camera truck. So we always got the speaker as close as possible, or a range of speakers. When like when I say and how is singing all the way through the Pinewood gardens, you know, the speakers all and sometimes we just follow them with a with a horn as close as we could get. Just an interesting little side thing can Hughes decided that that sequence in the primer garden should be monochrome, green and white. She was dressed in white, the swing was painted white, and all the trees had to be painted green no matter what colour their leaves were. There were some red ones and then they were all sprayed green.

Jim Betteridge  46:53  

God was meant for nature.

Graham Hartstone  46:59  

As time progressed, Cyril and I got upgraded sometimes to go into the into the dubbing channel, which was the sound camera operator in the dubbing theatre. Cyril Crowhurst wanted me to pursue that, but I was really enjoying production going on location and too much for that. So I turned down the offer of being an assistant dubbing mixer several times in order to stay on production.

Jim Betteridge  47:24  

Was that a normal route to people tend to start in production? What what the way up to or into,

Graham Hartstone  47:29  

I guess Oh, well, maybe he could foresee the end of Pinewood permanent production crews. So along came this dreaded day when one of the many slumped in the industry. The industry has always gone in peaks and troughs. And in one of the many slumps in the probably 69 7071 I can't remember exactly. Pinewood reluctantly had to let the production crews go. Now I just had recently taken on a big mortgage and had a young son. So I really wasn't feeling very keen to throw my lot into the freelance world during one of the one of the troughs so I took the offer from Cyril and went into the dubbing theatre. At that time we had data two was recording on six tracks stereo I think had two consoles front console just for panning and playing back six track pre mixes and the rear console for playing tracks equalising them, everything was pre mixed onto premixes that were eventually played either on the sixtrack faders in the front console, or from the back through the panels or from sixth graders at the back. Theatre one was still mono that's where I started. I had an old westroads console with three mixers, four faders each and a main gain. Met for the main gain you could do complete fade outs,

Jim Betteridge  49:01  

three metres four metres each, right

Graham Hartstone  49:02  

yes for rotary faders equal to

Jim Betteridge  49:04  

12 track

Graham Hartstone  49:05  

a 12 track more for shooting mono Yes.

Jim Betteridge  49:09  

And what would that be coming off

Graham Hartstone  49:10  

35 mil

Jim Betteridge  49:11  

for three tracks

Graham Hartstone  49:12  

are mostly mono tracks and loops and three track premixes that we've made all in mono. We had to run 10 minutes at a time. So we would rehearse right down on our cue sheets, all the relevant levels, and equalisation. This may be take half a day for real to rehearse it that we all thought we were capable of putting the tape on and going for a take when a bit more adrenalin flows. Especially when you're the young Junior there who's only got one one complicated dissolve to do which is the 880 feet

Unknown Speaker  49:53  

the triangle

Graham Hartstone  49:55  

so you know your your tracks come up. there are gaps between each clip and You reset reset for the next clip, and then you mix it and then you reset for the next clip. But with all these four faders, do the do the dissolves and the sound mixes. If it was good, and kept it if, if one of us had messed up, we had to go back and do it again. Or maybe a pickup say, well, let's pick up from 500 feet. And let's just and then they will be cut together. But mostly, we just did it all again. We'd probably get it right. And those three track takes dialogue effects and music separated. Were the masters.

Jim Betteridge  50:41  

So that was the beginning of stems as he, as you say,

Graham Hartstone  50:43  

yeah, that's mano masters like that way. The next stage was we got to be able to roll back, albeit in real time and punching again, so that we didn't have to learn it all if we, if we messed up, we could roll back and punch in at some point going forward. And that was pretty

Jim Betteridge  51:02  

much a gap response. And it worked.

Graham Hartstone  51:04  

He was in the very early days I was I didn't probably appreciate at the time how complicated it was to get a raise and bias to happen seamlessly. Yeah, but it did that guy, I guess. I managed him somehow. I must have that a lot of that must have been to do with Jeff labour. And because I remember later machines coming in. And I'd really have to think back about this when later machines came in. They didn't do it at all. Well, and I think Jeff had to redesign it so that it would and then we had rock and roll as we knew it with high speed, which is quite a bit later.

Jim Betteridge  51:48  

If you want is what did you have? It's obviously all passive. Was it?

Graham Hartstone  51:52  

Yes, it was passive. High. Carbon boost mid cotton boost and bass. Cotton booster three.

Jim Betteridge  51:59  

Could you decide on the frequency and all that or? No? So it's really treble? bass? Yeah, yeah. Right. You had a 12 channel system at one point, did

Graham Hartstone  52:10  

you see 12 inputs?

Jim Betteridge  52:12  

Each those will have a mono follow up? Probably yes. I mean, yes.

Graham Hartstone  52:17  

And if

the mono days and the mono days, they would still have to do premixes. Right. Which would then come out as mono.

Jim Betteridge  52:26  

So you do the same same process with the 12 into one

Graham Hartstone  52:30  

mega three track remix of three mono tracks, footsteps, atmospheres and explosions. The idea was always to keep as much separation as possible. Because you don't want to have to unmix something or redo it because you can't separate. So always through pre mixing days. It was to keep separation. And there were obvious things you separated like explosions, and obvious things that you'd necessarily peeled off like car horns and sirens because they might go sour with the music or something. You wouldn't make some of the engine cars anymore the

Jim Betteridge  53:02  

tow I want them. Yeah, yeah.

Graham Hartstone  53:06  

So yeah, we would premix. And the other interesting thing before we have any sort of roll back and, and punch in. We used to premix little sections, we used to call them little layers and little bees. So if there was a little car chase, you would just mix the car chase and then somebody would cut back in with our spacing front end to be a short premix you know, and obviously if there was a car chase that began a horse chase at the end, they could have been cut together so you only use one machine. Yeah, they were very much simpler days. But we had a very, very restrictive dynamic range and frequency range. Academy mono to get out of which are involved a great deal of pre emphasis in the high end to overcome the theatres roll off. The other thing we used to do because we have the cameras in the rooms, we would have to rehearse on pack listening through the light valve to see what we could get away with as far as overload is concerned. You know, he would never put the light bulb through the light bulb until he would show you got it reasonably well contained because a nasty splat up there would twist the strings and we'd be in terrible trouble we blow the light bulb. So we would once we've got it. And I remember the the Old West restaurants metre used to bang away at plus two which was absolute maximum. And once we could pretty sure we contained it two plus two n plus two was going to distort and anything a lot over just plus two was going to blow the light bulb up. So we would then listen to it because a certain amount of distortion was acceptable on explosions and gunshots, but not on the HELOC music. So we would listen to the listen on pack. Now Marina Nobody make any mistakes because if you leave that fader up too much you'll blow the light Well, I think I do remember we blue one on another note if it was me or not, but we blue on on a carry on with that had like a custard pie fight. And they just were all load of sharp, loud, spiky sounds that we hadn't controlled enough and we blew up of doing that.

Jim Betteridge  55:24  

So this is before limiters.

Graham Hartstone  55:27  

We had limiters, yeah. limiters and compressors, but we're you know, you had to switch the one I think and you switched it in that was putting into the premix stages. And it was upstairs effects are the same camera operator switch to zoom with when he was asked over the top back. We had chambers reverb chambers, which were quite large living room size rooms with no equal parallel walls and the loudspeaker and a microphone. And on one wall were all record sales that were just large felt baffles that we could pull up on down to dead net or lengthen it. That's before any of the electronics then we had some horrible like, spring.

Jim Betteridge  56:11  

Great British spring.

Graham Hartstone  56:13  

Horrible. I can't man they were horrible. It's really horrible. One of the best ones we had was an AKG. Big Box that was probably five feet tall and 18 inches square. That was quite a nice reverb had two channels in it. I can't remember what it was called. And we used to use for delays we used to try and just delay stuff. We would use a tape machine, Rebeck Reeboks or something and play it at different speeds differently.

Unknown Speaker  56:44  

Yes.

Jim Betteridge  56:47  

Did you did you do a feedback loop and how long?

Graham Hartstone  56:50  

Yeah.

In fact, there's a there was a serendipitous moment in the beginning of Blade Runner where I was using the Reeboks and the race had fouled up. And we got those repeats on that first interview with the replicant and really loved it so much. That was not exactly what we recorded. The first time kept in but I had to do the like,

Jim Betteridge  57:15  

it became a feature. It came. Yeah. So brilliant. This is copycats you have that Oh,

Graham Hartstone  57:22  

yeah.

Yeah, that and the role was at Roland desk where we've had had several heads around at

Jim Betteridge  57:29  

SpaceX.

Graham Hartstone  57:31  

Talk about copycats. Dobby mix has always wanted to hurt get their hands on shifting the tracks around. And they can do it now that the Pro Tools is in the room very easily. But in those days, we wanted to do it and it was quite a major drama to ask the editor Sunday to go away and get a transfer that and lay it up somewhere else. So we had a spare machine in the recording room put in and we called it the copycat and anything that we wanted to shift or pinch from another reel, we just wipe it down on that and shift it in sync till we got to where we wanted. So that's how we did our in mix editing, to end editing.

Jim Betteridge  58:07  

Of course, if you soon as you copy something off analogue, you're losing a generation you have to be a bit careful. Yes. And so yeah, make sure the levels right. And did you have huge patch? Did you patch everything to everything else? Yeah,

Graham Hartstone  58:18  

patch Bay's at the back of the theatre were everything to everything else in six track for wherever it was. And not only that, but when Dolby came in. They were through the Dobies as well into the Dolby out of the door because we had $60 instead of two I remember quite early. I remember saying up to Dolby the only company you can sell your 60 amplifiers to make things quieter.

Jim Betteridge  58:41  

That was totally a Yes, yes.

Graham Hartstone  58:45  

Technically, as well, Jeff libram introduced quite a in our patchbay we had trimmers, so we could actually get the hammers from our premix and trim them up before they ever got to the console. And similarly, we could push another button and inject doby level through the rest of the chain so that we could set the faders and it was a great use because when something didn't work, you just press this it's okay from here on Yes. And or is I'm getting it down to here it was just a really a really great tool for for finding out where the problem was. Yeah, it also meant we could because it's quite you know quite a long process if you've got seven or eight six track premix is to like to set all the the Dolby levels you could the assistant could do it at the back without ever anything coming through the system just went from track to track and set all those and, and that was meant that at least somebody else could be having a conversation.

Jim Betteridge  59:50  

Yeah. Yeah, like we'll go on. Yes. But what so while you're in theatre one that was all he was all gone into the sixth round when he went to theatre. Yes, yes. Yes, yeah. So then you transfer to theatre to,

Graham Hartstone  1:00:04  

yes. Gordon McCollum, who has his reputation went before me He is a brilliant mixer but could be a bit volatile and temperamentally didn't suffer fools gladly, basically. And he was not known to tell the editors and editors take all that sh one t back and redo it. So he was difficult to work with. But I accepted by people who really knew what he was getting at. The directors and people who work for you can really almost like two classes, those that know what you're doing and realise you're trying to help on those that just want it to cost less. So I want you to Crikey I can't really hear the difference. But fortunately, because Gordon's talents were recognised by, you know, a number of prominent filmmakers, we did get to go do some good, good films, but john Hayward found a lot of this conflict of it difficult to get on with at a point in about 1974 we were mutually agreed to swap he said, I can't stand it anymore. And I said, Well, I'll go. So we swapped as stereo was coming in to

Jim Betteridge  1:01:13  

when you say stereo, you mean the Dolby stereo?

Graham Hartstone  1:01:15  

Yeah, the Dolby stereo was coming in because Mac was already doing magnetic stereo and some of my like slipper in the rows, and one or two of the bonds would have had like a premier release print that was that was stereo alized on to four track Mac perhaps. But he was before that he was doing 55 days that became l said, and a large number of big Sam Bronson, American six track productions. And of course, Fiddler on the Roof for which he won the Oscar. So Dolby stereo was beginning to come in it was a big leap from Academy mono, but it still had a lot of restrictions in the early days the the separation between channels as I recall was eight D B's to begin with. So anything you put in the centre bled down atbs the adjacent channels. And being a phase related a matrix, common phase in particularly in electronic music or something would do some crazy things. And later, it would do it to m&s recordings, or things. So it was quite difficult to stop unwanted stuff getting to the surround. And also quite difficult to maintain a wide stereo image because anything that was similar tended to lump up in the middle, you know, typically music on and atmospheres and the little things like, like a noise reduction in the surround as well as a roll off. So that unwanted stuff because if you if you just listen to the surrounds in an early Dolby system, you could hear all the dialogue just cracking through. And to avoid that there was a time delay, and the roll off to try and make an a gate. So you would try to get a bit of birdsong up there and nothing would happen all of a sudden it would. And to overcome the the bleeding together, we used to lose delays as much as we could. Best thing was separate material left and right in to two nice mono tracks to make a stereo similar sounding would stay there. But anything with anything with cohesive phase would we get to the back. There was another thing that actually Dolby put in called bass blend, which would bleed a low frequencies across because they're not directional, and that would tend to lock them into position. Because it didn't matter where they were. And similarly, with voiceovers it was common to try and spread the the voiceover over the three speakers at the front just to separate it from the on screen dialogue. So that it was just a bit more intimate, but we try and do that with Dolby stereo, it just gets louder in the middle you know, the mixes were slower in those days it was you know, not uncommon to take three months to make a film like Superman was a lot of time while Mac was sought out his dialogues and music in the middle that I could just you know paint pictures in the background with with my atmosphere, pre mixes and tracks

Jim Betteridge  1:04:35  

and why would you be doing that if he was sorting out his mixes? You know,

Graham Hartstone  1:04:39  

every time we went forward, I know he will see Yeah. Especially once we got automation if if I like to keep it in if not I just and I mean that was introduced to me and on a monitor picture in fact with by Les Hodgson who have a very good sound editor, and he, while we were either pre mixing or mixing, he would just come up behind me and whisper in my ear that at 480 feet as cockerel just walks across in the background there if you just tweak tracks seven, and I, you know, I that's when I started with Oh, I can't do that. And then you know, it led to all sorts of things like having a permanent hand on the MIDI equaliser with the wind in trees and watching the guests.

Jim Betteridge  1:05:33  

So the editor was always there. Yes, yeah.

Graham Hartstone  1:05:36  

Well, on the ideally, as always, there were pictures where the shedule and the re cutting and got the better of them. And we were on our own. Well, what they did they provide a cue sheets for us. So the cue sheet for the sound effects, shall we say, and we used to ask them to lay after premix. So it all let's take it, we've got all the cars laid across 15 tracks, they would give us a cue sheet of 15 tracks with this car, at this foot is that car and where to where to mix, where to fade, where to cut. And we would lay these out on the floor of the theatre and go down with a coloured pencil. And just mark which premise that we're going to go into bearing in mind that we wanted to keep our separations so. And when it laid out like that you could see the gaps appearing. And there were tricks we could do in Dolby stereo, that if you wanted to keep something separate, but on the same premix you could either put it in the centre, you go for the equally left and right. And some of those things you can hear these days when you hear an old when you hear a DVD or an old movie, but hasn't had enough attention paid to the mastering.

Jim Betteridge  1:07:03  

So how many at this point? How many source tracks would you have if you got 15 tracks? reticulate?

Graham Hartstone  1:07:07  

Well, we did two had 17 playoff machines, of which about seven or eight were multitrack. And otherwise could be six, three or four. Several more that were just three track probably and then some mono ones, which also had loop ends on them. So 17 was our as our limit 17 machines. Obviously, when we were pre mixing with 17 mono tracks, we'd change all the six tracks and change the heads and and as we premix we'd change them back again. And the idea while we probably everybody did we, we would do the dialogues first and we'd play them into the monitor while we pre mixed the next thing around them always, you know, trying to get the premix to approximate how we thought it should be at the end. But with the separation because we invariably didn't have any music and that was going to change all our plans when it came along. But you mixed it so that it actually would stand on its own without music because it might have to.

Jim Betteridge  1:08:17  

Yeah, I didn't use temp tracks in those days. Yeah, no temp music

Graham Hartstone  1:08:22  

was was usually selected by the editor. Yeah. Terry Rawlings was particularly good at it, which is some great tracks and unfortunately sometimes they were not bettered by that. By the school. Yeah, Superman we had for the sequence where Superman take Lois Lane flying for the first time. It was mixed, and all beginning to final mix in with 210 cc's. I'm not in love. And it was cut to that, you know, and it worked beautifully, but they couldn't get clearance or couldn't afford clearance or what so wound up with Lois Lane doing his horrible monologue through it. She couldn't see. So next time you see your new radio have to remember how good it could have been

Jim Betteridge  1:09:21  

your first job as main mixer or Blade Runner?

Graham Hartstone  1:09:25  

Yes. Well, I done.

I don't like

shoe t TV shows and a couple of low budget movies. And then we were doing Blade Runner, which was blighted with post production problems, re cutting voiceover in voiceover out, compete changes. We started mixing it with Mac and I was with Nick worldway effects mixers, but it went back and back and back. And we've done a few pre mixes and then he had gone to hospital. So I said to Jeff, I said, Well, I can do this. But I really need Johnson who would come in on the effects. So john came in with the effects. And I mixed it with and also with Nick. And that first day, we thought, you know, they'll take it back to LA, you know, but we mixed to the first day. And we obviously acquitted ourselves because we went on to do it, but there were time pressures. There were only two weeks left before we had to deliver it. And we literally mixed that virtually from square one, there was hardly anything that was rescued Well, from what Mac had done. So we virtually remixed the whole thing in two weeks, which was very long hours every day. And we caught up with the sound editors who just couldn't keep up. One reel, I did the dialogues, just from the cutting copy, I had the cutting copy up there and I just punched every car and every everywhere should have been laid off, I just punched the water. All the rain in the Bradbury building at the end wasn't laid, john and i did it with all the rain loops we could muster, punch every card. just changing the loops on the cuts and punching the new one in. And that's man that punch the punch in really because there's nothing worse than rain for punching in. Yeah. And so we would punch on punch in on cuts. One of the one of my jobs as the as the assistant w mixer was to cue the action, so that we could make the cuts the right time in the sound, which meant putting it on the bench upstairs over a light box winding it through and examining every cut and deciding whether it needed a cue, which was a streamer, an 18 inch line join in trying to graph from one side of the film to the other. I built a little template for it, which I have perspex. So that was a perspex plate with two straight two straight edges hinged at one end. And a little blocks that were 35 millimetres wide. So I laid the film in it, and ran it through it and I just had to pull either one straight A's over or the other and I got a perfect 18 inch streamer. And it was that process when I looking through the film that made me analyse every cut about what I thought the sound should happen to the sound on it because you know, you don't want to change on every cut a lot of the edit a lot of edits in a film, like from in a conversation from you to me. We don't want the viewer to notice. So I had that taught me to analyse every cut, do I want to change the sound here? What do I want to happen to the sound through this thing? How do I want to put it to start? How do I want it to end? What do I want to hit the beginning what I want to hit the end. And I found that a great education for later when I as soon as I saw and even now when I teach the film school as soon as a soundtrack comes up. I know exactly what I want to do it. So it's not, you know, it's a really enjoyable process because I only have to think about it. I just know what I want to do with 1981. We went straight from Blade Runner into Pink Floyd wall. And maybe maybe because of the age that they had requested that Nick and I were the sound crew on it. Because the James Guthrie was going to obviously mix all the music, Pink Floyd's mixer. So we would be all of the same age, the levels that they worked at, you know, we're not going to be contained on to 70 millimetre magnetic. And behind us where these enormous egos three, actually three enormous egos as Roger Waters very much his project, Alan Parker, who was the cinematic and had done the brilliant, absolutely brilliant visuals to it. And the other ego was Gerald scarfe. So we had three very enormous egos. And they didn't agree on everything by any stretch of the imagination. So it was a constant battle.

But I think what came out is is a very, very interesting movie. Only only Alan Parker could put those sorts of visuals, I think to what is in factor. Hello large music video. Yeah.

Jim Betteridge  1:14:53  

And then the Oscar nomination that passage to India.

Graham Hartstone  1:14:56  

Yes. Working with David lean was was a pleasure. Again, he's not supposed to be all that easy. But I found I got on very well with him. And interesting man, he, as is recorded by his shedule of moviemaking. He wouldn't even start shooting until he got every detail down in the script. And he said, the conversation everyone is I don't know how people can do it any other way. Whereas I was fully aware that people went out and short all sorts of stuff on trying to make a movie out of it. I know very well with David and I was at the end of it. While he suddenly halfway through, he said, you know, dear boy, I think we might be nominated for a sound Oscar here. When Of course, he was absolutely right. But here, it was a great pleasure to to work with him, and a great privilege. I was looking forward to his next but unfortunately, the time he took to get scripts and things together. I remember at the draft of the governor's ball at the Oscars. Steven Spielberg came over to our table and David and David was saying, Oh, I don't know if I can make another one. Nobody will employ me Neverland show me and Steven Spielberg said I will. Well, Dad, what came of it, but he certainly was very keen to.

Jim Betteridge  1:16:29  

motiva Yes.

Graham Hartstone  1:16:33  

Obviously, he was becoming very popular, and stereo had come in. And at that time, I did the first one, there weren't any stereo theatres in Spain, and certainly no mixers who were had any experience of it. So they up to came over for the mix, essentially, but I was provided with just Peri mono material, because they didn't even have a sound editor. In those days. The picture editor just put together the cutting copy and some bits of music and the artefacts and some atmospheres. And obviously, it was all in Spanish, no subtitles, so I had to rely on them to tell me about clarity of the dialogue. I was able to end add in some stereo atmospheres and do some panning but not a lot. Because Pedro was one of those who didn't take to the stereo very easily. He knew what he liked what he had, and in something different was maybe not. I remember trying to replace a gunshot for him once which was, you know, the old example a very old recording of a gunshot. No, no, no, no, we have the old one place. The old one. That's, that's fine. Anyway, so we got home while and I think they enjoyed their trips to Pinewood. So I went on to do another three or four, and they would have gone further but the last one, the dates they booked clashed. And with something else, I'm looking at the men which is a great shame, but by that time, stereo got its feet in established in Spain, so he was able to stay at home. The interesting thing about eyes wide shot is that nobody but nobody except Stanley, and the editor had seen a frame of it until it was ready to show to the Warner Brothers executives. Stanley did a temp mix. Sally and Nigel did attempt mix on on the workstation at his home. But they had to bring it to Pinewood to first to level it out to make it playable. But we didn't have a picture. We weren't allowed to see the picture. I mixed the trailers without picture. I had to have a blind put over the projection portholes for all except the one projector that was showing and so that nobody sneak in there and have a peek. But this is where we got to mix it. So I had to put those in, get those fitted in beforehand. But up until up until the mix the proper mix up nobody had seen a frame where none of us had seen a frame of it until we saw the trailer is finished. It was just a music score over the images. Chris Isaac's added a bad bad thing. He was totally he was he i mean he's amazing because he's just total control. Absolute total control and given total. Allow total control by Warner Brothers and people use To say, well, that must cost a fortune because he shot for two years in and edited for goodness knows how long but it didn't because he shot with a third of the amount of a normal crew probably paid him a third of the money that was should have got. And he reputedly allegedly claimed on every possible thing he could claim on. So in fact, it cost no more than a normal feature. Sadly, he died before we actually got into the Wi Fi. Yeah, but I had you know, briefly discussed why he first thing he said to me when we went up to see him on the lot is gonna go stereo this time Graham, because he had rejected stereo for his previous few movies, obviously, 2001 was the old stereo but what he didn't like, on full metal jacket, which I didn't mix across Andy Nelson mixed, but what he didn't like was what the Dolby matrix was doing to his daughter's music. And so we just are no shortly into the mix. He pulled it and said, Now let's go mono. So Andy had gone off after that. And it came to the foreign language versions, which had to be sort of interviewed over the phone by Stan Lee and I was pre warned

by everybody from Cheryl Jones, who was a maintenance engineer who used to work at boreham wood and Bill row who phoned me up and told me about Stanley likes. No bass in the dialogue at all he likes to almost telephone quality, and you have to mix with the fader monitor to DBS down on Academy mana. So armed with all this in my said, No, that's fine. Okay, that's no problem. We can do all that. Okay. So I obviously passed the test, and we started, and his hours are 11 till 11. And he would probably sometimes turn up at three. And then we'd work 211. Not very often afterwards, because he was he didn't want the overtime to go past midnight. But a foreign language mix. Four movie would normally take three to four days, these used to take nine long days to do. He used to reject whole recordings of particular artists, and make them do it again, in the foreign and never, he never allowed a foreign direct rover. He did it all even though he couldn't understand what was going on. somebody suggested that one of the translations, the Italian translation wasn't rude and wasn't dirty and filthy enough. In Italian. So we paid the trip to a local Italian waiter in a restaurant, ask him what was the sort of things we began to find were normal. Difficult man, but I can't find with him. I fell out with him a couple of times. And that was pretty hairy. But he forgave me both times. And you did. I don't know everybody that I've ever spoken to who remained working for him because a lot of people fell at the first hurdle. And I just sort of privilege and so interesting working for him. Do anything

Jim Betteridge  1:23:36  

also given to directors normally take that much interest in foreign versions? No, not that much. Now.

Graham Hartstone  1:23:43  

The began to a bit we we used to work on them to say like on the bonds used to say, let's do the figs, you know, the French, German, Italian and Spanish. Now we can do it exactly the same. And then Spielberg began to take a notice, I think and get his films mixed in, in America rather than and over here, too. We did the foreign language versions for not for school, but we did for Apocalypse Now. And so they began to realise that especially doing them in the same place. You could, you know, get a much better result, Stanley paid particular attention to getting voices that were very similar performances that were similar. All done by a remote interview, you know, and screening and testing. So much show, but we had the automated console, obviously, and I would get track that I'd get the same artist laid up on the same tracks to come up for each different foreign language version. And sometimes the automation actually was still even down to the cue and I'd sit there thinking what should I just didn't Yeah, just a little bit. probably didn't need to very often because they were, you know, they were very strictly policed performances and and voices all across all the automation was allowed all the all the various echo effects on toast came up the same.

Jim Betteridge  1:25:19  

So, you meet head of post,

Graham Hartstone  1:25:21  

yes, well, obviously Jeff Flake Abrams retirement was sheduled. I can't remember whether whether I went for it. But it was sort of intimated to me that it was a given that I would take over from Jeff, which was useful because I was able to spend time with Jeff just going through stuff and going through the filing cabinets and finding out all the stuff before he went in, it was a pretty smooth takeover. I think. One thing I insisted on which they didn't, like I said, I still want to keep mixing. They said, Oh, you can't do both. I said, Well, Yes, I can. I will. I mean, who do you? How do you think the place goes with Jeff goes on holiday, you know, I mean, I'll be downstairs, I won't even be out of the country. And so I was allowed to do that. Which was very good. Because it also meant I could pick and choose a bit very luxurious position to be in Yes. And unable to work for people I liked and enjoyed working with, which was a very, very privileged position.

Jim Betteridge  1:26:31  

Thank you keep in touch with what's going on? Yeah.

Graham Hartstone  1:26:34  

Exactly. Keep in touch with the technology and the people and a lot more networking.

Jim Betteridge  1:26:41  

And that was the beginning of the digital age, wasn't it?

Graham Hartstone  1:26:43  

It was Yes, well, we had, we used to consider the lead. And quite a few things we had designed for and commissioned the first purpose built film console, automated film console, which Sam wise of a company then called technical projects built for us. To add a specification, we said that we wanted most important was automated panels. Because you know, everybody can, one may want to change the EQ the level balance, but if it cargoes left to right, it's gonna go left to right every time. So let's panic once and have it repeat. So that we had different laws for everything from a special little law that dealt with Dolby SBA, which can't remember how it worked now, but it's sort of slightly counteracted the matrix is tendency to speed the pan up or slow it down. And we had a job, we had joysticks, obviously, to go back. And we had it specifically designed to route easily it had 32 outputs, but at the bottom of those three buttons that said D and M. So if you press one of those, it went to six, right D or s extra E or F extract m, the panner internal panel. And we had all the knobs made a different size, a different shape and a different colour. Well, because the music consoles that all consoles had been sort of derived from people looking down and looking at them, which they were hardly we were looking at the screen all the time. And we felt it quite useful to have that tactile reassurance that we'd actually grabbed hold of the right one. That was very good. And it went on to service until 1999. We were very fortunate to have avid take up the UK base at Pinewood. And they were phenomenally expensive machines but but we could see that I could see the food shoulder and I managed to do a deal in exchange for sort of the publicity of having the Pinewood to, to buy a few along as well as real sound. But I'd like to think we sort of pioneered the use of those for ADR or they had a very good ADR programme in the audio versions. We had them in the ADR theatre. And they would just bring in big, they were great big heavy drives to gig to begin with, and nine gigs, heavy handbags walking up and down the corridors. But it was so efficient and so quick that we had a few American visitors that just seemed to be blown away by it at that time. So that was for john, it was very sad that audio vision didn't continue when did design took over. But I started mixing too hard this picture which was quite arranged for somebody who had been even gone from film rolling backwards and forwards a 15 foot run up and then tape which was a bit faster but took a while to settle down. Just to be instantly anyway wanted to was quite a lot lost all the rhythm that you had in your thinking process of what you wanted to do. Yeah. But eventually with fully automated digital control consoles that that is more run out now because today's mixers and students never noticed any headway so they're quite useful. They quite used to leaping anywhere in the programme. But what was a great use for me was Colin broads controller, which had like instant replay, which I had set for 10 seconds. So I would go forward to I went for went wrong, kicked it back 10 seconds and that my rhythm came back because I always do it at 10 seconds. And that gave me time to think get my hands on the right knobs. And yes.

Jim Betteridge  1:31:12  

So when you walk into a film, you had a good quality picture.

Graham Hartstone  1:31:16  

Well, a lot of in the early days, we'd have a horrible black and white Jube, which was the only thing we used to say was it look better than the playback when we play back to colour. But we didn't rock and roll colour because very often the only colour was the cutting copy and the joins would all come apart. Especially with high speed. In The Man Who Would Be King, there was a scene where all these people are bringing gifts up to be presented to somebody and then people are bringing them up and thank you and putting them down. And one came up with this big bunch of jewels and put them in the bowl and we had a volleyball falling in the bowl and we saw a colour it was a bunch of grapes.

So I'm here to post production and I'm still mixing occasionally as as it suits me. But kidding, I find the I got quite excited by the cut and thrust of being a shooter executive. Going through the after the acquisition. When rank sold Pinewood to a consortium led by Miko grade. That was a very interesting time getting involved with all sorts of new decisions that her I hadn't had to come across before. And

Jim Betteridge  1:32:40  

slowly sort of thing that well.

Graham Hartstone  1:32:45  

branding, we had a weekend like how to brand the studio, which you know, made you think about all sorts of things. It was obviously, it was obviously eventually decided to call it Pinewood also all sorts of decisions. And then the decision to go public, which I got peripherally involved with, because they I wasn't actually, obviously at any other very high level meetings, but I used to get questions fired at me from his meetings about this, that and the other. And so we went public. And for me, the emphasis seemed to change then a bit from I've always gone to work to biomed for 40 odd years to make movies. And now the emphasis add change to making money or a profit, which had to be because to satisfy shareholders and didn't sit in highly comfortably with me. And for the first time in my life, I found myself some summer days, wishing I was somewhere else instead of in my office, which hadn't happened to me before. Young grandchildren growing up and having missed so much of my children's childhood by working long hours. I wanted to not repeat that and really enjoy spending time with the very young generation finally have infinite patience, which amazes me. But they're just little sponges wanting to soak up information. That's great. And my thoughts turned towards retirement and I began to talk about doing less hours and finding a successor. And eventually we agreed to just let me go and be a consultant, which was also fine because it meant I could keep a few ties and fade out at about that time or slightly before I become involved at the National Film School in bekins field, I'd always, you know, supported them and done what I could for them as a sound department while I was in charge. But now I actually went there to be a guest tutor, which I thoroughly enjoy. I'm still doing it. And that is expanded to other film schools in Europe, Norway, Denmark and Germany, which are very nice. They're all bright, keen young people. And I enjoy it very much, especially if it's a trip involved.

Jim Betteridge  1:35:46  

What do they PLC what could they not have continued without going public?

Graham Hartstone  1:35:50  

I imagine I don't know much about those high finance things, but it was a venture capital company that were financing it and they seem to be always in it for the short term. So they were looking to go public and the latest owners desperately wanting to delist but they didn't get enough percentage of shareholder votes to delist and go back to being a private company again.

Jim Betteridge  1:36:21  

And they wanted to do that so they could return to making film.

Graham Hartstone  1:36:24  

I'm not sure why. I mean, I really am not too involved. involved at all anymore, but I'm not sure why. But it just occurred to me that while we were rank, under rank, we never made a loss. But there were years when we just about broke even or a bit more and there were years when we had real bounty made a lot of money. That's the way it was and that's the way it was accepted. We went up and down like that we did what we could when we could afford it and we were pulled in our belts when we couldn't that when you when you've got shareholders goes completely out of the board because the margin is just got to go up and up. Can't afford to see any downs. Yeah. I don't think the film industry will ever be like that.

Biographical

Graham V. Hartstone (born in June 1944) is a British sound engineer. He has been nominated for three Academy Awards in the category Best Sound.  Superman (1978), A Passage to India (1984) Aliens (1986)He has worked on over 190 films since 1962.