After completing his studies in audio and music production at our dBs Plymouth campus. Ryan Green has gone on to land a job as a freelance sound editor for the prestigious Pinewood Group. We tracked him down for a chat about his time at dBs Institute, his new job and how he's looking to develop his career further...
[Editor's note - since originally publishing this story, Ryan has gone on to become sound editor full-time at Pinewood, as well as Editorial Team Leader! Great stuff Ryan.]
Tell us about your time at dBs Music and why you chose to study with us?
I took some time out of education to work and to figure out my career path, music was always a strong passion of mine and in my early twenties I bought a very basic recording setup and started making music and recording demos for friends. This sparked my passion for working with sound and I decided I wanted to become an audio engineer and return to education.
I had friends who had previously studied at dBs Plymouth who recommended it, and after an open day visit and seeing the facilities and the content of the FdA Audio and Music Production course I knew I wanted to study there. I really wanted to build my technical skills as an audio engineer, other courses in the area involved a lot of either performance or composition elements, but dBs Institute stood out because of its focus on recording, mixing and audio technology.
How did your time at dBs affect the rest of your education and career so far?
The studio facilities at dBs are exceptional and offer the opportunity to work with lots of great equipment. When I continued my education to complete my degree I had lots of practical experience which enabled me to work and freelance during the rest of my studies. The course heavily involved training in Pro Tools and the opportunity to gain Avid Certificates with dBs tutor Stuart Welsh who is a Pro Tools wizard! This training has been crucial to my career and especially my current role as a dialogue editor. Most post-production houses use Pro Tools HD so you need to be proficient.
Tell us about your new job at Pinewood and what you role involves in a typical month?
I am currently working as a freelance sound editor with Pinewood Group in a department that creates international versioning for clients such as Paramount and Disney. My role is essentially dialogue editing and involves preparing international dialogues which then go on to be mixed in 5.1 or 7.1 for cinema release. These dialogues are recorded all over the world in different studios and my tasks involve editing, syncing, repairing and generally fixing any issues so all the dialogue is ready to mix. The turnover is extremely fast as we usually create six to eight different versions per week, but larger projects can involve 40 different languages. I sometimes also prepare screeners for client review and there are also a lot of quality check stages.
Prior to this, I was working in a music studio towards the end of my degree where I was in charge of music production and audio book projects. The last audio book I created was a law publication by Peter Rouse whose firm represented Mars and was released both here and in America. After finishing my degree I sent my CV to Pinewood looking for a junior position and was asked to attend an interview for my current role.
What advice would you give to anyone thinking about studying with dBs Institute?
I feel that audio is quite a specialist field but it's also an incredibly vast subject to study. There is so much to learn and so many different paths you can take to build a career working in sound. Independent institutes such as dBs cater for this really well, the staff have industry experience and are passionate about the subject. You can learn so much by spending time around other audio engineers or music producers. The facilities and equipment available are great and cater really well to building your technical and practical skills.
What are your ambitions for the future?
I'm really happy with my current role and in the future I would like to expand into the mixing side of production too. I'm also really passionate about recording and love recording foley and ADR but i'm still early in my career so we'll have to see. I'm a huge Star Wars fan so it would literally be a dream come true to work on anything Star Wars!
Any other projects you have going?
I created a short horror film for my dissertation called The First Circle and through that I started creating short films. I work closely with a friend who's based in Plymouth and together we've continued to create films. It started as a creative hobby but we've got a small production team now. I just finished the mix for our most recent film which my friend directed and filmed in Plymouth. We've got more adventurous projects lined up so maybe it will take off? We'll have to see!
