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EE British Academy Film Awards in 2013 – Winners Press Conference: Sound

10 February 2013
BAFTA winners and presenters in the press room backstage at the Royal Opera House for the EE British Academy Film Awards on Sun 10 Feb 2013.

Press conference with Simon Hayes, Jonathan Allen, Lee Walpole, John Warhurst, Mark Paterson and Andy Nelon, winners in the Sound category at the EE British Academy Film Awards in 2013.

Q. We have the winners of the BAFTA for best sound from Les Misérables, Simon Hayes, Andy Nelson, Mark Paterson, Jonathan Allen, Lee Walpole and John Warhurst.  Welcome.

SIMON HAYES:  Thank you very much.  Good evening, I am Simon Hayes.

JONATHAN ALLEN:  I'm Jonathan Allen.

LEE WALPOLE:  I'm Lee Walpole.

JOHN WARHURST:  John Warhurst.

MARK PATERSON:  Mark Paterson.

ANDY NELSON:  Andy Nelson.

 

Q. How are you with harmonies by the way?  So did your singing voices develop?  Congratulations first of all to all six of you.  How does it feel to be a BAFTA winner?

LEE WALPOLE:  It was a massive collaborative effort, this film, and we really got a chance to showcase live production sound and what can be achieved by saving the actor's live performances emotionally and how that affects cinema audiences and it was a labour of love from start to finish, unlike normal movies where the sound production team and the sound post production team and the music deposition are all separate departments, we all put all of our skill together on this one and we all worked together from beginning to end so it's fantastic to have recognition of that.

 

Q. So when Tom came to you said I want to do this live, live singing on set, no artifice, what were your first thoughts, honestly?

LEE WALPOLE:  It was a massive opportunity and it was a fantastic opportunity and we grabbed it.

 

Q. Any questions at all for the guys?  Yes thank you.

PRESS:  You know watching that film you're recording sound live in incredible conditions in the Alps with rain pouring down.  I mean what were the real challenges of doing it live?

LEE WALPOLE:  The real challenges were getting clean enough recordings that they could be used and not be recorded afterwards.  Of course it would have been insane to go into the process without having prerecorded any of the vocals and miming, which of course Tom Hooper didn't want to do from the very beginning, only to have poor sound quality at the end and then ask the actors to rerecord.  So we knew that we had to get the live vocals.  We also wanted to protect those actors' performances.  They were so emotive, they weren't working with the tempo so they could take moments within their performance to be emotive, and we wanted to protect that.  The challenges of that were basically getting the set quiet.

 

Q. And Ali over here, thank you.

PRESS:  You had people on set playing piano as it happened.  Was there a very strong relationship with those people and will they be getting a BAFTA as well?

LEE WALPOLE:  There certainly was.  You know what, we've spoken about this.  There's a certain irony to the fact that the two pianists who knew the material intimately created a very very special relationship with all of the actors on the set because of course they were playing into invisible earpieces, no one could hear what they were playing apart from the actors and the irony is their piano tracks were thrown away afterwards.  However, what they did with the actors was create the film and I think we all recognised that and it was a very very important part of the process.

 

Q. That's all the time we have.  Please give a huge round of applause for the guys from Les Misérables Simon Hayes, Andy Nelson, Mark Paterson, Jonathan Allen, Lee Walpole and John Warhurst.  Congratulations guys.  Thank you very much indeed.


Watch the acceptance speech and the backstage interview with the winners in the Sound category > 


Download this transcript

PDF icon Sound Winner Press Conference Transcript in 2013