It’s beautifully scripted by Stephen Knight. I was a fan of the show and was very fortunate to be offered the job by the director, who I’d worked with previously on the second series of The Tunnel for Sky Atlantic. He and I got on really well and he really loved the intimate sound we were recording. He really wanted that same proximity for Peaky Blinders. When he told me he’d got it, I asked ‘Can I come?’ and he said ‘Yeah, I’d love you to!’ I couldn’t believe it—it was like a dream come true. It was a really wonderful job and a really tough job. It was a very ambitious show with big expectations and high-profile actors like Tom Hardy and Cillian Murphy, who have so much experience. It’s a great atmosphere on set but it’s charged and there is pressure to deliver consistently high quality. There can’t be a dud scene. The job itself was over 15 weeks long and we were doing 11-day fortnights, which means you work six days one week and five days the next. You’re working really long hours and you only have three days off every two weeks. To keep up energy and commitment to a project over that length of time is really hard. That was the main thing for me— keeping up commitment to every scene and making sure every moment was as good as possible. There were a lot of challenges for location sound, but I was really satisfied with the results we got. They were able to use 99% of the artists’ original performances because we really pushed hard to get the best sound. That’s the most satisfying thing for me and I’ll put up with everything else in order to do that.

ALL OF THE LONG HOURS AND EVERYTHING ELSE

ONE PIECE OF ADVICE