Recently,I was writing an e-mail to a client who wanted to change the pronunciation of a word, I disagreed, but you can not just say no, that route ends in loss of work!
I justified my decision citing examples etc and finished with the sentence
“One thing I constantly remind myself about sound is that almost everyone can hear, and so can have an opinion. However they can also be wrong!”
I then went on to describe a session I was engineering for the Legendary John Webster. If you don’t know the name he is the creative brains behind some of the UK’s most iconic advertising, Smash Martians , Honey Monster..he is a colossus, yet I did not realise it at the time …and by the way he and his creative partner Chris Webster were two of my nicest clients.
The reason I remember it was that after several hours of notes, I questioned one of them and Chris replied “ fair enough, leave it as you had it…did I tell you I was deaf in one ear!”
Well if got me thinking. Although I do not define my self by my advertising career, it was a long and enjoyable part of my work history. We had some amazing work cross our threshold and I realise I worked with some of the greats! And I thought it might be fun to list some highlights
I briefly worked with Danny Kleinman (I dont think I made an impression), but he does the Bond opening sequences so that’s cool!
The only time I worked with Robert Campbell (RKCR) was on an advert for United Airlines, on the 11th Sept 2001. You could not make it up! The advert never made it to air. As we were mixing it the second screen in the studio showed the horror that was happening.
I did save Tesco a massive amount of money by pointing out the Celeb they had to promote their Champagne had just been convicted of drunk driving….he also had to do his VO session twice because the first one was a bit slurred. (we booked him for a 9am session for the ‘retakes’) Can you guess who it was?
Up until I left Jungle I had worked with EVERY doctor Who except Patrick Troughton
You should NEVER put Tom Baker & Brian Blessed in a very small studio! I did once and still laugh about it, Needless to say the sound insulation was inadequate!
Penelopy Cruz loves McDonalds fries,
Peter Mead..I was lucky enough to work for AMV and he was a gentleman. I must read his book When In Doubt Be Nice: Lessons From a Lifetime in Business, I have read sections, but this is his philosophy..be nice. That philosophy did resonate in the company while I was there. Be Nice is a very good starting point!