A strange request on the phone.

[Paul R Johnson]

I've been quite careful to NOT promote the office address as I've always worked from home, and Google know me there. However - Facebook is clearly better than I thought. In fact, today I got fed up with the taxi that has been parked there for two weeks in the space for one of our vehicles, and today I put a photo of it on a local town Facebook group. I've had an irate taxi company owner angry because he cannot tell me the drivers name, who doesn't work for him any longer due to our data protection laws. but I've had a friend of his get in touch to say it's being sorted. Social media really does have power. Of course I also got called names, moaned at for being precious and all that stuff too - but if the car gets removed, it's cool with me!

[Steven Digges]

Paul, an active train track behind you new studio! Holy crap...i worry about the hum of office CPUs and air handling systems. A train takes that to a whole new level. Bells, sirens, whistles, and tons of metal rolling on steal track. Are you kidding me? Do you have to keep image stabilisation on when shooting from sticks? Do your lights flicker and sway for that old parlor look. Are your low pass filters cranked up like the gain on a cheap pocket recorder? Do you love the smell of creosote permeating your studio in the morning? Have you started shooting "B" movies and the trains enhance the audio track. Somehow a black and white image of a fair damsel in distress tied to the tracks keeps coming to mind. Do you know the regular schedule so when the long freightliner comes through you just go to lunch? In my audio kit there is many pads and filters, none of them say LOCOMOTIVE on them!

Just kidding. I hope your new space is working out well for you!

Kind Regards,

Steve

[Paul R Johnson]

Well - my sound studio is luckily at home where it's been for years, but the new studio is normally video, but of course yesterday we were doing talking heads. Studio to railway track is probably 20m, maybe a bit less, and the trains are actually all new, and fairly quiet, so the only thing I can hear when it's quiet is the crossing siren.

One of the computers is enough to prevent the siren being heard - I often see the trains through the office window rather than hear it.

Audio wise I actually have more trouble with noise from the lights. I don't have any way to get rid of hot air created by the tungsten lights so, I'm now using my stock of theatre LED lighting, which actually looks pretty good, but all has fans for cooling and they can be heard on the radio mics if there is silence. Seems OK when it's busy, speaking wise.