Ryan McMurray

I think this piece written by Steve Albini is one of the main reasons I decided to pursue a career in film sound rather than music. I’m unsure of it’s accuracy but considering Albini’s experience over the past few decades, you have to believe he knows what he’s talking about. “Some of your friends are already this fucked.”

Ryan
www.ryanmcmurray.com

I’m loving iOS5. My (battered, cracked, weathered) 3GS seems to be running better than it did prior to the update and all the changes made are positive steps forward, with the new notification reducing clicks significantly. But the new ‘Music’ app is annoying. This was known as ‘iPod’ on all previous iOS versions, which made more sense. I often sync new sound effects libraries to my iPhone so I can flick through them to audition them when I’m out. People also listen to audio books, podcasts, comedy etc on their phones so I think the ‘Music’ app could be misleading to some people (read: my dad). Naming the app ‘Audio’ might have been a better option. Or re-merge ‘Music’ and ‘Video’ to a ‘Media’ app. I’ll see what my Dad thinks and get back to you. :)

Ryan
www.ryanmcmurray.com

Photographs from university, working on my 10.2 surround project.

Candy Cabs starts tonight at 9pm on BBC1. We shot it last summer, in a few lovely locations such as Lymm, West Kirby and Hoylake. These are a few photos I took…

More information about Candy Cabs can be found at Candy Cabs BBC and Candy Cabs IMDb

Ryan
ryanmcmurray.com

I know this is late and I’m certain I have missed a great record off this list, but here is my favourite music of 2010.

Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles
The Drums - The Drums
Girl Talk - All Day
Good Shoes - No Hope No Future
Hot Club de Paris - The Rise and Inevitable Fall of the High School Suicide Cluster Band - EP
Hot Club de Paris - With Days Like This As Cheap As Chewing Gum, Why Would Anyone Want to Work? - EP
Jonsi - Go
Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Kurran and The Wolfnotes - Tour CD-R
Sufjan Stevens - Age of Adz
Two Door Cinema Club - Tourist History
Uffie - Sex Dreams and Denim Jeans
Vampire Weekend - Contra

If you’re wondering how I missed out Arcade Fire, Drake, Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti and Beach House, well I haven’t given them a proper listen yet. I had a whole year, but I let you down. :) Special mention to my friend @sambaconsam and his band Slow Motion Shoes, Rihanna’s great list of singles and collaborations this year and to Tinie Tempah - I enjoyed his singles a lot.

Ryan
ryanmcmurray.com

I spent two days swinging boom in Norfolk on this Mob Film Company ‘Hoseasons’ commercial. This was the first time I boomed someone stood on a boat whilst I was on land. Long pole? Yes. My poor arms!

Ryan
ryanmcmurray.com

Last week Sony announced the Walkman will be discontinued in Japan after the remaining units are sold. Sad times for, well, everyone who ever owned a portable cassette player. When I was first given a Walkman, I thought it was amazing that I could listen to copies of my Compact Discs on cassette whilst walking around school - a strange freedom, I still feel now wandering around the city listening to music. School is when I got really into music. I don’t remember when I got my first Walkman, but it was sometime around 1996, about a year after we got our first CD player at my parents’ house. It was a Panasonic ‘boom box’ style CD/cassette/radio and it ended up in my room in about a week. Sorry Mum.

Once I had the boom box and Walkman I never looked back; I started making copies and compilations from CD’s for free time at school/college. I fell in love with music sat in school surrounded by other Walkman owners (some had Alba’s, but I didn’t judge ;)), swapping cassettes and flicking through Kerrang, Melody Maker and NME, discussing music. Only a handful of friends had home computers with Internet access, so cassettes and our portable cassette players were our MySpace, SoundCloud, iPod, iPhones, Facebook all rolled into one - we exchanged tapes, and we talked. But having a Walkman and a group of friends each with their own device meant music came out of our homes and became social, a few years before most of us got to gigs and concerts. The biggest evolution in portable music isn’t the iPod or even the MP3, it’s the Walkman. The Walkman is the device that took music from our home and onto millions of streets around the world - it changed listening habits forever, which paved the way for the iPod.

Although the cassette Walkman is now gone (in Japan at least) Sony has moved with the times with the release of the DiscMan in 1984, MiniDisc in the early 1990’s and the “Walkman that didn’t originally support MP3, just WMA” MP3 Walkman in the 2000’s. Everything was going fine, until Apple released the iPod in 2001. I didn’t ever stop considering the cassettes a contender (I hated portable CD players, because they skipped too much) until MP3 players took off. I mean, although I used MiniDiscs and enjoyed them as they could store much more music than a cassette, I didn’t fall in love the way I did with cassettes. But When I got my first iPod, I knew I’d never look back. The iPod was a game-changer. It took the idea of portable music from the 70’s and made it cooler than it ever had been before. Despite there being more affordable mp3 players, the iPod (in all variations) outsells it’s competitors because basically, it’s fashionable - much like the Walkman was when I was in college and school. Everyone had a tape player, unless they had a Walkman. The term iPod is often used to describe an MP3 Player, much like Hoover - vaccuum, Kleenex - tissue and Walkman - tape player have been for many years.

What about new versions of the Walkman?
If would be nice if Sony could get back to it’s glory days but it hasn’t really made any attractive devices for a number of years. One or two early digital audio player from Sony looked okay, but the MiniDisc and Net Walkman releases have been quite ugly and had ridiculous names like MZ-R91. The iPod is simply an iPod with the option of how much space you want. Much simpler for my Dad if he wants to buy a device. While in 2001 Sony was trying to sell us the MZ-N1 MiniDisc player with it’s NetMD, BassBoost, Groove, Long Play, LP2 and LP4, Apple released an iPod which would store and play 200 albums and look really cool. There was only going to be one winner. RIP cassette Walkman, CD Walkman, MD Walkman, MP3 Walkman.

Unless Sony can get back the coolness of their portable audio devices from last century, it’s (portable audio) days are numbered. Even if Sony managed to get it’s next series of digital Walkman to challenge the iPod, I still think Apple has the market sewn up - iTunes Store, App Store, compatible iPhones and iPads all contribute to the iPod experience and I can’t see (sadly) how Sony could come back from it. RIP Walkman, period.

Ryan
ryanmcmurray.com

Yes, my post title is a horrific play on words, but you should still go and watch Buried. If you haven’t heard of the film, it stars Ryan Reynolds in a coffin, for 90 minutes, with a mobile phone. Every frame of the film is set in the coffin, as Paul Conroy, buried alive, tries to discover who put him there and how he is going to get out. Once again, there are no spoilers here. Whether you have seen the film, or you haven’t, it’s safe to continue.

As mentioned in some of the favourable press regarding Buried, it’s all very Hitchcock. Victor Reyes does a great Bernard Herrman which is coupled with some crash zooms at intense moments to keep the tension high, whilst poor phone signal, a phone ringing and ringing and calls going repeatedly unanswered have never been more frustrating than when someones life is at risk. As Paul Conroy uses what little phone battery he has left to call various friends, emergency services and government workers, we are reminded constantly how we normally rely on body language and facial expressions, leaving Paul and the audience questioning who can be trusted and what the truth is. It is rare in cinema to experience a story from solely one perspective, but in Buried this is the case. We are uncomfortably (pun probably intended) stuck at one end of a phone line, once the call is ended, we lose touch with the person at the other end of the phone, we never see them. It’s Ryan Reynolds and a dozen faceless crackly voices. Annoying and brilliant!

There are also passages of the film that are pitch black - not a common experience in conventional cinema. The audience sees nothing, leaving us to rely solely on our ears to discover what is happening in the coffin. Throughout the entire film we are forced to trust our ears, when we spend our lives dependent on our eyes more than any other sense - It’s a completely new experience, which is gripping, frustrating and unsurprisingly very claustrophobic.

Ryan
www.ryanmcmurray.com

See the full gallery on posterous

A couple of photos I took whilst filming on location in Oldham, on probably the last sunny day of 2010. Rubbish.

So, I graduated MSc Sound Design, but I wouldn’t be the audio geek I know I am, if I didn’t record myself being presented with the scroll, would I? :)

Everyone loves the sound of rain outside when they’re indoors… I think? I only wish there was a slightly better microphone available for iPhone.

Freight elevators sound much more interesting than regular ‘people’ elevators.

So yeah, I was being driven and the rain was quite heavy. At the time, I thought it was “super-heavy”. Not so much now though. :)

This is a clip of Sofia Coppola’s Lost In Translation, for which I sourced music and edited it to suit the clip. This was part of a university project. The video and audio used here is for educational purposes. That’s cool under the fair use act, right? More information on the Vimeo page.

Ryan