I record, make, break, boom, fix, design, edit and mix sound/audio; often for film and television, sometimes for music or other stuff. Filmmaker. Keen Runner. Average Footballer. Burger Eater. Nerd. I have a CV and my website is ryanmcmurray.com
I am a conscientious and enthusiastic sound professional with a broad education in sound recording, editing and mixing. I have valuable experience on set and in post-production; including Dreamworks commissioned short films for Fox Television, award winning television dramas, commercials and numerous feature films. I have shown leadership and communication skills, throughout two fast paced, practical degrees, where teamwork and initiative were essential.
Captured the location sound of Harry Sherriff's 'Bicycle Thief', with boom operator, Chris Devlin. Edited dialogue and sound effects to create sounds for the final mix.
I record, make, break, fix, design, edit and mix audio. Boom Operator. Sound Designer. Audio Editor/Mixer.
Mixed boom, personal and spot microphones on this short written and directed by Toby Everett, produced by Nadia Jaynes, starring Emmet Scanlan. I mixed day one of four.
Mixed production sound on this sort film, written and directed by Michelle Hooper. Recorded location effects and Foley for use in post-production.
Fitted Manchester United player, Shinji Kagawa with a personal microphone and boomed the action on the green screen set on this commercial for the Japanese bank.
Mixed production sound on location of this 5-minute short film. Mixed the location audio with some affected library effects, Foley and music.
Scott and Bailey (series 3) - ITV
The Mill - Channel 4
Filmed various Manchester United legends in 'training' for a comeback, with Stuart Wareing/Matt Atkinson.
Operated 2nd boom on the new BBC Comedy production of Lapland, starring Sue Johnston. Worked with Chris Atkinson and Matt Atkinson on the final three weeks of the shoot. Operated 2nd boom and regularly operated first boom. Rigged personal microphones on actors and maintained the sound equipment.
Edited dialogue, effects and foley for the 15 minute short by Vito Bruno. The majority of time was spent ironing out the dialogue and problem solving, before completing the final mix.
Swung boom, worked with costume in rigging personal microphones on actors, ran the floor for the sound mixer; organised wild tracks and acted as the contact between director and mixer.
Operated boom one of four booms in a busy marquee set for the Emmerdale Live 40th anniversary episode on October 17th 2012. Four days of rehearsals, followed by the live broadcast.
Recorded location sound and operated boom on all three parts of The Caravan short film trilogy, directed by Andrew Gunn. Used personal microphones and booms to record dialogue and location effects/wildtracks on a beautiful location in Gisburn Forest, Tosside. Edited dialogue, wildtracks and sound effects in preparation for the sound mix.
Swung boom for sound mixer, Gavin Dunn on this clothing catalogue commercial for Basement Media.
Working with sound mixer, Keith Silva and boom operator, Dan Dewsnap on the second series of E4's 'Fresh Meat'. Operating second boom and maintaining sound equipment. Learning to operate Aaton Cantar, to add to my knowledge of Sound Devices and Zaxcom audio recorders.
Rigged personal microphones on actors and swung boom on this fast paced dialogue driven commercial.
Working with David Hall (mixer) and Jonathan Seale (principal boom) on series 9 of Channel 4's award winning drama. Operating boom, rigging personal microphones on artist.
Worked in a team of three to complete post-production sound of this Matt Greenhalgh directed short.
Operated boom with Dan Dewsnap (mixer) on this pilot written and directed by Tony Pitts.
Worked with Steve Phillips (mixer) and Lee James (boom) on Donald Rice's debut feature, produced by Teun Hilte. Swung boom, rigged lavalier microphones on artists and engineered the thumper tracks for dance scenes featuring digetic music and dialogue.
Mixed and recorded production sound for 'Small Garden', wirrten and directed by Craig Vance, produced by Dominique Molloy.
Series 7. Operated second boom, rigged radio microphones.
Swung boom, placed radio microphones on artists on this ITV drama. DoP Fabien Wagner. Producer Yvonne Francas. Director Sarah Pia Anderson.
Operated boom and fitted the artist with a personal microphone.
Sound Assistant on the BBC's Waterloo Road. Operating second boom, maintaining sound equipment and providing assistance to the Sound Department.
Operated boom and oversaw radio microphones on Being Sold - a feature film directed by Phil Hawkins, shot over two days on six cameras.
Sound Assistant on the new BBC drama Candy Cabs. Operating second boom, maintaining sound equipment and providing assistance to the Sound Department.
Sound Assistant on the BBC's Waterloo Road. Operating second boom, maintaining sound equipment and providing assistance to the Sound Department.
I worked on the No.1 FAMILY feature which ran for a number of weeks during 2009.
Boom Operator on the British independent feature film Woyzeck, directed by Francis Annan-Burton.
Sound Assistant for the three Manchester International Festival specials of THE CULTURE SHOW.
Assisted Alan Sheldon in post-production of this British adaptation of Phillip Pullman's novel.
Operated boom on this short, produced for Fox Television's 'On The Lot'.
Recorded and mix sound into camera and operated boom on this short film for Philm.co.uk
On set filming ‘Debut’. Recording audio with the lovely Aaton Cantar. www.debutshort.co.uk @debutshort
I love this commercial for the Manchester United Foundation. I worked on this just before Christmas and the nice people at The Mob Films have done a great job. It should be noted that I’ve never been as star struck as when I met Dennis Irwin. A childhood hero of mine!
For the Man Utd Foundation by the Mob Film Company.
Ryan
ryanmcmurray.com
The Caravan (Story One) - View video at http://goo.gl/3EvUv
I’m please to be able to post the video as a lot of hard work went into it from all involved. Very much a labour of love. We spent two long days in a beautiful forest in the north-west of England filming the first two (of three) short films; directed by Andrew Gunn, written by Adam Thursby, starring Ian Puleston-Davies - who delivers an incredible performance. The re-recording mixer was Gary Kelly, who did an amazing job!
I was production sound recordist and sound editor. Ian was put on a personal mic whilst I boomed the dialogue wider throughout, even when he got closer to camera. Because I knew I was editing the sound in post I chose not to mix the personal mic and the boom on location. These techniques gave us a very even recording which gave us options in post, regarding how tight we wanted dialogue to sound on each shot.
There wasn’t much editing needed for the dialogue, the split personal/boom tracks both sounded pretty good. I recorded dozens of wildtracks on location of various atmospheres which were hugely useful, and used throughout. There are a number of scenes which have mini jump cuts, for which I left those harsh audio cuts in as it emphasises those cuts. Other than that, I tried to make it sound as natural and serene as possible with the odd spot effect to hint towards the ending.
A Slipknot, Kelis, Peaches mashup I did years and years ago. Pretty fun, but also pretty rough. Enjoy (if you can).
Music Supervisor and Music Editor
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 - I intend no breach of copyright. More information on the Vimeo page.
Ryan
Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.
This applies to many film jobs, not just editing: half the job is doing the job, and the other half is finding ways to get along with people and tuning yourself in to the delicacy of the situation.
I think this piece written by Steve Albini is one of the 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 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
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.
If you live in the UK and you didn’t watch Cloverfield on Channel 4 a few weeks ago, you missed out. I love the Blair Witch inspired camcorder style and the fact it daringly portrays Manhattan in a state of panic less than a decade after New York was attacked on 11 September. I think this post is spoiler-free, so read on.
You know what else I love about Cloverfield? The sound (what a surprise). The style in which Cloverfield is presented allowed for some quite simple, yet satisfying uses of sound. The ‘camera-man’ in the film is Hud, who’s voice is sonically different to the other characters - his voice has a fuller frequency range which is technically accurate, but because Hud is also our narrator (since he has the camera) his clear close-miked voice benefits the audience - his voice cuts through the sound mix to allow us to hear ever nuance of his voice, even when whispering - through his narration we ‘see’ what is around him, when the camera can not. The only time we are sonically shown a glimpse of what is happening to the city outside of the main characters is when the military makes it’s first appearance and we hear nothing but gun-fire and engines rolling past the group. Perspective is used to keep what is happening in the city away from our ears to keep the focus on the group of friends, trying to make their way across the city. There are no cutaways of action happening elsewhere; gun-fire is often distant, and only when the action is in arms length of the camera do we feel it’s impact on the soundtrack. Despite there being a fair amount of action in Cloverfield, the sound is much more subtle throughout the film. It’s all about the perspective of this group of friends and the sound filling-out the image, with suggestion of what is happening outside the viewfinder of the camcorder.
Of course, if you really were stuck in a city with the military being attacked by a massive alien sea-monster, your crappy camcorder microphone would turn most sounds into clipped unrecognisable noise… but that wouldn’t be a very good film.
Matt Reeves is directing the remake of Let The Right One In, which I think is a silly idea. The original is absolutely amazing and I can’t remember there being an American remake of a foreign thriller, sci-fi or horror which I enjoyed more than an original.
Ryan


