Sound Design - Kit Rollings

I was registered as a blind person in 1960, spent three unpleasant years at the Foundation of the Blind in Auckland and then returned to Wellington to find a career. My brother-in-law had a close friend who was chief cameraman at The National Film Unit and he told me one day that ‘The Unit’ was about to advertise for sound trainees. Television had begun and now they wanted to start shooting local programmes. The Unit had the equipment but not enough staff to provide contract workers for TV. I applied with some trepidation as my sojourn in Auckland had taught me that if one used a white cane, one was frequently assumed to be intellectually handicapped as well.

Blindness was also an excluding condition for most jobs so I didn’t disclose this when I applied. At the interview the sound director asked at one point if I knew the resistor colour code. “Of course,” I replied and then had a sinking feeling he was about to ask me to sort a box of resistors. While I knew the colour code, I could no longer discern subtle colours. To my intense relief however, he went on to other things.

The next challenge was a visit to the admin officer who handed me a form to fill out. With a practised hand I reached inside my jacket for imaginary glasses then confided to him that I had been so nervous that morning I had left my reading glasses at home, so could I take the form with me and return it in the morning. “Of course,” he replied with an indulgent smile and I breathed again. So in March 1965 I was on the staff of the NFU.

Sometime after the standard three month probation period, I was asked to take a car to the airport, which I had to decline. The same admin officer called me over. “I understand you don’t drive,” he said. “We’ll have to get you a licence, you must be able to drive.” I had to confess that my vision wasn’t quite up to driving. An awkward moment but then I was nearly always with a cameraman so I didn’t think it mattered.

The training at the NFU was literally on the job. We were shown how to operate the gear and then thrown in to all manner of assignments. I enjoyed the work for television, in particular the Compass programme. My first solo job for the NFU was a 40-minute showcase of the meat industry. The film had been shot in several freezing works but without sound so I had to make a full list of every process then go to Ngauranga to record. Back to base after three days, transfer the sound to 35mm mag and edit to picture. Add the music, stir all sounds together and mix well.

The mixing theatre had a footage counter under the screen which was just too far away for me to read. I had to learn to begin a mental count from zero while concentrating on the mix as well. Since we usually mixed our own films I knew the tracks. Some directors though, edited the narration and didn’t amend the original written footages. I overcame this by dubbing the narration to a separate track, advancing it two seconds (enough to fade down music and fx) and feeding it to an indicator light on the mixing panel. Once demonstrated, everyone began using the system.

In 1969 we began on a three screen presentation for Expo’ 70 in Osaka. This is New Zealand was to have a three-channel magnetic stereo track, sometimes mono for each screen, sometimes stereo. There was no portable 1/4-inch mag stereo recorder available so we devised a scheme using two Mk 3 Nagras locked together electronically. Fine for recording but replay was a challenge. One three-track 35mm mag recorder and two replay machines were bought so we had to pre-mix. This would prove of great advantage when it came to the restoration and 5.1 mix 36 years later, having a music pre and an fx pre.

I often questioned why some things were done a particular way. For example, we were told only a bit of ‘atmos’ at the end of a roll and the same on the start of the next roll. Why? The sound neg. is 20 frames ahead of pic on the married print so the first 20 frames of roll two is always cut off when the 1,000 feet rolls are joined for projection. So why not put a 20-frame overlap on the end of roll one? I was told it wouldn’t work but I tried, found it possible and perfected it. Why did sound crash in with a butt cut? With experimentation I found that a head demagnetizer carefully wiped over the first two frames of a sound gave a smooth fade in, so this too became a standard until computers replaced mag.

At the NFU soundmen worked closely with directors who edited their own films. It was easy finding ways to ask them about the job if I couldn’t see what was on screen. Later we began using assistants – usually trainees – and as tracks became more complex they became a necessity. So I always had someone to ask.

I left the NFU in 1986 to work free-lance, editing and recording. Not driving has been a significant problem. The last film I edited on mag. was Bread & Roses and I realised that if I wanted to keep working I had to move to computer editing. Goodbye assistants. So the computer had mixed blessings. One particularly useful skill I had learnt at the Blind Foundation was touch typing — now a boon. When Mac OS X came along I found the voice over utility was of enormous help and I now rely on it completely. My database is Filemaker Pro and I’ve been able to work out scripts to read documents, etc. The Mac screen magnification is in constant use also.

In 2006 Archives NZ commissioned Hugh Macdonald and me to supervise the restoration and mixing of This Is New Zealand into a digital 5.1 version. I was delighted to do this, putting the music and fx pre-mixes into the computer, adding the necessary ingredients and mixing at Park Road Post. We have since made a documentary about the three screen project and hope it will be released on DVD shortly. Currently I am working on sponsored promotional programmes and still enjoying it.