Robin Ellis

AT LAST!

Yesterday the audio version of Making Poldark became available for download via Audible, Amazon or iTunes.

http://www.audible.com/search/ref=a_mn_mt_ano_tseft__galileo?advsearchKeywords=Making+Poldark&x=0&y=0

Below, I’m re-posting my account of recording it way back in January.

Just back from UK where I recorded my memoir of Poldark as an audio book–with an extra chapter about taking part in the new BBC/Mammoth version–40 years after doing the original!

Two days in a small, soundproof booth in a basement recording studio in Hove in Sussex, while the wind and the rain raged above ground.

I was fortunate to have three helpmates in the studio running the show–and keeping my nose to the microphone.

Chris Daniels, sound engineer, owns the studio and is a member of that fraternity of calm console operators who are never flustered.

They have seen it all before–and behave as though they read the first verse of Rudyard Kipling’s poem, IF, before sitting down to work:

If you can keep your head when all about you

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

 

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

    And you’ll be make a Sound Engineer, my son!

(With apologies to Mr. Kipling.)

My old friend, Constantine de Goguel Toulouse-Lautrec–his grandmother was in St. Petersburg in the October Revolution of 1917 and survived–sat in the producer’s seat and guided a rusty performer through the sessions with grace and years of experience.

He’s a fine actor and an experienced dialogue coach for movies.

He also runs Spoken Ink–subtitled “The Home of Short Audio“–well worth checking out.

Meredith made up the triumvirate as back-up producer keeping a beady eye on the script and an ear out for things that could be better (like the American pronunciation of “Potomac”!).

Her occasional ripple of involuntary laughter was a morale boost for The Man in the Sound Proof Booth!

The project is in post production now. When complete, we’ll announce it here.

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