Sounds Like Radio Episode 23
Cesca doubted the extraordinary story about Miriam and the man from the chocolate import firm.
It sounded like something out of a romantic comedy.
But Gerry was not the sort of person to make things up, so Cesca made no negative comments when Miriam rolled back into work, smiling and relaxed, at half past three.
“Can I make everyone tea?” she called.
Cesca was just about to go back into the main studio for the final lap of the drama with Kevin.
“That would be great,” she called.
“We’ve got seven actors here and they all want different weird herbal teas as usual, so maybe you could come down and take an order?”
Miriam appeared moments later looking perky and holding a pencil and pad.
“Everyone has a right to their own taste sensations,” she said to the cast, who looked at her in surprise.
“Are you still Miriam?” one of the actors asked.
“Absolutely.” She smiled.
It was a complex three-part play with lots of dream sequences, special effects and fiddly bits.
Kevin was on the sound desk and Cesca was behind him on the sub-mixer desk, playing in effects, recording and doing a rough cut as they went along.
In the middle of a long and difficult sequence, a car chase into which Cesca had to play dozens of brake screeches, engine roars and metallic impact sounds, a stray sound effect popped up.
It was the sharp closing of a car door.
Cesca put up both hands in confession as the director, whose chair was between main sound desk and sub-mixer desk, looked round in surprise.
“My fault. Sorry, all!” Cesca said. “There’s too much going on and I left that one running by mistake.”
Kevin pressed the talkback key and spoke to the actors, letting them know they could stand down for a moment. He turned round, frowning.
“What’s the problem?”
“That car door,” Cesca said.
Kevin swivelled his chair to face the computer and put on the headphones that he kept permanently round his neck.
Cesca saw him scroll back the audio, listen hard, turn slightly pink in the face and fling off the headphones.
“Of course,” he said. “I heard it.
“Yes, we’ll have to do that take again – I can’t edit that out of the mix.”
They continued. Kevin asked the production assistant irritably to “speak up” when she was telling him how many seconds a scene had run to.
When he did it again the assistant looked at Cesca and frowned.
“You’ve got the monitoring volume up pretty high in here, Kev,” she said. “I think Yolanda is having to yell.”
Kevin didn’t turn round.
“I’m using a normal monitoring level,” he said.
It was true – she saw that the volume knob on the desk was set to a standard point.
She edged closer as the next scene began and watched, over Kevin’s shoulder, the all-important meters, the ones telling her how much juice was being taken from the microphones and what the actual level on the recording would be.
The needles were kicking high; any higher and the audio would distort.
They got through to the end of that day.