Recently, here in the UK, there has been some progress with diversity in front of the camera, but what about the craft roles and specifically audio post-production? Emma Butt has undertaken some research and her findings do not make for pleasant reading.

For anyone who knows me or follows me on social media, you’ll know I’m very vocal about the need for more diversity within sound post-production. After the #Metoo campaign and all the changes that started to happen within the Film and TV industry and the push by broadcasters to have more diversity on screen, I had high hopes we would start to see positive changes within sound too. Needless to say, I was left incredibly disappointed. For all the talk from broadcasters and people within hiring positions here in the UK, no action was taken to really address the massive problem facing craft and technical roles and instead, all attention and conversations focused on on-screen talent and eventually directors. So it was back to banging my drum on social media and hoping someone would listen. And someone did.

Support From Birmingham University And The Sir Lenny Henry Centre

Earlier this year I was contacted by Marcus Ryder. We had been following each other on Twitter for some time and we finally got to have an old fashioned phone chat. For anyone who doesn’t know Marcus (you should, his work is incredible), he is a visiting professor for Media Diversity for Birmingham University and executive producer for Caixin Global, he is also an executive committee member responsible for launching the Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity.

We spoke about the centre and the possibility of doing something together to help highlight the problems facing post-production sound. It just so happened there was something I had been planning to do independently but linking up with the centre would without a doubt give it more weight.

Top UK TV Shows

I wanted to research the highest-rated shows on UK terrestrial and Satellite TV (BBC1, BBC2, SKY 1, Channel 4 and Channel 5) over a 3 month period using the Broadcast Magazine (2019) ‘The top consolidated shows for Q3 2019’ and find out the breakdown of the team members involved in key sound roles (dialogue editing, sound effects editing and re-recording mixing). I needed to show in hard facts and figures that post-production sound in the UK had a problem that needs urgent addressing. I needed to show this not only to get people to finally pay attention but also to help me in the future to secure funding for a scheme I know will work in creating a more diverse workforce.

Should I Be Doing This? Yes!

I recently posted on my personal social media channels about the reports release date and got asked (in a now-deleted comment) why I had any right doing this research as I am white and European.

Besides the fact that being a woman in sound for the last 13 years I have constantly found myself in the minority on teams largely made up of white men, I am also mixed race. I am half Pakistani half Irish. Growing up in Ireland in the early 90’s I was the only remotely brown kid in my school. I got racially bullied and beaten up so badly that we had to move to try to make it stop. All because of the colour of mine and my dad’s skin.

Thanks to the shite weather in Ireland my dark skin has paled over the years and I am now considered ‘white-passing’ so I have been fortunate enough not to experience racism in the workplace. Sexism yes, bullying yes, but racism, no. But I’ve heard stories from colleagues about their experiences and I’ve mentored young kids from diverse backgrounds for whom I’ve used every connection or way in I know to try to get them a job as a runner and they never make it past the interview stage. And I know deep down the exact reason why but I can never say it cause it’s very hard to prove.

The Research

Starting out the research I knew the results would be bad but I think I was even surprised how bad they were. I focused on the 3 month Autumn period of 2019 when I knew a lot of new shows would have aired and less live sporting events and reruns of old shows would be taking the highest ratings. Out of 36 highest-rated shows across the 6 broadcasters, there were 60 available sound roles across these shows, these were undertaken by a total of 55 people. I found that out of these available roles:

• There is a lack of racial diversity in male post-production sound crew – in this sample only one man identified as mixed-race, the other 46 identifying as white.

• There is a lack of gender diversity in the general post-production sound industry – in this sample 6 out of 55 people identified as women. There was only one Re-Recording Mixer who identified as a woman and they only worked in factual TV. The research showed that there were no women working as Re-Recording Mixers in Drama.

• There are issues with intersectional aspects of identity – in this sample, there were no women of colour working in the 60 available sound roles.                                                                             

• In the sample of 55 people, only 3 people self-identified as having a disability (none of the identified disabilities required physical adjustments to a workplace).

• As with the findings of the Directors UK research into the directorial professions, decisions on hiring are influenced by the opinions (or perceived opinions) of people in project management roles. In a risk-averse culture, this results in the hiring of the same sound teams without opportunities for new entrants, or later on in mid-careers professionals moving between genres.

• As a result of the inflexibility of existing hiring practices, people from BAME backgrounds have felt the need to create their own companies in order to progress within the industry.

• There are no opportunities or schemes currently available for training or progression for post-production sound freelancers, especially for those moving between short form or factual into drama.

The Interviews

As part of the connection with the Lenny Henry Centre, they paired me with a mentor to help complete the report, the wonderful Dr Ellie Tompsett. She suggested reaching out and interviewing people from ethnic minority and diverse backgrounds and people who identified as women about their own personal experiences throughout their careers to form part of the report. To say these interviews were eye-opening is an understatement.

Participant 2 in the report, when asked if he felt his name, which is not one that would be considered ‘traditionally white British’, may have played a part in not getting responses for jobs he applied to, replied:

“yes, the short answer is yes”.

Participant 2 did acknowledge that this could only be an assumption on his part, as this bias is something that's hard to prove. He had considered changing his name on his CV but felt he “wasn’t prepared to do it” as “that is my identity”. However, numerous studies have evidenced that name-based racial discrimination is prevalent in the UK. A summary of the Growth, Equal Opportunities, Migrations and Markets Report, produced by the Nuffield College, University of Oxford in 2019, highlighted that recruitment practices still discriminate against ethnic minorities.

Two other participants from ethnic minority backgrounds felt that the only way to progress their careers further was to start their own companies with one noting that, while working in facilities they experienced stereotyping from employers where they found themselves being given only specific projects based on black or ethnic themes. Another pointed out that, having worked in the industry for a long time, he can recognise now when some conversations take place with clients about an upcoming project, that…

“they’re trying something out, they’re trying to prove something to themselves and they recognise a diversity issue and it can be a diversity hire”.

In this way, a greater awareness of the need for a diverse workforce has impacted hiring decisions (without the structural issues being addressed).

For me, the most eye-opening account was a participant saying that there have been occasions when, while meeting with new clients about upcoming projects, he has felt it best to bring a white male colleague with him to meetings. He felt that this was necessary just for a white colleague to be present to reassure the clients, as he knows he will encounter suspicion and resistance, as he is…

“entering the lion's den […] they’re going to look at me and think is this person fine, look me up and down 3 or 4 times and I know it’s not a conscious decision on their part, it’s just part of their programming”.

The female participants were both white and had also experienced their own difficult career struggles. One spoke of how when they decided to go freelance, they met with a sound supervisor to join his team and was told:

“Well I like you, we get on but the problem is what if you join our crew and what if two of you started dating and it ended badly, that would disrupt the entire balance of the crew and I’m not sure about taking on that kind of risk.”

Following this exchange, she did not receive any offers of work from this man, arguably due to his sexist (and heteronormative) assumptions about the role women play in a workplace (i.e. potential sexual partners rather than professionals with skills to offer).

The full report is being released on The Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity’s website on November 30th.

What Next?

But what next? In the report, I reference the Directors UK and BBC Continuing Dramas new Directors scheme. It involves shadowing opportunities that result in tangible credits in drama programming. The scheme is described on the Directors UK website works in the following way:

“As part of their training, each director will observe and participate in the entire production process of an episode of a show, from pre to post-production, and will ultimately take the helm for one full episode to gain a directing credit. The scheme also offers the possibility of employment after training, as there is an ambition for the series to hire directors within nine months for a full directorial commission if the director has shown that they can meet the standards required.”

There has been research and reports published that show this scheme has worked and been successful in increasing diversity across continuing drama and helping further the participants careers. I believe this model can also be replicated in sound so my focus now is to use the report to secure funding to make the scheme happen.

I am not looking to “do anyone out of a job” as it has been said. What I do want to do is get our industry to start working together to help increase representation, create more job opportunities for people starting out and a mid-career level and make sure that when we all reach an age where we want to retire, we’ve left the sound post industry in good and well-trained hands.

With the film and TV industry now more focused than ever on having diversity on screen and telling more diverse stories, we need to make sure that trickles through to sound. As Steve Little, dialogue editor extraordinaire put it recently…

“people from different backgrounds, with different experiences hear things differently. Improving representation will fundamentally improve our creative output. We must look at every decision we get to make and ask if we can make a difference with what we decide”.

Even though he’s Northern and I only look at his Twitter feed for his brilliant dog, I really couldn’t have put it any better myself.

What About You?

This report covers the UK TV production sector. What about further afield, what has your experience been? If you feel able, do share your experiences in the comments below. If you prefer to be anonymous like the participants in the report then please use the Contact Us page and tell us your experiences and we will share them anonymously for you.

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