How lovely to see Ray Beckett winning a BAFTA for the sound on The Hurt Locker last night. He's often worked in the same studio in Cambridge where I also freelance, and after his last success (The Wind That Shakes the Barley, before it became that year's Palme D'Or winner) his anecdotes about the shoot largely involved the Irish mist getting into all the equipment and breaking it. When he got back from shooting The Hurt Locker in Jordan, his main remarks concerned the sand getting into all the equipment and breaking it. It's very nice to see such a modest and unpretentious chap get some more recognition for his experience and expertise. Even if the interviewer runs into a brick wall trying to flatter the sound department's work. She's impressed with the film's "sonicness". But I'd be just as screwed trying to think of something intelligent to say about everyone's awards night frocks, so...

BTW, update: he won the Oscar as well :)

At BAFTA Tuesday night for a screening of a Screen East film I worked on last year (location sound and dubbing mixer) - Things We Leave Behind. Turned out nice; lovely grade, pleased with how it sounded on a nice system, and speculating what famous behinds had graced the chairs in that BAFTA screening room... John Hurt was on my train again (which is so much better now I can catch it at a small village station, not compete for parking in town).



Spent Thursday in London, too, shooting an event at the British Academy. It was a debate about whether Critical Thinking should be a standalone subject, or incorporated into all A levels (if not GCSEs). A bit of a technical challenge on the day, but interesting subject matter.



A quick one-day short film job on Saturday, doing sound for Azeem Khan on "Disorder". Lovely crew assembled by m'colleague Becky Adams, including top bloke Gerry Vasbenter DoPing. Should be a nice, tense and atmospheric film, with a nice chase - Gerry broke out the rickshaw, which is always a bit of fun (and running :)

This week's Gates Scholars' lecture was by Professor Joshua Silver, inventor of some interesting eyewear - a pair of plastic glasses with two syringes on the arms, allowing you to feed a silicon-based liquid into the lenses using little control wheels, thus altering their strength in dioptres. The idea is that in developing countries, where they might have a handful of trained optometrists for millions of population, people can preform their own eye test by feeding the liquid into the glasses until each eye sees clearly, then cut the syringes off and have their own "prescription" specs.

The thing that strikes you about the Union Society in Cambridge - and I'd not been there since playing in the cellar with my band 20 years ago - is how the debating chamber, where the lecture was held, is a miniature House of Commons... obviously that's what the Society trains people for, but it feels oddly anachronistic anyway.

In other news, the subject matter of much of the last year's filming for the NHS has started to hit the papers - the cancer research side is in the local press, and the diabetes research has been published in the Lancet and featured by the BBC.

A very interesting day in Westminster today, listening to MPs, assorted Lords & Baronesses, and assessment people discussing A levels. To hugely oversimplify, seems they probably are easier these days, and maybe the increased participation in higher education justifies that.

Unsurprisingly, teaching for the test, rather than for a broad subject knowledge, is the worse problem. That's the reason grumpy old people like me think graduates all seem a bit slow these days; we're not discussing the specific things that were on their syllabus.

Interestingly, there was data demonstrating how all subjects aren't equal - headlines are that A level Chemistry's hardest, and Media Studies is easiest. Is that a bad thing, though, if Universities and employers took it into account?