Lessons From the Grave – Broadcast Television Series
Newtown Films / Little Brown Films
(Dir. Matilda Brown / DOP Chris Bland)
Sound designer, mixer and editor, location recordist.

Lessons From the Grave is an 8 episode series written and directed by Matilda Brown. When Douglas, played by Matilda's father Bryan Brown, wins $50m in the lottery and dies of a heart attack, his daughter Bonnie, played by Matilda, inherits the lot. But Douglas has unfinished business and Bonnie is desperately in need of his guidance, so he sticks around to help her out.

I was brought onto this project as sound recordist for the week long shoot in rural NSW. Whilst on the shoot I was asked if I would be interested in doing the post production sound and thus came on as sound designer and mixer too. This gave me the opportunity to record exactly what I wanted and knew I would need for the entire soundtrack. Along with capturing clean and crisp dialogue I was able to record beautiful countryside atmos tracks, as well as various animal sound FX that can be heard throughout the series.

As sound designer for the project I aimed to enhance the emotion and storytelling of each episode in addition to accurately establishing the countryside world that the characters belong to. The various atmos tracks and SFX I recorded whilst on the shoot were used exclusively for this, giving the soundtrack an authenticity that wouldn't have been possible using library sounds. Careful choice and placement of SFX along with a dynamic mix further enhanced these elements.

Lessons From the Grave screened on ABC1 in 2013 and season 2 is due to screen in 2014. It has also been picked up by QANTAS as in-flight entertainment.

Check out the Lessons From The Grave Facebook page