#015 Dead Cats and Fish Poles—The Story of the Basket Windshield

In this documentary, Neil looks at the emergence of location sound recording for cinema and one of the significant technological developments that enabled this.

Starting with the Italian neorealism movement of the late 1940's, the desire for dialogue authenticity gained hold in 1950's Hollywood films. This and the artistic truth of French New Wave filmmaking in the 1960's led to the indispensability of the location sound recordist by the 1970's and one of their important needs was met by the invention and refinement of the now-familiar microphone basket windshield.

To help tell the story, Neil plays real-world examples of Outside Broadcast sport; excerpts from classic movies and amateur YouTube filmmakers and also talks with Radius Windshields Managing Director Simon Davies as well as the owner and MD of plastic injection moulding company Elbmar Limited, Keven Rich and the Oscar-winning feature film Production Sound Mixer - and enthusiastic Radius Windshields user - Simon Hayes.

About the presenters:

You can find more about Simon Hayes' work here

The Radius Windshield site is here

Details about Neil Hillman and Jason Nicholas's work as dialogue editors and mixers and how to contact them is here

Details of our 1-to-1, training and coaching programmes for ambitious media professionals are available at:

https://www.drneilhillman.com and https://soundproducer.com.au/coaching and www.soundformovingpictures.com

Technical notes:

Written, produced and presented by Dr. Neil Hillman – IMDb

Programme edited and mixed by Dr. Neil Hillman on DaVinci Resolve v20. Recorded on location by Neil using a Sound Devices 664 recorder, with Sennheiser 416 and Sanken COS-11 microphones.