[Nicolette Hurnen]

Awesome! That’s really good to know ????

[Nicolette Hurnen]

Absolutely, now is certainly the time to learn as much as I can!

I’ll flick though the details for what we have on Monday as I can’t quite remember off the top of my head exactly what we have.

It’s something along the lines of an Icon Console, ASP8024 – the Heritage Edition (small edition with 24 channels? x3 and one larger board with 36?), Protools S6, Two Older Consoles, Foley Room, ADR room, 20 seat cinema (with the S6 in it), 9ish small studios/practice rooms with vocal booths, an orchestral studio with vocal booths, a modern performance room, 2 Colour grading studios, 3 edit suits, various microphones (AKG 414?, NTG 1000, SM57, SM58, Royer ribbon mic’s, boom mics…), Numerous C200’s and C100’s, couple of Red dragons, Cinema Prime Lenses, Sigma lenses, Samyang Lenses, Audio Devices Kit (four and 3 channel field recorders), some brand new aperture 120D(?) lights, honestly I could be here for a while with gear but that’s the majority of the fun stuff????

[Nicolette Hurnen]

Sorry for the late reply. I really enjoy uni, because I get access to some amazing gear. Some of my papers are a bit pointless (for me) and require a lot of work, but some are equally amazing. One of my audio lecturers worked on the Hobbit (in ADR I think) and we spent a lecture going through all of the stems and swapping Bilbo’s voice for a class mates. But that was the most complex thing we were shown in the paper, and there’s not a lot of audio in the degree (there’s one specific paper) everything else has audio on the side but not focused on Audio. Although we share facilities with a Commercial Music Degree so I’ve taken some of their papers.

The rest of the degree is mostly exploring production on a whole (which I don’t mind to much as I’m also interested in being a Producer and eventually a director).

I’m certainly going to look for more internships/positions on films when I finish my degree.

PS: I went to take the position (the morning after it was offered to me by the recordist) and I got a call to say that the producer had found someone who had just graduated (from the same degree as I’m doing) and that they were probably going to go with the graduate. Which is a little disappointing, but I hope that I’ll get more opportunities like this when I leave uni.

[Nicolette Hurnen]

Sorry for the late reply! Sort of, we have the facilities at Massey and we often have external clients (like feature films) come in and use our studios and mixing desks. However the degree is only 4 years old and there is no specific audio pathway yet.

I’ve made sure to organise projects and extra sessions with the Technicians so that I can use all of the gear and practice. Although it seems that only myself and a third year are they only ones interested putting any effort into learning how to do sound professionally.

We use protools but I’m not overly confident in it yet. I have a certificate in live sound but it’s not from uni, we mostly do on set and post production with very little studio time, even though we supposedly have some of the best studios in NZ (which is a bit sad).

I can find out exactly what we have if you’re interested? Unfortunately there’s not many high level productions that happen during my degree as many people don’t have the motivation to go all out on a project, so I end up working as my own producer and director (which is not too bad) whenever I want to do something that requires mixing later. But it means that I’m working from 7.40am to 9pm-10pm most days which can be quite exhausting.

[Nicolette Hurnen]

Thanks Ty!

Hmmm that’s very true and you make a good point. I have been wondering if it was the fear of never getting a job that was pushing me to take it.

Luckily fees in New Zealands aren’t nearly as expensive as the US but it’s still alot of money to spend when all the skills are practical and could be learned on the job. The good thing about uni (for me at least) is creating connections with other students and industry professionals who otherwise I wouldn’t have met.

Thanks for the email address! I’ll flick through a message today.

I appreciate the opinion heaps and I’ll let you know if I take it.