MUSIC+SOUND AWARDS 2023 WINNER SPOTLIGHT

BEST SOUND DESIGN IN A TV PROGRAMME

BEST SOUND DESIGN IN A TELEVISION PROGRAMME

SAS Rogue Heroes

Sound Team: Judi Lee-Headman, Nigel Squibbs, Tony Gibson, Lewis Todd, Darren Mcquade, Kelly Stewart, Jemma Riley-Tolch, Glen Gathard, Jason Swanscott, Zoe King, Kirsty Graham, Dominic Lawrence, Guy Mallett + Tobias Crane

Supervising Sound Editor: Tony Gibson

Re-Record Mixer: Nigel Squibbs

Foley Artists: Jason Swanscott + Zoe King

Director: Tom Shankland

Studio: BBC

The remarkable sound team behind the BBC's SAS Rogue Heroes emerged as winners of 2023’s Best Sound Design in a TV Programme category.

Judi Lee-Headman, Nigel Squibbs, Tony Gibson, Lewis Todd, Darren Mcquade, Kelly Stewart, Jemma Riley-Tolch, Glen Gathard, Jason Swanscott, Zoe King, Kirsty Graham, Dominic Lawrence, Guy Mallett + Tobias Crane all bought their immense skill to the project, impressing the jury and earning their unanimous recognition as best in category!

A British television historical drama series created by Steven Knight, SAS Rogue Heroes depicts the origins of the British Army Special Air Service (SAS) during the Western Desert Campaign of World War II.

We hear from TONY GIBSON, Supervising Sound Editor…

“The brief from our director Tom was "more is more!". With this in mind, we really wanted to make it stand out, use unique and original sounds in the series, trying to limit our use of sound libraries.

One major challenge with this series was sourcing authentic sounds for the guns and vehicles. A few months before we began the sound edit, we contacted production who were moving the shoot from Morocco to the UK. As luck had it, they were also transporting a vast array of vintage WW2 vehicles with them. Myself and our Sound Effects Recordist Glen were given access to these incredible machines, having previously read the scripts, we comprehensively mic'd up the Jeeps, Cars, Trucks and Transport vehicles and set off recreating and capturing a wide array of manoeuvres, engine sounds and vehicle foley to be used across the series. We may have broken a few of them in the process, but those breakdown sounds are always useful!

For the guns we contacted an armourer and sourced a number of weapons used in that time period (or as close to them!), we recorded different perspectives, mechanical sounds, various impacts and ricochets onto and into as many surfaces as we could possibly think of. All to give us a vast, original library to call upon when the edit began.

Our foley department really threw everything at this project, recording fire whooshes, punches, recreating some amazing parachute sounds, sourcing authentic army boots and equipment and even building their own version of an SAS Jeep to get as close as possible sound to the original!

We were allocated 3 weeks per episode for the SFX and 3 days shoot for the foley. The delivery was in 5.1 and with a heavy amount of VFX arriving just days before the final mix it certainly was a challenge, but one we all really loved and the team went above and beyond to create the soundtrack.”