This week’s lecture was given by Luke Pickering who is currently working a The Church Studios in Crouch Hill, London. His job title is hard to pinpoint but from what he was saying he does and the job titles that he listed I believe he is an Assistant Engineer at the studios.
Luke graduated The University of Lincoln in 2012 with a degree in audio production and began freelancing straight out of university (mostly working on sync sound) as he said that he didn’t want to end up taking a full-time job at a place that he was not happy, for example, a supermarket. A couple of years ago he did some work experience at The Church Studios and then later was given a job there as a studio assistant and has slowly worked his way up.
Luke gave us a little bit of history around The Church Studios. Starting in the second half of the 20th century the church was split in two and one-half continued to be used for religious ceremonies and the other half was used for animation such as Captain Pugwash and Trumpton. Later, in the 1980s the studio was renovated and transformed into a music studio by Eurythmics. The studio was very prosperous and allowed many artists to create their music from names such as Elvis Costello and Radiohead. In 2013 the studio was bought by Paul Epworth, a very popular producer/lyricist (who worked on Adele’s albums) who has since developed the studio and is running it to this day.
The lecture then turned to how the studio is run and the roles that people fill in the studio, there seemed to be one major theme: Make life easier for the people above you. There are many things that need to be thought about when working in a studio and it can be tiring but Luke seems to enjoy his job and enjoys working with the people he works with.