Kate Hopkins is an accomplished sound editor based in Bristol who has worked in all genres of TV and film. Due to Bristol being the home of the BBC’s natural history unit, she has specialised in sound for natural history films. Hopkins has been awarded 2 Emmys for outstanding editing for non-fiction programming, this was for work on Plant Earth ‘Pole to Pole’ (2007) and Frozen Planet ‘Ends Of the Earth’ (2012), she has also been awarded three BAFTAs. Kate has a long list of projects she has worked on, some of which are Disney’s ‘Monkey Kingdom’ (2015), National Geographic’s ‘Great Migrations’ (2010), Apple’s ‘The Elephant Queen’ (2018). More recently she has worked on David Attenborough’s ‘A life on our planet’ (2020) and Apple’s ‘Earth at night in colour’ (2020).
Kate began her career as a receptionist for a small post production company in Bristol. Her boss Nigel, she says, was a picture editor, and while fulfilling her receptionist duties (making phone calls, answering emails and ‘making endless cups of tea’) she would also assist her boss in the cutting room organising trims from 16 and 35mm film. Hopkin’s believes that the small nature of the company allowed her to experience many different fields, working alongside Aardman animation studios, and syncing up picture and sound for dramas and natural history films. After 3 and a half years working in this company, Kate received her union card allowing her to transition to freelance work.
At this time, there were a lot of 35mm drama’s being made in Bristol for large American companies such as Universal. Kate moved from Nigel’s practice to Universal and started working on these dramas as a freelance assistant editor, eventually moving into the role of assistant sound editor. Hopkins credits this moment as the birth of her passion for sound design, in her own words she ‘realised what impact a sound edit could have, if you put different atmospheres, if you put different effects in, they move on a story and add drama.’ Kate names some of her influences as the Cohen brother’s films, The godfather, Apocalypse now and Raging Bull. She says ‘these are all films which had very distinctive sound tracks’. ‘Raging Bull’, she adds, ‘was particularly good because all of the punches used a combination of real punches, but also had Lion roars and stuff put in. So it sort of illustrated how much you could do with sound design with it still feeling real. It was just adding power and drama.’
Kate began to learn about signature sounds used in dramas, for example if you wanted to portray poverty you would use distant dog barks and the sound of a baby crying, sudden silence being an excellent way to create drama. Eventually Kate would have to transition from film to digital as a freelancer, which meant no training, she remembers the process as very much ‘learning on the job’. At this time some of Kate’s colleagues from the past were setting up a production company named ‘Wounded Buffalo’, she began collaborating with these colleagues on natural history films such as ‘Natural world’. Continuing with the theme of learning on the job, Kate recalls accepting a job in Idaho (US) which was a 90 minute documentary about wool, the studio had protools which at the time, she had never been exposed to. Hopkins read the manual on the plane journey over, and thankfully produced the 90 minute soundtrack.
Hopkins began work on ‘Blue Planet’, she says this was a fantastic job as the show being underwater allowed for many creative opportunities in the sound design. Hopkins recalls enjoying designing sound to emphasise movement of organisms, and also the feeling of depth by changing ambience. She believed this work pushed sound editing further forward in the production process, sound became more important and her work became more of a collaboration between sound design and music. From ‘Blue Planet’, Kate went on to work on ‘Frozen planet’, ‘Blue planet two’, ‘Life’, and ‘the dynasty series’. She was then asked to work on Disney’s ‘Nature’ series, mixing feature films for large theatres with her colleague Tim Owens. During this time Dolby atmos started arise, which Kate believes helps sound designers achieve their goal of placing the audience in the environment on screen. One thing Kate stresses the importance of in her work is using accurate sound, she says you can layer up as many sounds as you want but It will result in a muddy mix if the right sounds aren’t used.
Hopkins describes working on horror films to be ‘an absolute joy’, due to the creative freedom. Using whatever sounds you like as long as it results in a scary sound. This contrasts heavily with the practices of natural history sound, where she is required to meticulously find specific animal calls and sounds. Kate fondly recalls working on a low budget horror films called ‘Hardware’ (1990), but states something that I think might stick with me ‘there’s nothing like a low budget film to put pressure on a sound editor.’ This really highlights the impact and importance of sound design, in the absence of high budget visuals its up to the sound to immerse the viewer.
Hopkins describes how she starts the process of working on a film or tv program, specifically in natural history. She stresses the importance of recording wild sound onsite, and says this can often get overlooked as directors can often be focused purely on visuals. Kate remarks on a moment in her career where a project was allocated a small budget for sound editors to go out on location, which she describes as a rarity. She talks about being driven around the Maasai Mara in a jeep, recording Lions very close up and wildebeest hooves among other things.
Kate describes the collaboration process between sound editors and composers, finding the balance between effects and music. This involves agreeing which scenes are going to be music drive and which are effects driven to avoid overlap and unnecessary work. They also have to work around each other to not overcrowd a mix, for example if there are a lot of bass heavy effects the composers have to avoid bass in the music.
It was at this point in the lecture where Kate showed a Protools session for a clip about meerkats from the Dynasty series. Watching this I was struck by the amount of audio files and the organisation of them. I find the idea of sculpting a believable soundscape very interesting, specifically the subtlety of the mix, doing just enough to immerse the viewer but little enough so as not to distract from the scene.