Brian Shennan

An international school trip inspired Brian Vincent Shennan's first experiences with recording sound. "In 1963 I did a school geography tour to South East Asia. I'd always wanted a tape recorder. In Singapore I went into a little backstreet electronic shop and purchased a Sharp tape recorder. I'd try it out and learn all about how to record. I found out how things sounded better when you are close, and how sound is hard to distinguish when you are too far from a microphone. So that was my first experience with recording."

Born and raised in Whanganui, Shennan died in Masterton in August 2022. In 1964 he began a Bachelor of Arts at Victoria University — but instead, a whirlwind romance inadvertently spun him into a 50+ year sound career. Shennan was doing well at uni when, a fortnight before his exams, he met a woman in a Willis St coffee bar. "At night we’d go dancing at the Chelsea Bar in Cuba Street. The night before my finals she asked me to carry her suitcase to the railway station. She said she had to go back to Auckland. That’s when she told me she was married and had two children ... I never saw her again. The next day I sat my final exams and failed miserably."

Knowing he couldn’t afford to repeat his first year again, he saw a job driving a butcher’s van, but couldn’t find the shop. Then he spied a newspaper advert for a sound trainee at the National Film Unit. "I had a tape recorder, so I went along to an interview. It turned out that the Sound Director was an amateur radio operator, as was my father, and he knew my father. My father’s cousin was also the lab manager. I got the job out of the 50 people who applied.”

The NFU offered Shennan his first big break, training alongside Kit Rollings in the unit's Wellington studios. Shennan learnt how to record sound on location, as well as mix the final soundtrack. In the mid 60s the film unit was contracted by the NZ Broadcasting Corporation to supply up to five crews a day to handle the sound on various TV shows, including Compass and Town and Around (see photos). "During my time at the NFU I worked on the very first Country Calendar and the very first Fair Go. I climbed up Mt Kaukau TV tower when it was being built in 1965, and we filmed from there. That was 400-feet-high. We had no safety equipment and I had a tripod on my back, as well as my sound gear. My legs were shaking when I got to the bottom."

On 10 April 1968, Shennan was one of the crew deployed by the NFU to report on the Wahine disaster. "I was there on Seatoun Beach as the survivors came in on the lifeboats. Gary Cunningham and I worked as a team with reporter Keith Aberdein for NZBC News ... It was a horrific scene with children crying looking for their parents, and parents searching for their kids. The initial wind speeds reached over 100 miles per hour. One of the other cameraman came across a woman up in Kingston Heights clinging desperately to a power pole, screaming. He got downwind of her, opened his front passenger window, grabbed her legs and pulled her to safety into the car. The untold stories of that day were many."

This Is New Zealand (1970), one of the NFU's most high profile films, saw Shennan contribute as both crew and talent. Under the direction of Claude Wickstead, Shennan worked with Kit Rollings and Noel Sheridan recording sound on location. He also donned a white lab coat to depict an agricultural scientist in the field. When the film was rereleased in cinemas in 2021, Shennan contributed to speeches about it in cinemas. He was known by his colleagues as a kind and generous man who was very happy to share knowledge. 

Shennan continued to work with the sound department at the NFU on projects big and small, including Games 74, a feature documentary that chronicled the 1974 Commonwealth Games in Christchurch. Veteran sound mixer Don Reynolds recalls that from 1974, Shennan took over the majority of the NFU's mixing. He also notes that Shennan was well respected for his knowledge and technical skills. "When the NFU moved from Miramar to the new building at Avalon, Brian was very involved in the design and equipping of the new mixing theatre, and was the chief mixer there. Brian and I mixed a large number of projects together, and we were both able to contribute equally. We worked as a great team."

The feature films that Shennan and Reynolds mixed together include acclaimed drama Smash Palace (1981) and Geoff Murphy epic Utu (1983). Don recalls the mixing process with fondness. "I was very proud of the Utu mix, and I know that Geoff was very pleased with what Brian and I achieved."

One condition of receiving funding for Smash Palace was that it had to be completed in a short time frame so it could play at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival. Shennan was known to mix features at record speed. "I think the first that I mixed on my own was Geoff Murphy's Wild Man. I went on to mix Angel Mine, which was a bit different. It was quite controversial as there was a bit of nudity in it. I mixed that film in 12 hours — the whole feature. This was all before computers, so I had to memorise mixes. I got quite good at it." In this period, normally working from the NFU's sound desk, Shennan was the sole mixer for many acclaimed features, including documentary Patu! (1983), Vigil (1984) and Ngāti (1987).

With Death Warmed Up (1984), Shennan became the first Kiwi to mix a Dolby Stereo soundtrack for a feature film. His work with David Newton on the Dolby mix for NFU short Logger Rhythms the same year was so effective, Dolby's London branch used the film in their demonstration reel.

From 1996, Shennan began to work closely with cameraman Ivars Berzins. Says Berzins: "We started working together regularly as a camera and sound team when I first went freelancing. We worked together solidly for the next 10 years. During this time we did many documentaries, corporates, travel shows, and TV shows. Some of the ones I remember are Asia Downunder, Tagata Pasifika, Marae, Waka Huia, Out Of The Shadows, Inside Out, For Art's Sake, Ken Douglas: Traitor or Visionary and The $20 Challenge."

"I chose Brian as my regular sound recordist because I knew him from my NFU days, where he was known as a hugely experienced sound mixer and field recordist. He was a calm, practical people person who had a quiet and nice way with people. His demeanour fitted in well with the way I like to work, where the aim is to make the person in front of the camera feel at ease. This was a lot more tricky in the days before small and light cameras, as there was often lots of gear to set up, including big lights. People sometimes got nervous and Brian would often lend a quiet ear to calm the nerves."

"Brian's role on our reality travel show The $20 Challenge (see photo) was in putting together a rock solid radio mic system for the newly minted one-person crews — where the camera operator started becoming the sound recordist as well; common practice these days, but not back in 1998. That's why Brian had such a  long career. He wasn't afraid of new technology — he embraced it."

In 1999 Shennan was the sound recordist for the award-winning My Name Is Jane, which he considered to be "my best documentary". Watching it again two decades later, Shennan remarked that he felt it was a privilege to know Jane Devine, and be involved with her in her last days and weeks. "We all loved her."

The Great Maiden's Blush (2015) and Mo Te Iwi: Carving For The People (2019) were two of the last feature projects that Shennan worked on. He continued sound recording and sound mixing for television, including on TAB Trackside and Sensing Murder.

Shennan considered himself to be a lucky man to do a job that he loved. "It's been a really interesting life. I've been places and done things that most people would never get to do. I've been shot at, attacked by a shark, climbed extremely high cliffs with no safety equipment. I'm very grateful."

Profile written by Jane Ross; published on 18 August 2022 

Sources include 
Brian Shennan
Don Reynolds
Ivars Berzins
Jane Ross, 'The sound of film is in the mix' (Interview) - The Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 January 2022
'Brian Shennan' Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision website.Accessed 18 August 2022
'Brian Shennan' LinkedIn website. Accessed 18 August 2022
'Brian Shennan' Internet Movie Database website. Accessed 18 August 2022