Bruno Barrett-Garnier

It could be argued that Bruno Barrett-Garnier’s natural habitat is the sound studio. He was playing around with old amplifiers and synthesizers around age 11, and went on to set up his own studio before leaving home. Born in Auckland but raised in Wellington, Barrett-Garnier began creating sound effects for local theatre productions at high school, aided by the discovery of an old monophonic synthesizer in the school music room. 

By the time he got to Victoria University, music was definitely at the front of the mix. Barrett-Garnier’s music degree involved composition, orchestral arranging and electronic music. He also played in cover bands. 

Fresh from uni, he began at Wellington’s Marmalade Audio in 1992. It was a brilliant place to learn about recording and mixing a wide variety of sounds, from violins to guitars to choirs. Barrett-Garnier worked mainly on radio and television commercials. He worked as sound engineer for composers Clive Cockburn, Michelle Scullion and Rob Winch, and won an Axis advertising award for a Suzuki commercial. 

Then came the opportunity to travel to Singapore, to set up a new sound studio for Australian audio company Song Zu. After two exciting years in Asia he returned home for another five years at Marmalade. It was during this period that Barrett-Garnier began composing for the screen. He has gone on to provide soundtracks for everything from short films (Link) and reality shows (helicopter series Rescue One) to two co-productions between NHNZ and National Geographic: Mountain Rescuers and China’s Ghost Army. He scored an award from an international wilderness film festival for another NHNZ title: 2005’s Wild Horses - Return to China.

In the main though, music has been just one part of the overall screen mix. A key early sound credit was award-winning Elvis emerging from the sea tale Fish Skin Suit (2000). Having supervised the final sound mix of this award-winning tele-movie, Barrett-Garnier went on to join the sound team on the final Lord of the Rings film and In My Father’s Den. 

By 2004 Barrett-Garnier had begun a nine-year run at Auckland post-production company Digipost. In 2008 he commanded the sound mix of indie feature The Map Reader, which played in a number of international festivals, followed by tele-movie Nights in the Gardens of Spain.

By now ancient Rome was starting to take up increasing amounts of Barrett-Garnier’s schedule. Inspired by the historical gladiator of the same name and shot entirely in studios and warehouses, Spartacus presented him with his biggest job to date. Over four seasons, Barrett-Garnier worked as supervising sound editor and re-recording mixer. The job of sound re-recording mixer marks the final step in creating a film’s sound mix, as dialogue, effects and music are combined together. On 17 episodes Barrett-Garnier was sole re-recording mixer; on another 20 he handled dialogue and music, while American veteran Bill Freesh (Deadwood) mixed the sound effects. Freesh later described Barrett-Garnier as “an excellent mixer and a pleasure to work with”. 

In between excursions into the sounds of Rome, Barrett-Garnier found time to work on a trio of local features. After handling the final mix of drama The Most Fun You Can Have Dying, he was picked to command the sound design and mix of two very different big-screen spectacles: impressing Toa Fraser with his work on ballet movie Giselle, then helming the sound for Leanne Pooley’s Beyond the Edge, which recreates Edmund Hillary’s conquering of Everest. 

Sources include
Bruno Barrett-Garner
soundnut. Accessed 14 October 2013
‘Bruno Barrett-Garnier’ IMDB website. Accessed 14 October 2013