Third BAFTA for Sound Technology grad

Sound Technology graduate Joe Beal has won his third BAFTA Craft Award. 

Joe Beal, who graduated in 2012, was part of the Boom Post team to win Best Sound: Fiction for Slow Horses (Apple TV+). He and the team picked up the same award last year, while Joe also received a BAFTA Craft Award for his work with Boom Post on Chernobyl (Sky) in 2020. 

Boom Post is one of the UK’s leading bespoke sound facilities, working on high end TV drama and big budget films. Joe joined them in 2013, is head of sound editorial and one of five graduates that work there. 

We caught up with Joe after the BAFTAs to talk about the awards, his work on Slow Horses as supervising sound editor and the trait that links LIPA graduates.  

Winning the BAFTA for a second year was a big shock. We were up against incredibly stiff competition, House of Dragon, True Detective and Baby Reindeer, all really successful shows with interesting soundtracks. So, we were really thrilled to win again. It’s great to be recognised by your peers and lovely for everyone on the team.   

We are always looking at ways to improve, both creatively and technically, and I think this award is recognition of that. Our aim is to take what we've done in previous seasons and build on it. Season four was a big progression in storyline and visuals from season three. We tried to follow the dark development in the tone and take the opportunities for interesting ideas in sound where we could. There were a lot of fun sequences to get to grips with! 

We start working on an episode when it’s nearing it’s picture ‘lock’ stage, where the edit is almost signed off. We’ll sit down with our director and editors, and discuss what they think each episode needs, what they have in their temp soundtrack and how we can take it further. 

After that meeting there’s a period of editorial and design, where we spend time editing dialogue, creating sound effects and building sound design sequences. There is often some back-and-forth with ideas as we go through pre-mix and ultimately to the final mix, where we finalise the soundtrack. We’ve worked on five seasons of Slow Horses, with a sixth just about to start, so we have a really good relationship with all of our creative partners on the show.     

Slow Horses is funny, and it has moments of action. Those two things allow you to do more with sound than you might be able to do typically. That’s why I think Slow Horses sounds so interesting. If you're trying to be funny, you can do something that in a normal setting just wouldn't work; the chair can squeak louder than it should, the door can crash open, the stairs in Slough House can be ridiculously creaky. You have to be careful you don’t go too far and it becomes self-parody, but the tone of the show certainly allows us to push the sound further. 

James Hawes, who directed the first series of Slow Horses, deserves a lot of credit for the sound of the show. From the start he was pushing us, telling us, "this is a comedy, it’s supposed to be funnier, go further." 

We always find that LIPA grads come in with a really positive attitude. They have an understanding of the industry and what will be expected of them that goes beyond just the technicalities of the job. At Boom we have a way of working that we will teach to people. What you can’t teach is passion and a drive to make it all work, which is what the LIPA grads have. They have all the technical understanding, but they are also prepped for the realities of work.  

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Top image: Joe accepting a BAFTA at the 2024 awards. Photography: Jeff Spicer/BAFTA/Getty Images