Tributes have been paid to Richard Lee, who worked on shows including Heartbeat, Waterloo Road and Dodger.
During his 30 year career he was a dubbing mixer for many high profile one-offs and mini series, ranging from Classic Albums – Paul Simon Graceland, to Fat Friends and The Royal.
For the last 3 years he’s been based at dock10, which today released a statement:
“It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our dear friend & colleague Richard Lee who was an invaluable member of the dock10 post production team. Our heartfelt condolences go out to Richard’s family & friends. Richard will be sadly missed by us all. Rest in peace.”
Breaking from the traditional journalistic third person I was fortunate enough to know Richard from 2015, when I approached him to do the audio mix on a particularly epic documentary I was producing for Channel 4 and Sony.
I thought throwing Hacienda Classical at him would push him to his limits. I was wrong. Instead of just taking the mix that the audience heard at Manchester’s Castlefield Bowl, he took each individual instrument (stem) and mixed the entire show from scratch. No small thing considering it was an entire orchestra, singers, DJs and percussion – 100 “stems” in total.
When I questioned whether that was too big a job, he got back to say it’d be worth it because “it’ll certainly sound better than the mix on the night.”
He was right. It was breathtaking.
Lee worked at Sumners, dock10, Timeline and as Audio Team Leader at Sky.
His last aired work was the Dodger TV series for CBBC.
