By Jason Greenough | Arts & Entertainment Editor
MRT Students! You’re going to want to read this! We caught up awhile back with John Little, the super chilled-out Audio Professor and Department chair that has been showing you cool microphones and sound stuff for the past 11 years. We talked about a bunch of cool stuff, so take a look and find out what John had to say about his musical and audio genesis, and his time at the Mount!
Q: What got you started in the Audio Production field?
A: “[I was a drummer] in high school. Someone said to me, ‘hey, you’re getting pretty good, so if you’re serious about this, you should go to this thing they do at UNH in the summer for high school kids,’ and it was a two-week intensive college course for music, tailored for high school kids. It was there that I discovered Pro Audio. They taught a course in it, and as soon as I saw it, I said ‘this is for me,’ and never looked back.”
Q: What are your favorite, and least favorite, parts of working in Audio?
A: “My most favorite part, I’d have to say, is the happy customers at the end of the process. It’s a great feeling to have done whatever it is that you do for someone and have them come back and tell you how much they like it. In regards to my work in TV, I didn’t really like the hours. I also didn’t like how some Producers were only concerned with getting a story and making it as sensational as possible for the highest ratings, at the expense of the crew, when we would have no lunch or sleep, and it was usually for stories that I personally felt were nobody’s business. In the studio, I don’t like unproductive sessions. When someone comes in, and they can’t do their parts, and they’re unprepared, I just feel that it’s a waste of my time, and theirs.”
Q: Have you had one of those defining “This is Awesome!” moments?
A: “When I was working in TV, while I got to travel, having seen 27 states within 9 months, it really wasn’t traveling, it was working. There were a couple of chances to goof off and have fun, and we’d had a ball in Las Vegas because we had a few days out there, and there was nothing to do but play. There was also a time we got to hang around Disney World during a job. That was pretty fun as well.”
Q: What networks and channels have you worked for?
A: I worked for a Crew-for-Hire company in Waltham, and they would send us out anywhere east of the Mississippi. That was our ‘territory,” and at the time, Fox was a big client of theirs. So I did a few tabloid trash shows like A Current Affair, Inside Edition, and their spin-offs. They had us do Good Morning America, Entertainment Tonight, and they did a few medicals that were cool, where we would actually go in and film a surgery. When I started freelancing, I did a little bit of work for Channel 4, The Disney Channel, the Discovery Channel, NPR, there are just so many of them.”
Q: What’s some advice you have for aspiring Audio students?
A: One attitude I had out in the television world that kept me sane, but a lot of people couldn’t tolerate, was that when things would go wrong, it wouldn’t shake me. Did you do something to make something go wrong? Then learn from it, and don’t let it happen again. But when stuff happens out of your control, like batteries die at the worst possible time, or you run out of tape at the worst possible time, not all of your gear made on the flight to the location. It’s not your fault! It’s only television! Nobody dies when something goes wrong, so relax. Don’t take it so seriously, it’s only television.
Q: What led to teaching Audio Production?
A: I never thought I would teach this. But I went to school here years ago, and I kept in touch with a few guys from the department, and they knew what I was doing, the types of shows I was doing, and one of them actually called me one day to ask me to teach here. I thought to myself, ‘why would I want to do that?’, and they gave me a number of good reasons why I would want to. I gave it a try, I liked it, and now, 11 years later, here I am.
Q: Do you miss working in the field full-time?
A: I still work at my studio, but I don’t miss the television stuff because it was such a grind. I had my fun in it, I saw a lot, I learned a lot, but there is just a lot of personalities that I don’t get along with. They take it too seriously, and they think they’re gonna save the world though television, and I don’t think that’s what it’s for. But, I would miss the studio tremendously if I couldn’t do that anymore.
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