Bournemouth sound man celebrates Oscars win for The Hurt Locker (From Bournemouth Echo)

Bournemouth sound man celebrates Oscars win for The Hurt Locker

10:07am Tuesday 9th March 2010 in

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OSCAR celebrations were not confined to California after it emerged that a film production graduate from Bournemouth Arts University College had worked as boom operator on The Hurt Locker.

After graduating in 2006, Simon Bysshe went on to work with The Hurt Locker’s award-winning sound recordist Ray Beckett, who lives in Dorset.

Speaking after the Iraq war drama secured six Oscars at the 82nd Academy Awards in Los Angeles, Simon said: “It’s fantastic. The Hurt Locker was a true international collaboration and it is great to have British technicians collecting these awards.

“It’s very exciting. The Hurt Locker is a great film. We were in Jordan for 10 weeks. We had a lovely time but it was really hard work.

“The film is a series of seven or eight vignettes which all build up to a sequence of haunting war stories.”

Simon and Ray both visited the Arts University College in Bournemouth earlier this year to tell current students about their successful careers.

After a special screening of The Hurt Locker the audience was invited to ask the sound experts about their experiences working on the film.

Head of the University College’s School of Media, Kavita Hayton, said: “We are very proud of Simon’s success. Our film production course continues to produce well trained, specialist producers, directors and technicians of great value to the UK and international film industry.”

Simon’s impressive CV also includes The Boat that Rocked, Nowhere Boy and the forthcoming re-make of Gulliver’s Travels, starring Jack Black.

• The Hurt Locker is the lowest-grossing best picture winner in Oscar history. Its director Kathryn Bigelow also made history by becoming the first woman to win an Oscar for best director.