I am a firm believer in that every choice you make affects
the path your life will take. I sat in my bed Friday night thinking of what I
wanted out of the weekend. I knew that we would be shooting the Stopover City title sequence and
scootering pickups most of Sunday, and also had my 10 AM-noon WICB Best of Broadway show
before all of that. So basically Saturday was my only time off; therefore I had a
choice to make about how to spend my Saturday; I could either:
a.
go to the Cortaca football game and have a
mediocre time whilst freezing my butt off.
b.
sleep in and regain some strength lost from
overworking the whole week.
c.
attend the sound workshop held by multiple
Ithaca alumni and professionals in the field.
After a fair amount of late night internal debate, I decided
to attend the sound workshop. I reasoned that there are a ton of opportunities
to sleep and have fun with friends, but it’s not everyday that professional
location & post sound mixers come in to talk with students freely (it
literally only happens once a semester). I also don’t know a ton about
on-location sound mixing but would really like to improve in case I ever needed
to do emergency sound mixing for a film.
So I woke up the next morning (at 7:30 AM because my
roommates were blasting music in preparation for the game, *sigh*) and made my
way over to Park to learn! I thought I would experience some fear of missing
out (aka FOMO) but the workshop was so interesting that I forgot all about the
other potential plans I had.
The workshop began with the sound mixers in a panel
discussion, including both location and post-sound mixers. They spoke not only
of the sound industry, but also of the overall tv/film industry workflow. The
panelists had a lot of very helpful/inspirational things to say—some of which I
wrote down in my handy-dandy notepad. Here’s a few pieces of advice they gave
(all 8 of) us:
-it’s really important to invest in your own equipment—that
way you get more practice with the equipment.
-(more audio-concentrated but) know signal flow; that helps
you troubleshoot a live recording session if something isn’t working
-learn how to manipulate mics
-“it’s all about listening”
-the turnaround is a lot faster in television than in TV.
-fast problem solving is the key to making yourself
irreplaceable
-if & when you’re a freelancer, you have to be
accountable for yourself
-figure out what type of work you thrive in and what works
for your personality*
*I found this piece of advice most significant for people of
all concentrations. I am still unsure of where my “calling” is in the industry
based on my personality. On the one hand I love doing art department but it is
extremely difficult with little to no budget, and I am not interested in
producing because I don’t enjoy
bossing people around. Location sound is not something I’d like to pursue as a
career but I would definitely like to get a better handle on it so I could run
sound on a future documentary passion project(?). I am getting quite off topic,
but that’s how most of these posts go.
 |
| the 1 picture I sniped: mama & baby mixer--SO CUTE |
After the panel, we split off into location and post-sound
mixing. Four people (including myself) meandered off to 269 for the location
sound where Jeff Pullman and David Rosenberg worked with us on refining skills
such as boom and lavaliere placement, in addition to little tips and tricks in
making our location mix the best it could be. While most of the mixing stuff
went right over my head, it was extremely helpful to learn about the microphone
manipulation tips. It definitely inspired me to refresh on the pickup patterns
of different mics to be better prepared for shoots. At the end of the workshop
Jeff generously offered for any of us to shadow him on Madame Secretary in the Big Apple, which I will definitely do
(hopefully) over winter break.
Overall, it was a very intriguing workshop and I feel that it was time very well spent.
