Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1011374
26 of the prior twelve months. I took a good long look around, I felt good about where I'd been and all I had learned and decided that a change was needed and my path forward was going to be in the commercial realm. At least until the kids grew up, I consoled myself. Commercials. Yep, commercials. Still hard to believe. When I got in the IATSE in 1977, film was the undis- puted king of the crop. Television was a different beast than today, closer to the old factory system of the studios that were cranking out a steady stream of cop shows or three-camera sitcoms, and commercials were, well, commercials. The stigma was understand- able as commercials were formulaic and square at best. That all started changing in the mid-'80s as a new sensibility and atheistic took hold. Directors like Joe Pytka, Ridley and Tony Scott, Rick Levine, Bob Giraldi, Adrian Lyne and others brought a cinematic look and approach to the process. An entertaining thirty- or sixty-second movie/story was the new direction. These directors all did commercials, as well as the emerging music videos and feature films. For them, work was work. Another day to practice and perfect their craft was the sensibility. Money was a motivator too. The commercial stigma started to evaporate a bit. For a Sound Man (that's what we were called and mostly were back then), the commercial work left the two walled sets on quiet stages and more often ven- tured out to practical locations where the challenges were more difficult, exactly like film and TV. The work was still ninety percent one boom and a mono Nagra and luckily one camera, so our success rate was high. Roger and I did so well that I was working more days a year than I had prior, but the big difference being I was home every night with my family. I was happy and seldom looked back. On commercial shoots back then, many a day was short for the Sound Department. We'd have a later call, record our part, and go home early. A lot of six- to eight-hour days in the eighties and early nineties. The glory days as it were. Roger had a very loyal clientele of the top players in the commercial world, the LA, NYC, and London production companies and directors called him first. I nicknamed a lot of people and I called Roger "The Godfather." Not that original but true. He handed off many, many gigs to other mixers. I and others benefited greatly from him doing this to keep his customers satisfied. That's how I moved up to mixing Crew (left) with William (Bill) MacPherson working on The Milagro Beanfield War in Truchas, New Mexico, in 1986 From left: Crew on the set of the 1985 film Prizzi's Honor; the 1986 film Down and Out in Beverly Hills with Matisse, the dog, and Clint Rowe, dog trainer. Crew is booming Nick Nolte and Jamie Anderson is the cam operator.