Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1122868
C A S Q U A R T E R L Y S P R I N G 2 0 1 9 39 Well, you came out of it with flying colors! I feel blessed with being able to do it. That led to working on major movies. I guess I was eventually trusted with this responsibility on a number of projects, which put a fire under me to really make sure I had all my ducks in a row and better understood film and cinema as a craft. So I studied the process. Not necessarily the audio only, but the whole process. The details of filmmaking are unbelievable. When making a record, details are different than in cinema. In cinema and TV, a big part of the job is paying attention to the cinematic details; following every piece of communication and making sure you're communicating as well. A number of the projects you've worked on have been centered around different eras. From a technical perspective, how do you approach these types of recordings? Let me start with Boardwalk Empire, which was set in the 1920s. For the series, which lasted about five years, we recorded more than 400 songs. All of them had to be interspersed with other original recordings and, obviously, we wanted to make sure the transitions weren't noticeable. While it makes sense to try to use period-accurate recording gear, the most important variable is "who" you put in front of the microphone. You need specialists who can emulate an era; a specific type of vibrato, or play with a specific vintage instrument, etc. If you have that, then the technical part becomes less difficult. That said, if I can be in front of an 80 series Neve and have some tube and ribbon mics, I'm usually in a pretty happy place. (Laughs) Tell me about working on the music for Maisel. Amy (Sherman-Palladino) and Dan (Palladino), the show runners, are really music-savvy people. One thing they don't want to do is use music gratuitously. It's sort of a theatrical approach where music is used for a specific lyrical purpose. That's what really got me interested in working with them because the music is used to tell part of the story. Also, the show takes place during a great time for music; the late 1950s and early 1960s. There's jazz overlapping with doo wop and rock-and-roll and folk music. It's such a diverse period. (Production mixer) Mathew Price was telling me that, when a scene has on-camera musicians, they like to record the music in the actual location. Yes. We shoot a lot of scenes in nightclubs or bars, for instance, and we are recording performances in those set locations. The directors love to feel the space we're shooting in. We bring in a recording crew and set up a full console and speakers and get as far away from the sound source as possible so we can have isolation and make assessments. We get a pre-call, and I get, maybe 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. to capture the performances accurately. I have to be done at 9 a.m. because an entire film crew and actors are coming, there's no "play" room. And then they do playback during the shoot of what we recorded earlier in the day. What do you like to do when you're not in the studio? I really enjoy cycling. NYC has become really bike-friendly (well, not for pedestrians). Cycling is a great way to rejuvenate. I also like to cook and, of course, spend time with my family. The odd part of this job is that the thing that came from recreation, making and recording music, became the thing I get to do all day long. And the people I wanted to hang with outside of work, I'm now hanging with at work. RON BOCHAR CAS: Re-recording Mixer Ron Bochar has been involved in the sound-for-picture industry for more than 35 years and is a co-founder of NYC's C5, Inc. This is his second CAS Award win, the other is for Angels in America, which also won him an Emmy. He received an Oscar nomination, CAS Award nomination, and Golden Reel nomination for his work on Moneyball. Additionally, Ron won a News & Documentary Emmy. Did you play a musical instrument growing up? I was a frustrated teenage guitarist who couldn't seem to get past "House of the Rising Sun," despite my guitar teacher's best efforts. (Laughs) What did you focus on in college? I grew up in Ohio and went to Ithaca College in Upstate New York as a TV and radio major. They had a really cool television department where students were part of the crew for programs that would air on the local PBS affiliate. I was really interested in doing work in the field, but the portability of equipment in the late 1970s was non-existent; it was just too big and cumbersome. However, they did have a small cinema department with about a dozen students. The program had a real strong bent toward industrials and documentaries because none of the Re-recording mixer Ron Bochar CAS