Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1178376
C A S Q U A R T E R L Y F A L L 2 0 1 9 19 leave. A friend of mine told me I should check out post-production. He had heard you could still mix and be contributing to films instead of music, and I thought that sounded amazing! So, I just knew the keyword "post-production" and sent my résumé all over town. I got a job as client services at Encore, which is a video post- production house. I went to the interview wearing a shirt with headphones on it and the girl interviewing me said, "You know, this is a video house, right?" HA! I said, "Yeah, totally!" but I had no idea—but I was hired immediately! I wanted to be on the technical side, so I started training right away to work as a color assistant. Then I transferred three months later to being a dailies tape op, we were still on film then. I'd come in, get my stacks of film, take them to the machine room, lace them up, set up the colorist, sync all the original audio to the dailies, and transfer all that to different bay from quarter inch to TT and he was like, "Just wire this stuff up, it's already labeled." So he put me to work and then I just kept going. DID YOU SPEND A LOT OF TIME IN MUSIC STUDIOS BEFORE YOU GOT INTO POST? Yes, I was 15 at that time and decided to hurry as fast as I could to graduate from high school so I could pursue a career in audio engineering. YOU GOT OUT LIKE A YEAR EARLY OR SOMETHING? I graduated high school when I was 16 and told that engineer that I was going to go to audio engineering school. He said it was the stupidest thing he's ever heard in his life as he'd already taught me everything I needed to know! Why would you do that? I told him that I wanted to learn a program called Pro Tools. Which he also thought was the stupidest thing in the world. So, I moved to LA when I was 17 and went to audio engineering school, learned Pro Tools, as well as analog. Then I moved back to San Diego after that and he had bought a Pro Tools rig! RIGHT! And I taught him how to use it! OF COURSE! DID YOU START WORKING RIGHT AFTER SCHOOL? All along, I had two jobs to get through school, and then I also interned at a recording studio while I was here in LA. When I moved back to San Diego, Don hired me as a tracking engineer, but I only worked the night shift. So I'd work my day job—which was a lingerie sales person at Nordstrom. HA! And, then I'd work all night in the studio. THAT'S OK. I WAS A VALET AT THE STANDARD FOR SOMETHING LIKE FIVE YEARS WHILE I WAS A RUNNER AT SIGNET SOUND. You have to have a job to keep your job! EXACTLY! The studio was paying me nothing, but I was just happy to be getting paid. HOW DID YOU BECOME AWARE OF THE BUSINESS IN TERMS OF POST AUDIO? I had always been into independent films and there were a couple of films that I saw that made me start thinking about sound. Now, I still didn't really know or grasp how it was done or what went into it, but there's obviously musical and sound design moments that caught my attention. So all that was filed in the back of my mind. But I still very, very much wanted to be a music producer. OF COURSE! So I stayed in San Diego and I moved to, in my perception, a larger, more popular studio called Rolling Thunder and started working there. It was also a little bit disappointing, so I decided I had to move back to LA, but I didn't have the financial capabilities to do so. So, I started interning at a hip-hop studio in LA two days a week. I'd work five days a week in San Diego and drive here two days a week. Unfortunately, they wouldn't give me two back-to-back days off at my job, so I had to come here Tuesdays and Thursdays. THAT'S COMMITMENT! Yeah, but at the time, I was still only 18 or 19. THEN HOW DID YOU MAKE THE JUMP FROM THAT TO POST? WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST POST JOB? I got a little bit fed up with the happenings at the hip-hop studio and decided to With the team from Bull. Mixing S.W.A.T. with Richard Weingart CAS.