Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1197255
leader, and then we'll categorize them." This went on for three or four months. When I got done, we had a sound effects library. Sound editors would come in and sit with me, and they would audition sound effects. TALK ABOUT KNOWING YOUR LIBRARY! In those days, I don't think there were any really good commercial sound effects libraries, or if there were, maybe we were cheaper. We sold the effects for $7.50 per effect and $0.10 a foot for the stock. So a sound editor would come in and say, "I need 300 feet of birds and some wind and doors and cars." Whatever it was they needed. They'd come in with a list of things, we'd sit maybe for a few days or a week and just audition stuff. I would transfer them to 35mm mag. If I didn't have the effect, I'd often go record it myself or get it from another sound house in town. That was my first job. That, and making deliveries. Lots of deliveries! BUT YOUR MAIN FOCUS WAS THE SOUND EFFECTS LIBRARY? And then Elisha started expanding the studio by building a Foley stage, so I also worked on the construction in my free time. This was before automated Foley … before ADR systems. This is 1970-71. They were still doing Foley with loops at that time. He had come up with this idea where the editors would prepare the reel for Foley using a black & white dupe picture. The editors would splice a piece of white leader in between the shots to be Foleyed and put a punch hole two feet before the first frame of the picture for each segment. He had a photocell on the window of the projection booth and the punch hole would trigger an oscillator and create a one-frame pop. So, the film would go through the projector and the pop would be generated. I was running a 35mm mag recorder on interlock with picture and I also recorded on a quarter-inch tape on the Scully with Pilotone sync. Elisha would be in the studio where he had built his own recording console and floor surfaces, and he would walk the Foley along with the sound editors who often walked their own Foley in those days. They would walk the Foley, and I would be in the backroom with the recorders. If they got a good take, I would unlock the interlock, they'd back up the picture, I would lock it back up, and they would do the next character. So, at the end of the session, I had everything on quarter- inch, each section was slated and had a pop, and they would walk out of the place with a 2,000-foot roll of 35mm mag stripe with all the printed takes on it. They could go back to the cutting room and fine-sync them. If they needed a reprint or wanted one of the unprinted takes, they could be transferred from the quarter-inch tape. WHAT WOULD YOU SAY THAT ROLE WAS OFFICIALLY? A FOLEY RECORDIST, A SOUND EDITOR? I was more like a machine operator. I wasn't in charge of the levels or the miking or anything like that. I was still very green ... the kid in the back. DID YOU KNOW AT THIS TIME THAT IT WAS SOUND FOR YOU OR WERE YOU STILL EXPLORING? My time at Image Sound was when I knew I was going to stay with sound. I worked for Elisha for two years and got completely obsessed with sound. I forgot about everything else. In addition to auditioning and selling sound effects and recording Foley, I was also doing transfers, voice and sound effects recordings, and learning how to use the most important tools of the trade, the fader, the equalizer, and the compressor. In those days, the only noise-reduction tools were a variety of different types of noise gates which were all only marginally effective, and I didn't start using them until later when I got into mixing. Mixing The Aviator with Martin Scorsese. Photo by Jennifer Dunnington