Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1259912
40 S P R I N G 2 0 2 0 C A S Q U A R T E R L Y it! There was no turning back and I have been working in production sound ever since. Any memories of those very first days as an employed boom op? I loved boom operating as a job: the physicality, the dexterity, and nimbleness needed to be accurate. Deeply understand lighting, lenses, editing, so as to achieve the best results from what most of the time were one mic shoots. Radio mics were only ever used if they really had to be. It is such a misunderstood and underappreciated job. It is akin to mastering a martial art. There is deep job satisfaction for those who understand. My ears are tuned for that and, as a mixer, I still will always lead with the boom in my mixes unless impossible. I am pretty tough on boom ops in what I expect, but I have an amazing team and we laugh a lot. It still makes me laugh looking back at all the technology transitions the mixers I boomed for had to go through such as Nagra to timecode Nagra, DAT to HD. Running off floor between takes to make sure the TC Nagra was printing TC for a 70-year-old Oscar- winning mixer who doesn't give a damn was character building to say the least. That scenario seemed to be repeated with every transition. Looking back, are there some scenes from GOT that stand out more than others? Game of Thrones was extremely demanding on both the team and equipment. There were a lot of 4 a.m. calls in the depths of winter in sleet and snow and mud. Microphones had to withstand all sorts of extremities from deserts to glaciers and sometimes only a few days apart. Battles, fires, blood, bear skins, armor, leather, silks, swimming, nudes—we had it all and it could be all in one day! The equipment these days is astounding. The range and quality in wireless, the workflow from mic to recorder to IFB and how they all talk to each other is what makes a job like GOT deliverable. In saying that, because it is all software, when there is a glitch in the matrix it can get very interesting very fast. That's a ton of variation! Any particular challenges that come to mind? In the final season, we had a big ensemble scene in Seville; 16 main cast, 20 pages of dialogue, four cameras, three wireless booms, 16 radio mics with backups, and a wireless stereo running all the time in 100-degree heat. The track count was high. I usually ran two 12-track machines, but decided to use a new 24-track machine to deliver the ISO's and mono mix. It worked seamlessly—until it didn't. After day one, I noticed an error in the file writing, but the recordings were fine. It wasn't until we had to deliver rushes that the machine was telling us there were no files recorded. Panic! When on a remote location that's spending so much money each day, you need to have a good relationship with your producers, who happen to also be directing, [to be able to let them know] that the day 's work is there and we just can't get at it. The manufacturer and I worked around the clock to figure out what was going on whilst I remixed the day 's work via the analog outputs so it was ready to be shipped the next day. It all worked out fine, but in true filmmaking style, when you start to believe you have seen it all, it will bite you in the ass. I love this business—it ages you and keeps you young at the same time! What do you have coming up this summer? I have recently decided to take some time out. This seems timely now that we have a pandemic to deal with. During GOT, my daughter was born. I literally left the hospital after she was born and made the six-hour drive to Belfast to start Season 3. She has known her dad to be away from home for eight months a year, so I'm taking some downtime to be at home and develop some other interests. I will be back—I miss the film business. I am thinking about ways to educate producers, directors, and young sound mixers on the importance of quality recordings [and] the emotional impact of a performance. I feel it's missing a lot these days and overlooked as a key reason an audience engages positively or negatively with content. The better the recording, the better the human connection to the prosody of the performance, the more engaging the content will be. BRETT VOSS CAS: Foley Mixer How do you and the Foley artists attack a show? We typically approach all linear shows the same way. As a team, (L-R) Boom operator James Atkinson, driver/helper Davíð Logi Gunnarsson, assistant Jonathan Riddell, and production mixer Ronan Hill CAS in Iceland