Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1277477
BAY AREA By Peter Tonguette S ince the emergence of the coro- n av i r u s p a n d e m i c, m i l l i o n s o f Americans have had to reinvent their homes as workplaces. Picture edi- tor Michael R. Fox, however, had a head start on the rest of us. In 2017, the Salt Lake City native, w h o s e c r e d i t s i n c l u d e t h e s e r i e s "11.22.63" and "The Last Ship," relocated to his home state after years spent in Los Angeles. The decision was made in part to achieve a healthier work-life balance for Fox and his family (his wife and five children relocated a year before Fox, who initially commuted). "Kids are only kids once," Fox said. "I love what I do as an editor, and my other passion is being a dad. I had to find a way to make those two blend." Early on in the transition, Fox and other colleagues who had moved from LA set up shop at a postproduction facil- ity in Salt Lake City. When that facility went out of business, the editor saw an opportunity. "All this gear that we had, that we'd purchased, suddenly became available," Fox said. "I thought, 'I'm go- ing to buy back my room.'" After working remotely on several projects, including the ABC series "For Life," Fox found himself with a major home renovation project: Just around the time the pandemic hit, the editor turned his basement into a fully functioning, highly customized edit bay. "A good editor knows exactly what they need and what works for them and how they want to set up," he said. "I've been in edit bays that are as small as closets and some that are as big as a theater, and this is a happy medium. It's got everything in it that I've come to expect or need." CineMontage went on a tour of Fox's digs, which include the expected editing, sound, and video equipment, as well as a few Lego sets that the editor occasionally shares with his kids. " We s p e n t f o u r m o n t h s re d o i n g this and building it up. There's a lot of tech hidden in the walls. I was floating walls so I could control the sound bleed. My whole goal was to create something that would satisfy a lot of the MPAA compliance requirements for offline, to secure the asset where I'm not operating at a facility." "I can spend time down here, as I'm messing around with some other things. It's quiet, it's very comfortable, and it feels exactly as it should." "Everything is dimmable. I've got two rows of LED cans, and I can dim those independently, the first row and then the row that's above me. I can bring down if I want to keep a little bit of light up, or if I want to go completely dark. The room is windowless, which is really nice." 30 C I N E M O N T A G E MICHAEL R. FOX PICTURE EDITOR BOUNTIFUL, UTAH