Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1279181
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S I 53 C oming to the end of high school in Coquitlam, Canada, it was time for Craig Berkey to start thinking of a job. As with many kids at this age, Craig faced the all-knowing aptitude test to help guide him in the right direction. At the time, Craig was already juggling playing in a band, teaching classical guitar, and working for the phone company programming mainframe computers, so naturally being a rock star was at the top of his list. Going into the test, Craig wrote down five aspects he was looking for in a future job: job security (the irony is not lost here), working with his hands, intellectual stimulation and challenge, achieving competence, and variety. Now armed with the test results, he'd be ... a woman's fashion designer or a sound mixer. After the next eight years of crunching ones and zeros at the phone company, Craig decided it was time for a change. He quit that job, left his band, and went back to school for audio engineering at Columbia Academy where he would learn to combine his technical knowledge from these past years with the creativity of recording and mixing music. Partway through this one-year program, an instructor left and Craig was hired to teach digital theory classes. Columbia Academy had a separate studio attached to the school that was four-walled by an outside production company, Beckett Productions. During this year, Beckett Productions was looking for engineers to hire in their studio. Naturally, Craig figured he had plenty more time to give so at the end of each day, he hung up his tie and sat down to part-time engineer music and voiceover sessions. One night, Craig took home the manual for the Neve console they were working with and noticed a feature that wasn't being used, flying faders. The next day, he came in armed with this new knowledge, he wowed the people in the session with these faders that moved by themselves. Shortly after this, Craig moved into a full-time position. After some years of honing his craft in engineering, a new medium poked its head, post-production sound. Coming from Los Angeles, Paul Sharpe & Jacqueline Cristianini were making their way to Vancouver to set up a post- production sound studio. During the studio's construction, they would use Beckett Productions and their staff to complete the sound on their television series. At this point, Craig asked a simple question, "What is post-production audio?" While Craig wasn't familiar with post sound workflow, he was familiar with digital technology and the nonlinear 16-bit New England Digital Post Pro system. Jacqueline had years of post-sound editing behind her but wasn't familiar with these new digital systems, so Craig was paired with Jacqueline to share in a mutual learning experience on this series. Shortly after this, Craig and his partner Catherine Winder moved to Taiwan where she was working on an animated film. Craig worked part-time on the film designing software using Lotus 1-2-3 to help the production keep track of scenes associated with various departments. After this project, Craig and Catherine got married and moved to Toronto. During a few months without finding a job in Toronto, they made a deal that whoever got the first job offer anywhere in the world, they'd move there. One crazy week, they received seven job offers, the first of which was for Catherine working out of Hanna-Barbera in Los Angeles. Not having a work permit meant Craig had to travel back to Vancouver for three weeks of every month for work. Craig reconnected with Paul and Jacqueline and began working freelance on a couple of films for Sharpe Sound Studios. During this time, Craig was asked to meet with the people at Digital Sound and Picture in L.A. to see if they'd share how they BY MIGUEL ARAUJO MPSE Test list. "In the freelance world, it's kinda like a universe where you have these planets, and the planets have moons and other planets in their orbit. That's like a studio and the freelancers that work at the studio. You may work in one orbit for a while but one day be flung to another planet and end up working in that orbit on many projects." Craig's test list results.