MPSE Wavelength

drafted a great document entitled "A Letter From Your Sound Department." I give it to all my filmmaking students because it has great advice on how to get the best production sound which, of course, makes the best post-production sound. Film students today get a much more rounded education when it comes to filmmaking. A filmmaker needs to know about sound issues, along with how to compose a shot and guide the actors. But often, a director just leaves it for someone to deal with later. It's when you get to the editing room, that you realize you have sound problems. That's a little late. The old adage, "We'll fix in post" is outdated and untrue. Yes, we CAN fix it in post but we'd rather use our time and talents for more creative work! My new adage is "Fix it on the set." When I began teaching at a new school, Video Symphony, around 2000, digital sound editing replaced Moviolas and analog editing. The studios didn't know how to deal with so many different platforms. As an editor, we only had to know how to use a Moviola or a flatbed in order to edit anywhere! Then we had to learn a lot of different systems—Avid, Pro Tools, Waveform, Nuendo, Lightworks… Each studio had their own. Finally, Pro Tools won over all of them. Some of the "older" editors just couldn't deal with editing on a computer. Like my mom. She was a brilliant editor but could not make that leap. She retired in 1996. As I went along in my teaching at Video Symphony, I developed a core curriculum to address the "why" we do things, not just the how. There was a flush of schools and courses and people, who have never edited on film, suddenly became "certified Pro Tools instructors." Life progresses forward, as it does, and I saw that NO one was addressing WHY we edit. I knew that students needed to exercise their ears, not just their fingers on a keyboard. I discovered a great book called Film Sound: Theory and Practice written by Elisabeth Weis and John Belton published in 1985. The book delved into the DNA of sound. I Xeroxed portions for my UCLA students (with permission of course). I brought in guest speakers— producers, directors, production sound mixers, re-recording mixers. I took students to studios for field trips to see a Foley stage, a dub stage, an ADR stage. It was eye- opening for them. Then I adapted that class for Video Symphony but those students were really there to learn the craft. They didn't want to know sound in a heady, intellectual way. They wanted to get a job as an editor. All of us of a "certain age" learned on the job, as apprentices and then assistants before we could hold an editing position. We had experienced editors and mixers as our mentors. All of that vanished with the advent of film schools. Today, it seems that every junior college has film classes. Film is even taught in middle schools. But it has been mostly about the visuals of film—very little is taught or considered about sound. But that is changing. After a few years at Video Symphony, I realized that talking about the "old days" of film didn't matter to these students. I still brought out my film strips to show them what film actually looks like and feels like. I found myself refraining from talking about my early days. It didn't apply anymore. BUT… the principles and concepts will always apply, no matter where technology takes us; the principles of HOW to hear, what to listen for, what moves the story forward via sound, respecting the actors' process and the director's vision. Those concepts will never change. How to recreate the apprentice process for today's students? I still play the opening of the film The River, which was the film my mom won her Oscar for. I play it completely silently. They just watch the opening images. After a while, I stop the film and ask them, "How long did that feel?" Some have said anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes! Then I tell them. "It's ten. Ten minutes." They can hardly believe it. That is the power sound brings to the images. I play the same 10 minutes with the sound mix. Then we play it piece by piece so I can talk about not just the editing, which are the choices and placement of sound effects, dialogue, and music but also how it was mixed. It's a great example of Top: Here we are with our MPSE Awards and her Oscar for the The River in 1985. Above: Vickie said this photo with the film in her mouth is from around circa 1987.

• Cover
• 02-03 TOC