MPSE Wavelength

20 I M PS E . O R G I had worked the summer before with her and illustrious film editor Verna Fields on an independent feature film directed by the son of Mattel, Ken. Verna was the picture editor, my mom the sound editor, George Brand was the music editor, and Richard Portman was the mixer! We worked in Verna's pool house building where her dog, Bubbles, would sit on the pedals of the Moviola and there was dog hair on all the tracks! Spielberg would come over with his spaniels to swim in the pool. Those were the days. (Dictionary of terms in bold at end of article) I got bit with the movie bug that summer, fascinated by the fill leader that was used to make the dubbing units. I tried splicing these pieces of old movies together as an experiment. I was hooked. Sitting next to my mom while she ran the film on the Moviola, I would take notes. She would run the reels and dictate: "At 35 feet, fill click." I'd say, "What click?" Moviolas are very noisy machines. How could she hear a click?! She'd play it again and again until I finally heard it! I thought, this is dumb. If I can't hear it after listening to it over and over again, the audience is NEVER going to hear that! She explained to me that any sound that isn't part of the movie (like a click, a noise, a voice) is perceived by the audience and is subconsciously reminding them they are watching a film as opposed to being a part of the film experience. "At 55 feet, extend tail of 34B-2." "At 55 feet, add to head of 34C-1." What this meant was to overlap the tail of the ambience from scene 34B take 2 with a head extension of ambience of scene 34C take 1. "At 75 feet, ADR this scene." "At 75 feet, look for alternates for this scene." I still have her notes for most of the films we did. This is how I learned about sound editing. Listening for extraneous and non-diagetic sounds and figuring out how best to fix them, determining how best to smooth out a scene with different levels of ambiences, whether or not to use alternates or to ADR. What sound effects to choose? How best to lay out the units for dubbing (mixing). How to set up units for coding. How to conform all the units when the picture editor made changes. How to write cue sheets. How to determine what was the cell or emulsion side of the film. (Hint: Stick your tongue on it and if it pulls off your skin, you'll know that's the emulsion side!) How to make a fade on a piece of mag. How to go through the sound effects library books to choose sound effects to pull (choose) in order to listen to them. Almost all of these skills are USELESS these days. I started teaching post-production sound at UCLA in 1992 because I wanted filmmakers to know enough about sound to not only appreciate what we bring to the table as editors, but to give them knowledge and skillsets that will make their films better. I created a class called "Post- Production Sound for Directors, Producers, and Editors." It was around that time, in the early '90s, that analog editing was cross-fading into digital editing. I was trying to figure out a way to teach what I had learned "on the job" and to relay and preserve my mom's wisdom from her years of experience. There were no film schools teaching digital editing and apart from USC and other "film" schools, they didn't really teach sound editing. They only taught it as a component of film editing. Sound editing was gaining a little in stature, both from the Academy and from universities, but it was still considered the "step-child" of the industry—a necessary evil. Even at our MPSE Awards banquets, they used to be so noisy that the host or hostess couldn't even be heard! We have since changed to a more refined banquet that any star would be proud to host! My mom fought hard during her tenure as a Governor of the Academy for sound to be respected and elevated. Years ago, a lot of editors, production and post-production mixers, HOW TO TEACH FUTURE SOUND EDITORS THE CRAFT OF EDITING BY VICKIE SAMPSON MPSE I started my sound career when I was 20, back in 1973, as an apprentice sound editor on a film called Cinderella Liberty, directed by Mark Rydell. Donn Cambern was the film editor and he hired me on the show and consequently, I was able to join the union. My mom, Kay Rose, was the supervising sound editor but she didn't believe in nepotism. She won an Oscar for another Mark Rydell-directed film, The River, in 1985.

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