Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1316380
"When you're in audio, you are always sort of working remotely anyway, because you're at the other end of the building, or you're in your own room because of sound treatment issues." their own setups, and they have demonstrated success on their own merits, without an engineering staff or some network room. No support besides you, and your gear, and your knowledge, and your talents. You can get it done over the phone, or texts, or—God help us—Zoom meetings. I think for the short term, it's going to stay this way because it's saving companies a lot of money not to have a 10,000-square-foot facility somewhere. The work is still getting done. Eventually, people are going to get sick of the way, and style, that this work is being done. It affects the way the product looks, sounds, and feels. They're going to want a return to things feeling alive, a team working side-by-side, together under the same roof, to make the product feel up-close and personal. I think it's a little bit drier when handled remotely. But again, we won't be returning to this in the near future. I started my career at an out-of- house independent place, and then after that, everything was moving in-house. And just when the in- house thing became really strong and everyone was working that way, it literally blew up overnight. Nowadays, almost everyone is out-of-house, freelancing. The people who already had their stuff together are working. And the people that didn't are scrambling to put things together on-the-fly, calling people. I've been out-of- house for six months, but I already had a studio out-of-house, so it didn't change anything, I just didn't have to drive in the morning. The studios and workflows that I built are exactly like the studio that I work in. So for me, I was just turning on a different computer and working with the same stuff, and working with people remotely. When you're in audio, you are always sort of working remotely anyway, because you're at the other end of the building, or you're in your own room because of sound treatment issues. You have to be in a different environment, and not a lot of people come by regularly because it's loud. You can have people come in and approve stuff, but while you're doing the actual passes and working, no one really wants to hang out in an audio bay, because you're hyper-focused, and you're not talking to them. They can't make phone calls—it's a racket. They hear you do the same thing 77 times while you're auditioning EQ over a three-second moment, and that drives people crazy. So I guess audio people are better suited to working remotely, in a way." Soundies are a special breed of people, aren't we? Perhaps we really are better built for these times than most. No matter what happens next, commercial work is still uniquely fun and energetic. That's not changing anytime soon. The work is far from easy, but then again, what is? Nothing keeps you sharp like a commercial project on a tight turnaround. It's not for everyone, but thanks to Jay's guidance, I have loved every minute of it. "There's nothing stopping you from doing it right now. You don't have to get a full-time job to be doing it. You can take an online video, put it into a session at home on your Pro Tools rig, get rid of all their information, and rebuild it any way you want to, with whatever tools you've got on hand. You can do it 10 different ways. You can have 10 different music tracks, with 10 different approaches to sound effects. You can record your grandmother performing the voiceover. Whatever it is, you can just do it. You don't have to wait to get paid to do it. If you're driven to do it anyway, that's how you know it's the right job for you. There's nothing stopping you right now from becoming the person you want to be, and to have the career you want to have. Just do it now so that when you actually walk into a place, you already have 10 things that you can show them that you've done, and they're all great because you cared enough about the finished product to do it on your own time. Whatever tricks and cheats you've learned doing that, those are yours. You can take those to any job, and you'll be six steps ahead of everybody else because they didn't do it like that. Maybe they took a roundabout, slower route. If you're driven and you're talented, and you just keep doing it, you'll be successful."