CAS Quarterly

Spring 2017

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48 S P R I N G 2 0 1 7 C A S Q U A R T E R L Y I I have many role mod- els and mentors in other areas of my life, but my earliest mentors in film sound all come from my days as a graduate student at USC in the late '80s. The history of the cinema program at USC includes about half a dozen faculty who were there for decades. I matriculated at a pivotal time, as the end of that era saw a large transition in faculty. When I got to USC as an MFA student in 1986, the sound department had two full-time faculty members, Dan Wiegand and Ken Miura. Dan was loved as a mentor by many people before my time, but he retired my first semester as a student. As such, I did not really have a rela- tionship with him. Ken Miura, however, was around for a long time. He was no longer teaching regularly when I arrived. He was an administrator when I started, but I do remember him doing guest lectures. Ken was born in the US to Japanese immigrants. I remember that he peppered his lectures with references to Japanese thought. As one example, he would talk about the fact that sync did not mat- ter if there was a lot of movement onscreen, and he explained that in Japan there is a different word when a group of people is three or more. Psychologically, we treat a larger group dif- ferently, which is why we do not need to sync background footsteps for all the characters in Grand Central Station; only the featured two or three main characters are necessary for the audience to believe what they are seeing and hearing. Unfortunately, during World War II when Ken was a teenager, he and his family had been interned along with 120,000 Japanese-Americans. When I found this out, I MENTORSHIP: b y D a v i d B o n d e l e v i t c h C A S M P S E MY MENTORS IN Education Ken Miura at his retirement party and alumni event. Photo: Dan Nienaltowski Ken Miura at his retirement party and alumni event. Photo: Dan Nienaltowski

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