Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/987065
C A S Q U A R T E R L Y S P R I N G 2 0 1 8 43 So, for Silicon Valley—congratulations on your big win! Thank you, thank you! Modern Family has won in this category for years, well-deservingly so, though. Steve Tibbo CAS was the first one who contacted me. He wasn't [at the awards] either. He and I are very good friends. So every year he wins. I'm always happy for him. It wasn't ever really about winning. To get acknowledged, for me, it was enormous. We're all doing the same job—and the job is to support each other. It's a great community of friends and colleges and mentors and students. When you're also asking about mentors, I think your actual crew are your mentors because so much of what we do we learn through experience of others, and you go through it together. My old boom operator, Brian Wittle, who I was with for so long, had worked with some great mixers around town, he got a lot of experience from them, he brought that experience with him. Excellent point because you're in those trenches together and you're figuring out a problem you have to solve. Tell me about your crew. Chris Diamond and Corey Woods were my crew on Silicon Valley up until this last season. Corey was the boom operator on 24. Chris was the boom operator on Sons of Anarchy, working with great mixers. They just had good pedigree and were recommendations for my old crew on The Office. I helped move Brian Wittle up to mixer and Nick Carbone moved up to boom. I had to leave my old, comfortable team—which was one of the hardest things I've ever done, quite honestly. They're my friends and I wanted them to be able to make that move, but at the same time I missed that family for my next project. However, being able to land with Corey and Chris made up for it in how competent they are. It's a half-hour comedy and very challenging. I am guilty of over-mic'ing, I freely admit it. But if we have the time and we've got the equipment, why wouldn't you try it? I don't think you'll ever hear a supervising sound editor say: "You're giving me too many options." No! Speaking of sound editors, I love ours on Silicon Valley, Matt Taylor. At the beginning, he and I spoke and I asked, "Well, what can't you handle?" And he said, "I can pretty much handle anything you throw at me." I said, "Well, thank you very much. But I'm not going to ask for you to work that hard and I'll give you a heads-up when a rough patch is coming to you." Having a relationship with your sound editor gives you the priceless knowledge of what is repairable. On the day, if pressed, I can turn around to the director and say, "Yeah, that didn't sound good right now but don't worry, you're gonna be fine." I want to have you discuss how Silicon Valley compares to other TV shows you've worked on. I've been really lucky to work on mostly comedy in my career, which I love because it keeps me on my toes. In the sense that the comedy only happens once. [It's typical to tell an actor] "I'm mic'ing you, I have a boom mic on top of you AND at the same time there's a plant mic for you." It may sound silly, it may sound like overkill, but at least I know I got it. On Silicon Valley, they run with ad-libs. They will be adding stuff left and right and you have to be ready for it. One great thing about Silicon Valley is that the cast are all standup comedians making their riffing pretty funny. I really strive to get it all on the boom to have a sense of the room because one thing that's very important for comedy is to base it in a space. Radio mics don't do that. Even a great sounding radio mic still doesn't have much presence of the surroundings. I kind of picked that up on The Office that something's not funny unless it has the pressure of where it is. So, I like to think about what's going to serve the comedy. So back to the night that you won. You said Tibbo was one of the first people to reach out to you. It sounds like you were working. We were shooting Silicon Valley that night of the awards. We were madly bouncing from stage to stage on the Sony lot and we were under such a deadline that they were tearing down the sets as we were rolling off them. And when I got that text I was in a casino set on Stage 25 and I was like, "Oh, no way, really?! That's amazing!" And then the next person who texted me was Elmo Ponsdomenech. He was there so he could accept. I was so glad that they could be there. Elmo was like, "I can't believe it, I can't believe it, we won, we actually won!" Noel Espinosa texted, you texted, and others. I thought you were playing a joke and had all these people in on it! Talk to me about Elmo and Todd, the show's re-recording mixers. They have such a great sensibility and ears and we've been able to keep each other in the loop on almost everything. I could just tell by meeting them that they were going to be great to work with. And those guys are always so accessible. If there's any kind of question—"Hey, I'm gonna try to get away with this, what do you think?" And they're forthcoming with their opinions. They couldn't be more competent or nicer guys. Do you want to talk about what it was like shooting the winning episode "Hooli-Con"? I could talk about the episode. That was a bear! I'm sure a lot of people can commiserate with this. We were shooting in the conference center downtown, and using their practical lights— which are up high and cast about 20 to 30 shadows around everybody. So Chris and Corey boomed all of that crawling around on the floor from below, boom poles underneath tables, popping in plant mics. But we boomed it! They are so good at what they do … just figuring it out as we go. But the location's practical lighting kind of forced that in a way? That … plus it was not a quiet location. No matter how stressful it was, we all still managed to have fun. It was the end