Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1277927
12 S U M M E R 2 0 2 0 I C A S Q U A R T E R L Y M E E T T H E A S S O C I A T E CAS Associate Jenny Elsinger, a sound utility who has been in the business for two decades, has worked on programs such as Sleepy Hollow, The Resident, Stranger Things, and Outer Banks. I sat down with her (on the other side of an internet connection) while she was holed up with her family, north of Dubuque, Iowa. Where did you go to school? I grew up in Northeast Iowa, and I'm home on the family farm right now. I went to school at the University of Iowa and graduated with a communications degree. I focused on broadcasting and fi lm and minored in anthropology which, believe it or not, really goes together. For me, it always goes back to the idea of storytelling. Anthropology is the study of human beings and their stories throughout history, and that's what we do on fi lm sets. I was interested in the fi lm business in general before sound. I liked the idea of writing and making movies and I always wanted to be a storyteller, but I didn't know exactly what I would do in the business. Did you stay in Iowa after graduating or did you leave immediately? After I graduated, I ended up in Wilmington, North Carolina, and that is where I really came up in the fi lm business. I had done a little bit in Iowa, but there really wasn't much going on. I PA'd a little bit on some tiny shows and was even a stand- in on a Hallmark movie. I ended up working on a show in Kansas City, Missouri, and met lots of people and so many of them were out of Wilmington, NC. To be honest, I'd never heard of Wilmington, NC. I thought "Wilmington, Delaware," I'd heard of that. This was at the time, I was told, that Wilmington was number three in the United States for fi lmmaking—behind LA and New York. This was in 1998, and that's where I fi rst met all these great Wilmington people. They said, "There's this great fi lm industry there." I was out of college and sort of dreading the idea that I had two choices—New York or LA—if I wanted to continue in the fi lm business. Growing up in a rural area and loving it, loving nature, and the outdoors, I just dreaded the idea of going to New York or LA. I'd never been to either of those cities at that point, and when I heard about this third option, I thought, "This might be the answer for me," and it absolutely was. It was just the best decision I probably ever made. It was a great, busy time, and during those years you could just drive onto the lot at Screen Gems. They had a guard, and you could say, "I'm just trying to get on a show," and they 'd say, "Okay!" They had Panavision on the lot, and they were crewing for a tiny little movie. At the time, I had never done sound, just PA'd and done intro stuff on movies. But I had worked as a camera PA on my last show in Iowa, and I thought, "Well, that's perfect, that's what I want to do. There's nothing more central to fi lmmaking than camera department!" Steering toward camera, how did you end up in sound? At that time, sound had not occurred to me, I just didn't know anything about it. I was literally walking into Panavision when someone was walking out who had just gotten the camera PA job, he literally got hired as I was walking in. It was a very low-budget movie and I was just looking for experience, I didn't care about the money. I was so bummed because I thought that was my best shot at getting on something. Because I knew I had no experience, I was specifi cally looking for little tiny movies because I didn't have anything to offer other than my good attitude! So, I was walking out and I still had my résumé in my hand. And this is a moment I will never forget; I ran into Jeffree Bloomer CAS, and he was based out of Columbia, South Carolina. I think I was standing there trying to decide whether to go left or right—literally, "Well, now what?" He was down there, too, prepping his gear for the same show. He said hello and I told him I was trying to get on Sound Utility Jenny Elsinger I n t e r v i e w e d b y G . J o h n G a r r e t t C A S Sound utility Jenny Elsinger