Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1335010
30 W I N T E R 2 0 2 1 I C A S Q U A R T E R L Y the New York-based features made by directors like Sidney Lumet, Arthur Penn, Elia Kazan, George Roy Hill, and Brian DePalma. Dick was a friend and colleague of my mother, who was a film editor, and had known me since I was a small child. In 1975, I had the good fortune to be hired by the company Dick and his brother Jack owned, Trans/Audio. I was hired as a transfer engineer and spent six years in the transfer room. Dick would let me sit in the mix in my free time and I was able to observe what happened on the mix stage. Later on, I was blessed with the opportunity to work mixing second chair with Dick on The Wiz, The King of Comedy, The World According to Garp, Reds, and several other pictures. MF: I started at Sony Music Studios in NYC in 1995 and was an audio assistant and editor. Back then, assistants would also run Pro Tools because the senior mixers were, generally, more focused on mixing and may not be as quick in the DAW. My main mentors were John Alberts, Chris Floberg, and Sue Pelino. At Sony, they worked on anything and everything—be it a music special, comedy, reality, doc, animation, whatever. As an assistant, you were able to watch and listen to how these different genres were mixed and grow from there. DB: I had Ron Curfman CAS (retired) and Tom Holman (CAS Career Achievement Award recipient) at USC. They gave me a pretty good start learning how to mix. However, I feel I learned the most by mixing student films and film scores. As a teaching assistant (to Tom), I had keys to the department, and spent most of my free time in the studios. I'm a big believer in "Practice makes perfect." Although the 10,000-hour rule that Malcolm Gladwell espoused has been shown to be inaccurate, I do believe that no one is ready to mix professionally until they have spent many, many hours behind the console. One of my pet peeves is that students have access to millions of dollars of equipment, but only use it when they have an assignment due, rather than taking advantage of all the studio time they can get to practice. The ones who take the time are the ones who, typically, become successful. In the professional world, my mentors included Bill Varney (past president of the CAS), who gave me my first job out of grad school as a trainee at Universal. All of the mixers there were very supportive, but as a trainee, I was not allowed to do any mixing. I did work my way up to recordist, so I learned my way around a machine room as well. I also learned a lot when my friend Matt Meyer (who now teaches film and audio at George Fox University in Oregon) hired me as a mixer at a low-budget facility after I left Universal. I mixed hundreds of hours of M&E's. That's a great training ground; I'm forever indebted to him for hiring me. How did your mentors support your learning? Did they help you find work? TF: I actually got my first gigs on my own, but it helped that I was working at the premier mixing facility in New York at the time. At that time, Trans/Audio offered mix time at a greatly reduced rate ($25/hour) to graduate film students at the New York film schools, NYU, Columbia, and School of Visual Arts. I would come in on weekends for my regular transfer engineer scale and mix the student film projects. It was fantastic training for me as I learned to use the tools of the trade and came up against the most horrendous problems a mixer might ever encounter. DB: Faculty at USC were surprisingly unhelpful in finding work for students. As a faculty member now, I understand why. A university does not exist to be a job placement service. It exists to give you the knowledge, skills, and disposition to work as a professional. I do try to help students get a foot in the door whenever possible, but it's a rarity when I can have direct influence like that. (My successful former students have earned everything on their own.) What really helped me was the network of USC "mafia" graduates " MIXING IS ONE OF THOSE THINGS THAT NEVER STOPS EVOLVING. " —TOM FLEISCHMAN CAS Photo: Dan Pinder