CAS Quarterly

46 S U M M E R 2 0 2 1 I C A S Q U A R T E R L Y TELEVISION SERIES – HALF-HOUR The Mandalorian Ep. 102 " Chapter 2: The Child" by ADAM HOWELL CAS Meet the Winners Congratulations to the sound team of production mixer Shawn Holden CAS, ADR mixer Matthew Wood, Foley mixer Blake Collins CAS, scoring mixer Christopher Fogel CAS, and re-recording mixers Bonnie Wild and Stephen Urata on their well-deserved CAS Award win for The Mandalorian. This marvelous Emmy-winning show, created by Jon Favreau for Disney+, is the first live-action series in the Star Wars universe. After two seasons, it has already become part of our cultural consciousness. I had the pleasure and privilege to chat with the team. (ADR mixer Matthew Wood was unavailable.) What got you to where you are today? How and when did you break into the industry? Shawn Holden CAS: I was attending college at the University of Oklahoma and was doing an internship at a TV station in Oklahoma City. At the end of that internship, they hired me. One of the things I was doing during that time was sound. I worked there for about a year and a half and then moved to Dallas, where I started working as a freelance sound technician in network news. I traveled around the world doing that for about 12 years, but I had always wanted to work in the movies. In 1995, an opportunity to move to Los Angeles came up and I happily jumped on it. At that point, I transitioned into doing movies and dramatic television work and haven't looked back. Blake Collins CAS: I was a student of the Conservatory of Recording Arts and Science where I learned all about music production and recording. We had a course in post audio and I fell in love with it. We took a scene from Pirates of the Caribbean and stripped all the sound away and re-did everything, including the dialogue. My job was sound effects and Foley, and I just had a blast recreating all of those sounds. My internship out of school was at Dubbing Brothers USA (DBUSA) under Fred Taieb, who, sadly, just passed away. He let me mix and record instead of getting coffee and taking out the trash. A real teacher. Once hired on at DBUSA, I met many people, including Dan O'Connell, John Cucci, and Jim Ashwill of One Step Up. Jimmy let me sit with him in the mix room and watch him mix all the Foley they did, occasionally getting to step in on some group Foley cues. Fast- forward a couple years of doing ADR for DBUSA, I drummed up the courage to ask Dan if he could use any help in the Foley mixing role. A couple months later, he called saying he needed a backup mixer. I ended up learning and working with them for about five years before I made the move to Skywalker Sound. Christopher Fogel CAS: I played trumpet throughout high school and got a performance scholarship to attend UC Santa Barbara in 1986. I quickly realized that I didn't want to perform for a living, so I went back home to Reno and transferred to the University of Nevada. While there, I took up DJ'ing to help pay my way through school. In 1990, I went to recording school in Florida, and at the end of that year, I was hired as an engineer-in-training at Westlake Audio in Los Angeles. In 1991, I started assisting producer/ songwriter Glen Ballard on most of his projects that came through Westlake. The first album I engineered myself was Jagged Little Pill by Alanis Morissette. I used to record pop string arrangements for David Campbell, so I had built up some experience recording orchestral elements, along with dense production. In 1999, a colleague at a record label introduced me to a composer friend (Edward Shearmur) who was looking for an engineer from the pop world for his next score project (Cruel Intentions). Bonnie Wild: I studied music and music technology in the UK and got my first job in post-production in 2003 at ITV Leeds after mailing résumés and chasing leads! I made a crazy plan to

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