Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1451070
C A S Q U A R T E R L Y I S P R I N G 2 0 2 2 59 Gary now turned to Dane Davis, stating, "The amount of time we have is indicative of what we can do or what we are allowed to do. And it seems that the only way we can buy time is through educating the people in charge of the purse strings." Dane said that time is a limiting factor, and it is what defines your priorities. There's never enough time to do your job. Dane shared, "The post-production supervisor comes to me with the schedule, and I look at it and say this won't work or it doesn't make sense. So, I ask for more time." Gary asked who he talks to in order to help with these issues to get what is needed? Is it the director or picture editor or someone else? "Well, you don't want to step on toes, so you go up the hierarchy. I have been on projects where I go up and get no, no, no. If you lay out your case as to what you need, a good producer will make it happen. But first, I always go to the post supervisor," Dane noted. Gary continued, "When you are brought in on a new project because of your expertise, who do you find you should suck up to to get what you need to do the quality work? Who do you talk to first to make sure they get what's best for them?" Dane replied, "It depends on who brought me into the project. I'll talk to them first. And if there are five people who make the decisions, and you know two of them, it means the other three have worked with different people and you have to navigate the relationships and the weather patterns that form. You don't want to give anyone ammunition that wanted to hire someone else." Gary asked about the politics and brought up his daughter, who is a sound assistant who sees problems where the picture department doesn't respect what the sound department needs. You have to be diplomatic and sometimes the sound supervisor has to talk to the picture editor to get greater cooperation. How does Dane deal with that? He answered, "You have to start out low key. When you start to feel the alliance or team, you have to get the picture department to trust us, you have to feel that gel. You don't want to throw too many grenades over the wall at first. We're all making the same movie and, like Lee said, it's all about the movie and not any individual department. It's about the movie telling the story as effectively as it possibly can. We are making the same movie, but everyone has their own agendas and priorities. But you have to be friends. Sometimes it gets antagonistic but, hopefully, by the time you get to the dub stage, it's one big team." Gary then presented an observation; "The client wants us to be very creative and artistic, but there's a sense that we are treated as just technical and are limited compared to the picture department. There seems to be limited education about what we can bring to the table. Other people want to tell you what they want instead of being open to your creative input. Any thoughts on that?" Dane said that it goes both ways and sometimes we can sit with the picture editor and suggest opening up cuts so that sound has space to put in a horn or gunshot. Alex was asked about going to spotting sessions and suggesting different places where music could start or stop. Alex replied that he doesn't go to many spotting sessions anymore, he just bounces off the temp. Noting that if you have too many starts and stops, it sounds terrible, so you are going to eliminate cues or put them together. Spotting sessions he'd been to recently were all very quick with no sort of creative chat. Lee interjected that there's "been a tendency of a 'dumbing down' of our contribution to the creative process. It was only a little while ago that Jim Cameron referred to what we do as 'knob twirling, button pushers.' Our role in the creative process has been going down and now, especially producers, only care if the actors are wired [because] if they are, you'll be able to deliver what we need. And that is not the essence of what we do when we create the production soundtrack. The director of photography has their arsenal of lights and cameras, and we have our arsenal of mics and "Lately, I have been working with directors who coerce the composer to come on early and thus, we have totally new music to work with." –Alex Gibson