Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1474752
36 PRODUCTION SOUND & VIDEO – Fall 2022 I feel I had this need to belong somehow in this sonic community. I wasn't great at math and science, wasn't much of a musician, and I certainly was not an extrovert or performer in any way. However, I did understand there was a connection between the creative and technical processes, where you couldn't have one without the other. In a roundabout way, I hooked onto that idea of being in these two different worlds which lead me to film and TV. Growing up in Southern California offered a huge choice of options to study and apprentice. My father, who primarily was a middle school electric shop teacher, also did Local 40 elec- tric work for the movie studios. That was his summer job; had that been on my radar, I could've easily wound up as a Studio Electrician. While attending junior college, my first real audio job was with a childhood friend whose father-in-law owned a videog- raphy business. I cut my teeth on audio-signal flow, making crude A/V snakes, miking up wedding bands, and shoving interview mics in the faces of Bar Mitzvah guests. I was also a gopher at a small recording studio, which was a great experience, because I got to learn about basic microphone and recording techniques, more advanced signal flow, and that recording "was a business," which depended on bookings and payments for services rendered. Everyone there had advice to give and opinions to share. The Audio Maintenance Tech told me about music recording programs and schools in the area and recommended a few to me. The least expensive option was a music degree at a state university, and I chose a small school in my own backyard of Los Angeles, Cal State University Dominguez Hills. The term "Recording Arts" is more defined these days with certain aspects and levels of instruc- tion. Although this was a music engineering program, it felt very comfortable. When I enrolled at Dominguez, I studied both traditional analog engineering and early digital recording. Digital audio recording was just beginning to be written about academi- cally, and there wasn't room to study audio for cinematic applica- tions. We rarely discussed sound for film or post sound, yet I was able to apply much of it later when I worked on set. The theory was also immediately met with practice, because the school had a small 24-track recording studio within the Music Department. All the audio students had lab projects to record, so you would invari- ably work on each other's assignments, or help record concert recitals in one of the theaters located below the studio. When I graduated in 1991, the home recording market was taking off and computer technology was "bit-by-bit," changing the way society was doing things. Recording studio facilities were facing an upheaval of technological change, not unlike the film industry would go through a few years later. My options seemed limited at the time but were far from it; the film biz was the perfect place to grow roots, I just didn't know it at the time. After a mini-career as a temp employee, and doing video work on the weekends, one of the Video Camera Operators I'd been working with said to me, George Flores with Richard Lightstone on Hidden Hills