b y S t e p h e n F i t z m a u r i c e C A S
Headphone Mixing
Considerations
If I had to guess—I'd say it was about 2014. My mixing partner, Dave DiPietro
CAS, and I were mired in what was probably the third season of Scandal for
ABC. It was a two-day dub, and I was in a little over my head. I'd slid over to
the dialogue side of the desk a year prior and, as much as I thought I knew
and learned, it was still a big change. Dave was pretty new to his role on the
FX side as well. We were doing all right, but we needed more time. We'd heard
some teams were saving time by pre-dubbing independently on headphones.
Others shared the mains, somehow working on different parts of the show
simultaneously. We tried the latter for about 30 seconds and realized it wouldn't
work for us. If the goal was to do better work in less time, headphones were our
best chance of making it happen.
