Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1475048
C A S Q U A R T E R L Y I FA L L 2 0 2 2 19 Is there a particular project or point where you felt like you hit your stride? Well, that's an interesting question. I don't know that I have ever reached that point. I have done so many different things, and I still suffer from the "grass is greener" conundrum. When I'm mixing, sometimes I think I want to be cutting instead and vice versa. I have a few colleagues who knew what they wanted from the get-go and have had what looks like very steady career trajectories, which I envy. On the other hand, some of my colleagues seem fascinated by the variety of things I have worked on over the years. It's a cliché, but I think the second you start thinking that you know what you're doing or that you've made it is the point where the wheels start to come off. There's always something to improve and new things to learn. Especially with the technology constantly changing. I have been working in audio post from the end of mag film through analog and digital multitrack to where we are today. There's always something new to learn, which is a great thing. Did you have any experiences or lessons learned in your career that helped pave the way for your future successes? It took me a few years to internalize something that my friend once told me, but conceptually it is very simple: As a mixer, it's not my movie. It's very easy to get attached to your craft, your contribution to a project, and to have it detrimentally impact your relationship with the team that you're a part of. We can get very focused on what our piece of the puzzle is and lose sight of the bigger picture. You can work really hard and create something that sounds awesome, but if it's not right for the scene, then it's not right. You've worked in the Toronto post-production scene your entire career. How do you feel that market compares to Los Angeles, New York, and other US markets? Do you see many similarities? Most of the people that I know who are in L.A. came from Toronto, actually! Over the years, a lot of sound editors and mixers have moved down there, either on their own or after being "invited" by companies who saw the work they did on American films in Toronto. A big difference for mixers is that we are one of the only film crafts here in Toronto that is not unionized. Mixers are either full-time employees at a facility or freelancers who move around from place to place as the work dictates—that's my situation. In terms of the market itself, we have a decent amount of domestic TV production. However, from what I've seen, the Canadian feature film business has shrunk a lot in the last 25 years or so, at least for English- language films—Quebec is different. We have a thriving production industry that gets a lot of American projects, but a big chunk of the post ends up getting done back home. For us to stand out on the post side, we really have to demonstrate that we can do the same work as L.A. as efficiently as they