Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1475409
Aboard the Pullmantur Sovereign on the sets of the film Dil Dhadakne (2015). And I am grateful to the many who have allowed me to harness, cultivate and grow this knowledge. You have to remember in the early '90s the internet is developing and slow. So how did I tap into the knowledge and learn? I mean, I knew of you before you knew of me. I didn't know your name, but I was, and still am amazed with Blackhawk Down (2001), and I'm amazed with the sound of these films like Speed (1994), Die Hard, Star Trek, Rambo. I'm aware of these films and I'm aware of the wow! I mean, I'm sitting in Mumbai. I'm watching these films in a theater or on my television screen. I'm watching them and I'm just thinking wow, how do they create this amazing sound? With the internet not as fast as it is today, how do I learn the art of editing and design and to create all this magical stuff? At CCL, my bosses Shyam Ramanna & Seema Ramanna were my greatest mentors & coaches. CCL was among the first studios to get a couple of Avid Media Composer and the My Avid AudioVision. It was only the second machine in the country. Shyam Ramanna is a wizard. He is what some of us would know as the evangelist of CG & VFX in India. He was doing stuff nobody was doing at that point, sheer genius. He took me, a young kid, completely under his wing. I was allowed to run wild and explore anything and everything. So I think maybe he saw the spark and allowed the spark to become a flame. SSS: Wow. BF: We had the Avid trainer with us for three days. The Avid Media Composer machines cleared customs on day two and this left us with one day of Avid MC training. Total "facepalm" moment. For some reason, I was tasked with understanding how the machine assembled together, software setup, and basic operation. And an 800-page manual dropped in my lap. "Teach the editors" I was told. It was fun learning, practicing, teaching. I won't deny that. A few weeks later, the Avid AudioVision cleared customs. I set up the machine on my own, but I was stumped, how do I operate this machine? It was so different from the Avid MC. I had never ever recorded anything let alone edited content on a DAW. I shared my concern with Shyam who sat down on the machine. Fingers flying he was doing stuff I could not understand. He put together an edit and then looked at me saying "See? This is how it works." I looked at him and said, "But what if I blow up the machine?" Shyam responded, "We'll buy one more. But don't fail before you start." SSS: He's right, you know? BF: Yeah. I remember a memorable encounter with Shyam sometime later that year, a heated argument which, I see as a very filmic moment in my life. We were working with animation for the first time and I had to match ADR—phonetics to lip movement. Exasperating stuff for a kid who had never been introduced to it. It required a lot of editing skill. I ended up arguing with Shyam and ranting, "No, it's not possible!" Using an expletive he said, "Go home, I will do it!" and walked away. When I came back the next morning, I sneaked into the edit room to check it, and I felt like a stupid kid. I learned a very important life lesson that day. You never walk away from a task. Since then, I have lived the motto Shyam had set for me. Nothing Is Impossible. In time, I went on to master the Avid AudioVision, not without heartaches and hurdles. The AudioVision was at the time, the only DAW that could have video on disk. In the era of film, most film directors thought this was impossible or unbelievable for the simple reason that film is 24fps and video is 25fps. So a huge learning curve for an industry that was evolving with the times. The other huge learning was the application of timecode and locking with multiple machines. Conforming EDL's, using OMF's became a routine process. CCL, Shyam & Seema Ramanna—that's my school. I wish I could take those three years and cash them in for a degree. During this time, Senthil Kumar and Real Image Technologies, who were the Avid distributors for it in India, would invite me to do Avid AudioVision training and demos at the trade exhibitions in Mumbai. SSS: What happened then? BF: I was coming into my own around this time, starting to work on sound edits for film. I was very certain I wanted to edit. I wanted to sound design, a concept that was clearly unheard of in India. Back then, the term supervising sound editor was unknown to me. Another thought emerging in my mind was that the sound design actually comes together in the mix. This is the advent of DTS and 5.1 mixes in India. This introduced me to another crazy genius, H.Sridhar, a mixing engineer with Media Artist (Chennai). I started to follow his work. A lot of it was iconic and radical. This influenced me a great deal and I wanted to learn how to mix and bring ideas alive. By '96, I was ready to move on. I want to mix! I'm actually jumping from being a sound editor/ sound designer to saying, "Man, the mix is where it's happening. This is the realization of the dream, right?" So I headed out to meet with Senthil Kumar at Real Image Technologies and