Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1475409
m ot ion p ictu re s o u n d e d i to r s I 15 just calling to tell you that you got the internship." And it was at Universal! I was driving down 25 and traffic and my mind was racing. I was like, oh my god, this is ridiculous. I called my dad immediately afterward, and he said, "Oh, I guess you're moving to LA." I thought, I guess I'm moving to LA, but it hadn't even hit me yet. I got kind of a sweet little apartment in Beachwood Canyon, which is the perfect place to be. I had no idea how lucky I was. My neighbor played with Adele at the time. How the hell did I end up in this beautiful canyon surrounded by celebrities? People are parking on my street to take pictures of the Hollywood Sign. My supervisor at the Universal internship was Kim Jimenez. Knowing Kim during my internship was so essential in terms of giving me people to reach out to. She would tell me that this studio was run by this guy, his email is this, and I collected four pages of contacts that she would try to put me in touch with. She was really fantastic. She was instrumental in getting me work at Roundabout. You know Roundabout, they are really some of the best people in the business. It's a fantastic place to go and they've kept me fed for years. Part of my internship at Universal was editing and mixing a project. They gave me Stage 1 to mix on for an entire week. Mat and Onalee were mixing Black Sails next door and they would come in on lunch break and just rip my mix to shreds. It was the best thing that possibly could have happened. I had to come back to Denver after the internship. I didn't have a job immediately, but I had all these connections. When I left the internship, I went back to Denver and was just flying out here for events like the Mix magazine/Sony event and the MPSE Golf and Poker Tournament that you invited me to. That was essential as I met Trip Brock that weekend. He gave me my very first sound effects job from that weekend. I said, "Trip, I want to do sound effects." He said, "Let's do this." He gave me a job at Monkeyland while I was working in Colorado. He let me work on this show, which I was not ready to do. I did a 10-episodes show for him, and they plugged me into their sound effects library from Denver to their server. He was very helpful, and he gave me my very first credit, which was obviously a huge deal for me at the time. Then I kind of hit a dry spell where I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I was contacting all these people, and nothing was coming up and it was so hard to get from that internship to an entry-level position. I was applying to anything. I ended up getting in touch with Pedro Jimenez at Benchmark Post, which does trailers. I interviewed on a Friday with him the first meeting. I said, "You tell me to jump, and I'll ask how high?" he said, "Okay, let's go Monday." At the time, I was living in my parents' house in Colorado and flying out to LA for interviews, lying and telling them that I lived on my friend's couch, ready to go whenever. I flew home that afternoon, I packed up my car with everything I had and lived in the Burbank Marriott for the next two weeks. I was just booking the daily deals on Travelocity every day, so it was about 100 bucks. I had to check out of my room in the morning and then check into a different room in the afternoon. It was comical. It was the classic "move to LA story," just pretending. But that job was temporary and ended at the end of the summer. Then I was out here in LA. My girlfriend was out here. We had an apartment, and all of a sudden, I had no job. I freaked out for a couple months but floated and was fine. I was lucky to have family to help me at that time. Then I ended up getting a runner job at Formosa. DB: What was it like working as a runner? MT: I thought that was my next big thing. I was running around delivering McDonald's. A bit of a step down, and they would work my ass off. At 7:00 a.m., some editorial needs to be set up in Sony, and we need you to drive to North Hollywood to get the rig and drive it down to Sony and have it set up before 8:00 a.m. It was really great because I met some amazing people; I was able to sit down and hang out with Mark Mangini and ask questions. I was the maintenance guy at Formosa 66 which is exclusively Mark and the big dogs McGaugh from the film program. I scored a project for the local PBS station with her. That was a documentary about three students from UCD following their journey through camp. Despite not getting into Berklee, I gigged heavily during my time at UCD (and even played Red Rocks one time). The two months before I left for LA, I was touring full time with my bluegrass band Hog Magundy. I had to quit the band to move to LA. DB: How did you make the transition out of UCD? MT: It was the TV Academy internship. It was 2016, so I have been here in LA for about six years. That was such an amazing program. I didn't even know I was going to apply for it until you said, "You need to apply for this internship." I thought, okay. I still was unsure about everything, especially moving to Los Angeles at the time. Until UCD alumnus Tim Farrell (supervising sound editor on Game of Thrones) came to class. I chatted him up after class. I basically started by saying, "I'm moving to LA, please give me whatever you can." At the time, I had no plans to move to LA. But this was my opportunity to make a real connection with someone who's actually doing something very cool. Tim generously allowed me to come meet with him on the mix stage for Game of Thrones. I met Mat Waters CAS and Onalee Blank CAS who mixed the show. This was Spring Break senior year. I spent all day observing the mix, meeting people and getting a sneak peek at the new season. I even had to sign an NDA just to be in the room. Tim made all of that happen just from the short chat we had after class that day and a couple of emails after that. His help was essential, and he gave me a first real look into this world. That trip is when I realized it was possible. Then I sent [the application for the scholarship] in and I kind of forgot about it, because it was a while after that, it was a month before graduation, and I had a lot going on. I remember I was driving down I-25 from the university area where I was living. A woman from the Television Academy called me. She said, "Hey, I'm