Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1475409
38 I M PS E . O R G job. At the time, his was the best FOH company in India. SSS: What is FOH? BF: Front of House or live sound gigs. The music scene in the early '90s in India was still evolving. Rock Machine (later known as Indus Creed) was my first touring experience as a rookie. I was learning a lot about planning the rig, speakers, amplifier, mixers, outboard, cabling, stage monitoring. During this time, there were a lot of foreign acts that would come to India, and this particular rental company would be the Front of House service company for any of these gigs. My time with the company exposed me to international acts like Bryan Adams, Jethro Tull, Michael Jackson, Bon Jovi, Deep Purple to name a few. Baylon Finseca in Samos, Greece, on the set of the National Award winning film Game (2011). SSS: Tell me how you learned sound editing specifically. Were you with Front of House for years? BF: I worked with Roger Drego for a year and moved on due to personal reasons. Three months later, I was hired by a post-production house, Crest Communication Ltd. CCL, in the mid- '90s which was emerging as a first of its kind one-stop post-production entity in India with everything under one roof. I was 21 on my first day of work, the most beautiful thing was the exposure to CG (computer graphics) which left me mesmerized. I had never seen a U-matic low band or high band or Betacam machines in my life. I remember spending my entire first day & night at the office, I just didn't go home, I kept asking question after question. At the time, CCL didn't have a sound department. This company was moving from a small office to a three-story building. We were setting up a studio shoot floor, multiple edit rooms, and an audio editing/mix room. I ended up slowly gravitating toward handling all of the audio—planning all of the cabling, machine room layout, the audio patch bays. and the signal routing. SSS: How did you learn all that? BF: I never have an answer for this question, except that I can give you a parallel example, driving a car. Most people say, hey, we have to learn how to drive. I sat in the car and just drove it. And I can't explain it. I think somewhere between what we call the theory to the practical and the practical process was a very clear roadmap in my head. I would say, in all humility, I think it's a gift and I am grateful to the universe for it.