Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1487730
LV: Well, I remember working on films where the dialogues were cut on film and the effects were on digital, and you had to try and make everything marry up. I have memories of working at three o'clock in the morning, trying to print charts (for the mix) using a dot matrix printer and it wouldn't work because of a SCSI error. The words "SCSI Error" still make me feel sick. WP: Musicians like Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel were using Fairlights because they were very stable machines. We were using them slightly differently, synching them up to picture using timecode, so there were lots of cables and leads running from machine rooms into cutting rooms. If you got a buzz on a track, you had to check each input to locate the buzz, and sometimes it was the XLR cable, or a loose connection which required re-soldering, or it was electrical interference from the fan in the toilet next door! (Laughter) LV: It was a pioneering effort from everyone. There was a bit of resistance from the old guard who didn't want to learn the new equipment. Some of the sound editors who did make that first transition were then expected to make another one a few years later when everything went to Pro Tools. We lost a few good sound editors along the way. WP: And we're still learning new skills. You've gotta keep learning something new, it never stops. JW: What was the immediate impact of digital workstations on sound editing? WP: The expectation. It was a tool that filmmakers hadn't experienced before, and they were expecting you could do more and have more. For those of us coming from a film background, we were disciplined in the number of tracks we would use. New people coming in tended to lay up way too much sound. So that was the first thing, trying to keep everything contained. LV: There was an immediate impact on schedules and budgets. Filmmakers were expecting costs to come down because using computers supposedly meant everything was faster and easier to accomplish. The schedule went from an automatic three-month tracklay to almost Recording Loop Group Choir, Trackdown Studios, Sydney, Happy Feet Two (2011). Photo by J. Ward Wayne & Ben Osmo with Andrew Miller and Mark Wasiutak in background, Motion capture stage, Sydney, Happy Feet (201O). Photo by J. Ward Wayne conducting loop group, Todd-AO/Glen Glenn Sound, Hollywood, Happy Feet Two, (2011). Photo by J. Ward