Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1490686
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S I 25 take care of her. Other editors saw this and started asking more of me, too. About six months into that, we started doing things on computers, not editorial, just ADR programming. A small ADR program was being developed on a computer, and I started working with the guys who were developing it. One day while I was programming material for the movie Best of Times with Kurt Russell and Robin Williams, Beth ran in holding her mouth and said she cracked her tooth off and had to go to the dentist. She handed me the sheets and said, "Go shoot Robin Williams!" This was my first session alone. I went in and met the director and I sat down with Robin and said, "Robin, what I need from you is just one line that matches the way you did it in production. Then we can do 100 takes any way you want because you're a free- flowing guy." He said he could do that, so we did one that matched production which he just nailed. Then he went on and did takes any way he wanted. It was awesome to be in the driver's seat. After this, Marvin Walowitz asked me to do Act of Vengeance, starring Charles Bronson. I was still new to all of this but I faked my way through it and figured it out. It worked. Then I worked on a movie called Soul Man with C. Thomas Howell. After that, a comedy called Outrageous Fortune came in. Arthur Hiller was the director, and he was the president of the Film Academy at the time. It was a huge movie with 3,000-4,000 ADR lines. Following that, I supervised the ADR on almost every film that came into the company and worked with Arthur Hiller on every film he did until he passed away. It was an amazing trajectory from being a driver to getting in the union and supervising. It just clicked with me, and I had good teachers. I understood how to put tracks together and talk to actors on the ADR stage. MA: How long did you spend at WallaWorks? BS: Well, 10 years later, I bought the company with my partners. We were on the Board of Directors, and some things went down at the company. We all got together and bought out the owner so we could own it ourselves. The original company split into two becoming Soundelux and Sound Storm. We had 60-70 employees. It was a vibrant, hardworking sound editorial company that did a lot of work for 10-12 years. MA: Who split onto the Soundelux side? BS: Wylie Stateman and Lon Bender took a bunch of their crew and moved across the street. We stayed where we were on Hollywood Boulevard. We continued for about 10 or 12 years, and then we dissolved the company. Between 2004 to 2014, I was a sound supervisor, ADR supervisor, and operations manager for Soundelux. It seems crazy now when I think back on it. In early 2014, I was supervising the sound for Unbroken when Soundelux closed its doors and Universal Studios called me to come set up shop with them. Together with Andrew DeCristofaro, we packed up our crew and moved to Universal. We had some rooms over there and stayed for a couple of years. After that, I went to Technicolor for a couple of years, and then to Sony, where I have been and will stay because Sony is awesome. MA: In 1987, you supervised ADR on RoboCop which went on to be nominated for the best sound Oscar. On this, you worked alongside some heavy hitters in the sound industry. What was it like working with that team on RoboCop? BS: It was very cool. I was between shows, and Steve Flick called me and said, 'Hey, can you come over to his studio space and do RoboCop?' and I'm like, 'Absolutely!' At that time, we were all still on mag and Moviolas. His place was so full of editors for RoboCop, there were even people working in the hallways. I moved into Steve's room with my Moviola. I was in one corner and he was in the other. I was on headphones. He had speakers. It was crazy. He was doing explosions and gunfights while I was trying to hear somebody whispering their ADR through the RoboCop helmet or whatever. I remember the first cut we got was the Director's Cut. Oh, man, it was awesome. Limbs and guts were flying, it was crazy. In the end, they cut out a lot of that violence. RoboCop was difficult because he had the suit on, and the suit made noises, rubber, crinkly stuff but you've got to clean it out. In the RoboCop days, we didn't have the technology that we have today, which helps us clear out production dialogue like iZotope and all the different programs that we use. So we did a lot more looping with just getting noises out of production dialogue. MA: In 1993, you won a Golden Reel for your work on Under Siege, a film that also went on to receive two Oscar nominations for sound and sound effects editing. The film is riddled with action sequences and locations I imagine it would be difficult to mic actors. Can you talk to us about working on this? BS: Before that, most of our crew's work had been on comedies. And so to get the shot at doing an action film was really exciting to us, because sometimes you get pigeonholed into only doing this or that, which is just not true. Sound is sound, and you're a craftsperson and artist. You can do a comedy, as well as an action film. So we took on Under Siege and it was really cool. The SFX crew got to go on the ship and record 50 millimeter bullets out of the big guns and do a lot of water recording. They got to go on the big ship and record everything. With me, they did do a lot of location shooting on that ship. So the mic'ing was crazy, because we were dealing with a lot of hums and buzzes and stuff within the ship. It was really challenging. There was a lot of group shot on that film. I had a book that was kind of like a naval document. It told me all the slang words that everyone used on the boat so that I knew where the front of the boat was, the back of the boat, the side of the boat, and everybody's rank. MA: Where did you get that book from? BS: My dad was a Navy man. So I asked him, and he had a guide to being on a naval ship. It was just really fascinating to make sure that it was all technically correct with all the dialogue, ADR, and group because we had people talking on walkie-talkies and PA's and all that sort of thing to keep it very military and very correct. Every film I do, I really delve into the correct language. MA: In 1994, you went on to win a BAFTA for your ADR