Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1500189
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S 51 that was somewhat down on his luck, and was open to having some type of partnership. So Tim and I went there on a Sunday and met them. I'm going to call him the realtor or the introducer. We met the gentleman who owned the building, and ran the recording studio which was called One Step Up, not to be confused with Dan O'Connell. He seemed like a nice guy, and we listened to the stage. It seemed good to swing by on a Sunday [chuckle], which came into play later, not realizing that was a huge mistake. Anyway, we felt like we could go into business with this guy. We needed to retrofit the stage and make it a Foley stage, and this is something we'll have together, the three of us—'T' Tim, 'A' Alan, 'J' John, TAJ Soundworks, perfect. The only problem was, we did not do the proper acoustic testing, per se, because for music, you can get away with certain things, for Foley, you cannot. So we're now working away on the first two films. One was Trading Places, the other Jaws 3-D. On Trading Places, during that picture I got a call from Buzz Knudson, who was the head re- recording mixer at Todd-AO Stage A. And he said, "Roesch! Listen to all the buses in your tracks!" And unfortunately, he was right. Because buses create very, very, very long, low waves that can penetrate easily. So after our two films, Jaws 3-D and Trading Places, we shut down for a month. And of course, who had the money for that? We decided we needed to get the original technician who helped put One Step Up together. His name was Ed Bannon. We had him come down from Northern California and he came in and he actually designed a floating roof. He designed it and I will tell you it was a thing of brilliance. It worked perfectly. I mean, it's almost like if I'm talking to you and I put my hand over my mouth, the sound is kind of muffled and when I take my hand away, you can hear me easily. It was that dramatic, where we no longer heard anything. It was just wonderfully quiet and had a good, what I call a resting Foley stage pulse. And from that point forward, we were good. I'll never forget that phone call from ol' Buzz, who I really, really loved. I must say. SSS: I did too, I really loved him. JR: That's one of many stories with Buzz, etc., and Chuck [Charles L. Campbell] because that was Chuck's film. And Chuck, by the way, this is something very interesting because Chuck defended us in that 'well, I'm gonna make this work.' Fortunately, most of Jaws 3-D was underwater, and what we did Foley-wise in that picture was mostly underwater, so it didn't really affect us. Gordon Ecker, Jr. also said, don't worry about it, just get it fixed. Other people might have just gone, hey, these guys don't know what they're doing, they're doing a terrible job blah, blah, blah. So you have to have the right people behind you, for sure. SSS: How long were you at TAJ? How long did TAJ exist? JR: Well, those are two separate questions. TAJ existed I'm going to say for about 10 years, I was there about eight and something. SSS: Okay, so after you left TAJ, it still continued? JR: Disney had taken it over with Ed as the head technician and helping run it, I guess as TAJ Soundworks, but really under the auspices of Glen Glenn Foley Stage circa 1981. Daddy Waks Footsteps for Explorers (1985) at TAJ Soundworks.