Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1504731
STEVE LEE: We've talked so many times "on the record" before, so I'm sure we're going to cover some of the old ground … but I'm going to try to find new ways to ask you the same old questions! MARK MANGINI MPSE: All right… Let's see what you've got! SL: I know you got your start in film sound at Hanna-Barbera. You started as a track-reader, but when you started editing sound there … could you talk about the way you worked back then? Cutting on film, ordering effects by the foot, off of loops … it seems very alien to a lot of us these days. MM: Well, it wasn't so alien back then! Digital had not been invented, we used sounds printed on analog 35mm sprocketed media. The sounds we edited were physical reprints from the original masters that lived on film racks that ran down the middle of the sound editorial department hallway. Racks and racks of alphabetized sounds in large rolls with endless repeats of the same "boinks," "zips," ricos, and tympany doinks. If you went to the library and you found a little roll with one last one sound on it, you sent it to sound transfer, they'd pull the master, print another roll of those sounds, put a label on it that said, "Fred Flinstone Running," and that went back into print library where it was all organized alphabetically, from "Alligator" to "Zebra." As you laced up the episode you were working on, usually a 22-minute cartoon for a half-hour slot on a Saturday morning, you'd come across the first sound, "Oh, Fred falls down! Let's try bowling pins!" You go to "B" for "bowling pin," you pull out a big roll, you thread it on your Recording in the dunes of Qatar for Dune: Part One, (2021).Photo by Mostafa Sheshtawy 38 M PS E . O R G " There is great value in sound libraries—but I believe the best sounding movies always have the freshest ingredients. No self-respecting chef would put canned peas in a featured dish. "