Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1521235
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S 85 caught fish & chips under a full moon in Cooktown. It was such a magical trip and worth every last penny! I never in my wildest dreams imagined that I would be lucky enough to return 20 years later and work on another Peter Weir movie with you, Rick, Will, and the whole gang; so much fun! It is amazing to think about all the places this job has taken me—London, New York, Sydney, Toronto. Who knew an assistant career could be such an adventure! It has afforded you with many opportunities. And yes, working together on the Peter Weir film, The Way Back, was such an amazing time for all of us. We still talk about it and remember it fondly, even though it was 15 years ago. Okay, sorry for the sidebar about Australia. Where were we? I imagine you picked up a lot of skills and knowledge at USC, but how did you find your way into the industry? Whilst at film school, I learned rather quickly that all my fellow Andrew & Richard King, The Way Back (2009) Sydney. Photo by Tony Murtagh. Our favourite Sydney pub. The Way Back (2009). Richard King, Ron Bartlett, Andrew & Doug Hemphill. students wanted to direct but no one wanted to do sound. So, I volunteered to do sound on every student film I could manage and watched and learned. After college, I did a few internships and through a friend of a friend, landed an internship at an independent sound facility in Los Angeles named Acme Soundworks. I met so many incredible people there who taught me all about the art and craft of movie soundtracks. This was the mid-'90s when there was plenty of film work and being young and inexperienced meant you could learn on the job and not cause too much damage. Leaving film school to work in a sound post facility must have given you an amazing opportunity to broaden your skills. Acme Soundworks was an incredible training ground. I apprenticed under their engineer, Alan Goulding, who among other things, built two radio stations, toured as drummer for the Beach Boys, and was previously the chief engineer at Village Recorder, a famous music recording studio in LA. Alan taught me so much about electronics, audio technology, and signal flow—skills that I still use today. Meanwhile, the owners of Acme, George Berndt and Jerry Ross, would throw me into all kinds of unusual situations and projects that I had never done and patiently taught me how to do them. It was sink or swim and I loved it! One day, I was soldering microphone cables, the next transferring quarter-inch dailies to single stripe mag, another I was mixing a temp mix. This was the mid-'90s, just as the movie business was transitioning from film to digital editing, and I was getting a master's course in both worlds. In two short years, I went from knowing nothing about how movie soundtracks were made to having a strong foundation in both film and digital post. But it was really the friends that I made at Acme who launched me on my current path. Those connections became instrumental down the road.