Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1532010
20 S P R I N G 2 0 2 5 I C A S Q U A R T E R L Y Straight into the fire? Yeah! He brought home a boom pole with a microphone one day and showed me how to do it; I think it was a Saturday morning that this happened. On Monday, I'd be doing it for real. He taught me how to hold it, how to operate the pole, how to look like you know what you are doing when you get onto set! Figure out your distances, figure out which side of the camera to come from, where the shadows are going to be, and how to get the mic over the actors. We'd run through things like, where's the best place to stand? What are the potential problems? Do I need a ladder? So, tell me about that Monday. Well, I think for anybody, the first time they are ever on a film set, it's so intimidating. Obviously, having your father there makes things so much easier. He was making all the introductions. I was just trying to stay afloat. I knew I was given the golden ticket of sorts, the expedited plan. I was on set as the additional boom. He threw me right into booming because he knew that that would force me onto the set, and I would have to interact with everyone. How did you get through that day? When I was wrapping my head around how in the world I was going to survive, my father said, "50% of it is what you know and 50% of it is how you play the game." What he meant was how you interact with everyone on set. And that was the beginning of my education in learning how to deal with actors, directors, the crew, you know, life on set. His advice kept me levelheaded, it taught me how to problem-solve and know when I needed the help of others. Even having him around, it was still very scary to be out there as the boom operator on set. So much of being a good boom operator is the time put into making all the mistakes many times over. Waiting to get to the point where you can finally feel at ease and be comfortable doing it. Everyone goes through this when they start out, I think. This was before video assist and you had to go look through the camera and you had to judge where things were, you had to ask people a lot older than you for help. Can you cut this light over there? Can you do this or that for me? What movie was that? That movie was Slow Dancing in the Big City [1978, directed by John G. Avildsen, starring Paul Sorvino and Anne Ditchburn]. Everything was an eye-opener to me then. I'm commuting to New York City for work. My father is giving me a crash course on sound. I'm finding my way around all these new environments and people. I'm making mistakes on set and learning from them. Another strong piece of advice he gave me then was that I should always figure out my problems beforehand, otherwise, you're not doing your job. If you are having boom shadows on set, you need to know what's causing these shadows and how to solve it. You're not doing your job if someone tells you simply to stand somewhere else and that's the answer. If you haven't thought it through beforehand, then you're not doing your job. That sticks with me to this day and it's something I always tell my students at NYU. By the end of the movie, I gained a bit more confidence and I could see a future in it. The Talk Radio sound crew with Kim Maitland, T.J. O'Mara, and Dave Roberts, among others.