Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1532010
"The Mad Hatters!" PANEL b y C A S A s s o c i a t e K a r t h i k M o h a n M P S E This panel discussed the advantages and disadvantages of wearing multiple hats at once and how the different roles can inform the others. Joe Dzuban CAS hosted this esteemed panel consisting of some of the most versatile professionals in the business who seamlessly transition between various roles, while balancing the technical and creative challenges of each project and producing work of the highest quality. When the industry was transitioning to the digital realm, supervisors saw a clear advantage in having someone on stage to cut stuff for them. It was then that sound designer Tony Lamberti CAS MPSE put his hand up to be that someone when no one else did, and he very soon became well known for this. Several years later, a dialogue mixer was looking for a mixing partner and Tony once again grabbed the opportunity and made his foray into re-recording mixing. Jazz guitarist Jamey Scott MPSE had no mentors and was 100% self- taught. He was the only sound person at the game studio he worked at. This trial by fire sparked his interest in sound design and he had to rise to the challenge to learn and do anything and everything in sound. Starting as an assistant engineer working a night shift at a recording studio, Kate Finan CAS MPSE put her foot in the door by working as a sound effects editor at a small studio that did sound for animation films. So, proper setup and proper speakers are essential for intelligibility at home. On the production side, the tendency for more complex shots, which make good microphone or boom placement difficult, and an acting and dramatic stylistic trend towards underplayed and even less clearly enunciated performances, has also led to more material that leaves the viewer at home wondering what exactly was said. Beyond the technical and practical solutions discussed for home playback, production recording, and mixing practices, the biggest solution to the problem of intelligibility was education. Making sure your clients know how the different formats will affect the clarity of their mix, making sure your production mixer has time to capture the sound cleanly, and making sure the viewer is set up to receive the best representation of the creatives' intended mix were all cited as an essential and ongoing challenge. All participants were confident that given time and focus, clean dialogue that didn't require a subtitle assist was an achievable goal, with the caveat that there was also a new category in the audience who preferred to use subtitles in situations where playing the full level mix wasn't convenient to what they were doing in their day (doing laundry, cooking, listening on a bus, etc.). So, the answer to this complex question is also complicated. We live in a world where some viewers prefer to have subtitles. Fortunately for them, there is a robust system which will continue creating a clear dialogue guide for a wide array of languages. To deliver a clean mix to those who want to experience it as the film and television creators envisioned, we must devote ourselves to the time, education, and analysis required to gather and assemble it properly, and we must look to the continuing development of the codecs in streaming and hardware that transform our dynamic Atmos and 5.1 mixes into the stereo mixes that the majority of our audience will hear at home and on the go. Warner Bros. bought that studio, and Kate rose up to become a supervising sound editor, working on multiple projects at the same time. Five years later, she left to found her own company with a partner where she took the plunge into re-recording mixing. Starting off as a runner who later worked as an assistant editor, music editor, and sound effects editor, Jamie Hardt MPSE was called to cut effects on The Hurt Locker. Multiple Oscar winner, sound designer/ re-recording mixer Paul N.J. Ottosson, the "OG Mad Hatter," according to Joe, liked to have everything prepared before getting to the stage and mixing. That changed Jamie's process and slowly brought him into re-recording mixing. As technology evolved, more material began reaching the mix stage, thereby cutting down the time a mixer could spend finessing each clip. This put more on the sound editors to make the session presentable to the mixer and clients, a trend that started with Transformers, adds Jamie Hardt. The introduction of clip gain and later clip effects changed Jamey Scott's workflow and almost eliminated automation in his design workflow. Modern-day scores are often composed with full registers, often leaving no space for sound effects, notes Tony. When music is not provided beforehand, which is often the case in TV animation, Kate stresses on the