MPSE Wavelength

M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S 23 as a mixer because I mixed at NPR. Even though I'd never really mixed to picture before, it was kind of second nature. It all made sense. I put all my knowledge together from working at NPR and Lucasfilm. I worked at a small company; it was an independent company on the Universal lot, doing a sitcom. I could see they were going to go under and a friend of mine got me a job working at Sony as a sound editor. So, I started working at Sony. I just transitioned from that to sound supervision, and never really went back to mixing. I wanted to mix, but it became clear at that time that it was going to be very di-cult for somebody like me to transition to be a mixer. There are a few people who've done it. Joe Earle, who's African American. There's nobody else I can think of in L.A. It was going to be hard. So, I realized I'd have a better road as a sound supervisor. I met John Singleton while I was at Sony and he hired me to do Poetic Justice (1993). And then my supervising career just took oŠ. TM: I definitely want to talk about John Singleton's movies, but you also had a couple of great breaks around this time with Twister and Speed, right? How did those come about? GH: That's right. Before I got into that, I had worked with Steve Flick on a short film called The Coriolis Eect (1994) about this couple that's trapped in a tornado and they fall in love in the midst of it. I worked at Weddington [Productions]. They gave me the space for free at night to do this tornado thing. Then Steve wanted to go for Twister, and he said: "Yeah, I have this tornado movie I'm going after. Can I use your sounds?" I'm like: "Yeah." So he used it as a demo or somehow, to help him get that show. But before that, he hired me to do Speed (1994). I designed the sound from the point where Keanu Reeves goes down into the tunnel until the end. That was my first big sound design gig and it went pretty well. I think I was just pulling on all that knowledge I had. At first, I had a four-channel Pro Tools with a 20MHz Macintosh II. That was just a crash factory. This thing would only stay up for 15 minutes at a time. I'd have to White Men Can't Jump (2023). L-R standing: Greg Hedgepath, Pernel Salinas, Bobbi Banks, Charlie Campagna, Eric Basta; L-R kneeling: Andre Salinasm, Mateo Campagna. " I call that my PhD program in sound. I just learned so much working there that I use every day—using things I've learned or imparting that knowledge to other people." – Greg, on working at Skywalker, early in his career.

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