Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1535880
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S 37 in something about bitrates and plug-ins, two things I no longer care about. I thought about Facebook, but I've been told that my posts there are already too long. Where does that leave us? Here my friends. Where the great unwashed working stiffs gather. We, the ones in the trenches, the ones who know how to cut, the ones who actually do the work and know how wonderfully weird our jobs can be. This is just us here now, so we can talk and indulge in a little untold truths telling. Just remember, this is all through my personal, biased, fogged with age and far from objective lens. ome with me now, back to a time when mixers were rulers of all they surveyed. Back then there was a definite stage hierarchy, an almost British-style class system with mixers at the top … until directors and producers showed up on stage. The power would then almost comically shift. I remember as a driver/ apprentice/assistant delivering a reel and cue sheets to a stage run by one Don Bassman. While he might have been a friend of yours and a great guy to hang with, to fledgling drivers, he was kind of frightening. Big guy, big voice, and a total "what are you doing on my stage" vibe. Probably my own insecurities but I turned into Bert Lahr's version of the Cowardly Lion approaching the Wizard, quaking and shaking and wondering if he was going to strike me down. I wondered, are they all like this? Turns out they weren't. Days later, I delivered to Richard Portman's stage at Todd (or was it still Glenn Glenn?) and he couldn't have been nicer and more welcoming. But wait, what's that familiar smell? Is he stoned? On a dub stage? Nah, he can't be … can he? Leaving, I did get a disapproving look from Buzz Knudson in the hallway assessing my sweaty T-shirt, Levis, and beat-up tennis shoes. C'mon Buzz, it's more than a 100 degrees out there, I just delivered 30 boxes of film units and besides I don't think I even own a tie. I did, of course, meet mixers who were kind, welcoming, encouraging and didn't make me feel like Lucy Ricardo trying to break into show biz. But some of them, oh my goodness, there was room for their egos and their espressos on those stages but not much else. Back then. mixers didn't supervise and supervisors would rarely mix. That landscape has changed. At the time, there were established mix teams. Some as compatible, loving, and easygoing as Ozzie and Harriet, some with the friendly antagonism and rivalry of a Laverne and Shirley and some as volatile as Liz and Dick with ugly emotional breakups and awkward reconciliations. I've had professional falling outs so I get it. Slights real and imagined, conduct on both sides as juvenile, selfish, and embarrassing as kindergartners fighting over toys. I'm not proud of some of my behavior, but screw it, it's long past time to let go. It all seems so small, petty, and even humorous now. Back in the '90s when we were switching from mag to digital, stage editors were freed from those awful change rooms down the hall with Moviolas that had barely evolved from their birth in the 1920s. Rooms where splicers and synchronizers were actually chained to benches. Stage rigs were now being set up on mixing stages right alongside mixers. Much better. Like coming from steerage to the bridge. You could follow the mix, interact with the captain and crew and depending on the gig, actually be a very active collaborator. No more frantically building sweetener reels in the change room and rushing them to the machine room. No more C Per Hallberg and Chris Assells at Universal Studios.