Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1541592
20 M PS E . O R G a hoarder for $300/month who had trouble throwing anything away and you could barely walk through the apartment. The place was in bad shape, but it was all I could afford at the time. I had a key to the studio I was working at, so I practically lived there only going home to sleep and sometimes not at all. I had plans in motion to move back to Michigan and rethink my career. I was on a return flight traveling to New York from Michigan in 2018 when the guy sitting next to me dropped his luggage on my head while trying to shove it into the overhead bin. He felt so bad and kept apologizing which led us to chatting the whole flight. He was a schoolteacher, but a good friend of his was the CFO at Harbor Picture Company (One of the big sound facilities in NYC). He insisted he put me in touch and that led to me joining the union and accepting a job there as a mix tech. Fate had me staying in New York. My responsibilities at Harbor as a mix tech were slim compared to Flavorlab, but I was now a small fish in a big pond working on big-budget movies. I had a lot to learn and a lot of room to grow. I picked up many slick tricks and workflows from working with some badass mixers, editors, managers, and engineers there. Then COVID hit… There was talk of the mix techs at Harbor getting furloughed since the stages were empty. In order to keep us on staff, we were given the opportunity to edit FX and dialogue on some projects. Luckily, I had a lot of editing and mixing experience from my last job, so I was able to quickly build up trust with some of the sound supervisors. After lockdown cooled off, I was basically editing full time. I was even offered the opportunity to supervise a to meet Stephen Hunter Flick, who had just won his second Academy Award for the film Apollo 13. It seemed we made a nice connection, and Stephen invited me to meet with him in LA about future prospects. Once back, I met with him at Todd West where he was dubbing the show Showgirls and we spent about 45 minutes chatting about all sorts of non-sound-related things while the swimming pool sex scene was rolling back-and-forth, which was sort of surreal. Stephen had mentioned that he was going to be leaving Weddington Productions where he was a partner and was starting his own facility and he asked me to join the team he was assembling there. So, I ended up moving over there a few weeks following that. There I was able to work with an incredible team of A-List editors in order to really refine my craft in editing and sound design. A shout-out to many of the titans I was able to learn from, and they suffered through my inexperience with great patience. These included Warren Hamilton Jr., Marvin Walowitz, Chuck Smith, David Yewdall, John Pospisil, Ben Wilkins, Greg Hedgepath, Frank Smathers, Beth Bergeron, Richard King, David Stone, Chris Smith, Paul Berolzheimer, Dean Beville, Patricio Libenson, Addison Teague, Peter Brown, Terry Eckton and of course, the legend, Solange Schwalbe (of Hollywood). I also got to meet and become friends with John Fasal, Eric Potter and Ken Johnson. We worked on some great films there, notably Twister (Solange tried to teach me everything about Foley editing and was very patient with me) and Starship Troopers, where I got to cut and design most of the weapons and had my very first experience recording guns) and the first Spider- Man film. There were dozens more, but mentioning them will probably bore people to death—though you can look them up on my IMDb page. I could go on a lot longer, but I think everybody might be either getting weary, or tired by now. So, if you made it this far, I hope it was worth the time. BREAKING ENTERING & "I do sometimes feel like I started my career over, but it feels good to know that I built some solid friendships and experience along the way and realize that sometimes you have to take a step back before moving forward." Dennis Dembeck MPSE Sound Editor I started my career after college in 2013 when I moved to New York City from the Detroit area of Michigan where I grew up. I wanted to be a composer at the time and I landed an internship which eventually turned into a job at a studio called Flavorlab. Flavorlab had both a music and sound division. I started getting music placements on a lot of reality TV and was making fractions of a penny on royalties. I do still collect those royalties to this day and they might have added up to be a few bucks by now! I started to expand my interest from music to sound editing and mixing similar shows I was writing music for in hopes of paying rent. It was a small team I worked with, so I wore many hats working there and I learned a lot in a short amount of time. I was doing bookings, billings, sales, tech support, sound editing and mixing, and still kept up writing music on my downtime which paid off with a few good placements. Flavorlab taught me a lot about what it takes to run a business and be self- sufficient. A huge benefit of working at a smaller studio compared to the big ones is you're able to get your hands dirty in every corner or the business. After about five years living in New York, I started to get burnt out and considered moving back home to Michigan. On top of the constant work grind (which I enjoyed for the most part), my living situations in New York weren't ideal. At the time, I was living in a funeral home with a friend in East Harlem for $600/month. In order to get to our apartment, we had to walk through the funeral lobby up the stairs, and we probably saw about three open caskets a week, along with grieving families. Before that, I was living with