Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1541612
58 W I N T E R 2 0 2 6 I C A S Q U A R T E R L Y It actually took a couple of years before I started putting "Supervising Sound Editor" in the credits. It just sort of happened that way. These days, do you see yourself more as a supervisor who mixes, a mixer who supervises, or simply both? It's both. There are a lot of shows that I just mix where other supervisors bring me projects to mix, but I'd say it's equally both. When you're working, you can't take one hat off. You're always thinking about both sides of the process and that's just actually one of the tricky parts. I sometimes have to stop and figure out which hours to log as supervising and which as mixing because neither ever stops. It's all happening in my head at the same time. Has your perspective as a mixer shaped the way you supervise? Oh, certainly. Especially on independent productions, because budgets are tight. One of the key things is knowing, as the sound mixer from the very beginning, what I intend to have in the final mix or what options I'll want, and which are completely unnecessary. Like, if there's a big section where we're going to feature the score, I'm not going to pay for Foley there. Knowing what the finish line looks like helps dictate our scheduling and our budget and all those other things. Luckily, the people I work with, sound editors, Foley artists, there's a shorthand now. Half the time I don't even have to tell them, they'll just skip something because they already know, "Lucien's not going to want to hear feet in this section." That helps keep budgets down, and it lets us focus on the parts that really matter. One big advantage of supervising mixers is that we're part of the early client conversations, so I'm mixing in my head before I even touch a fader. Just from hearing what the client says about tone or story, that's where a lot of mix decisions start forming. What have you found to be the most effective ways of aligning editorial and mixing teams so that their work flows seamlessly into each other? Communication. That's just the biggest thing. Always has been. Ever since I built this place, even though all my editors are working from their own locations, it was really important to me that it still felt like we were in the same facility. We have a big server I built, and every editor has a shared folder mounted right on their desktop through encrypted VNC. It's like they're just down the hall. We all see the same file structure, same projects. We use Monday.com for our post schedule, where each project has its own chat thread so we can stay organized. Plus, we're on Zoom or chat basically every day. Just staying in constant communication is what makes it work. That ties into the main question that inspired this whole piece—is there a way for sound editorial and sound mixing to become more connected? Do you think the industry is heading toward those roles merging or do you think they'll always stay separate? They actually didn't used to be separate. The split happened over time because of scheduling and how some facilities