Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1544300
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S 21 - "Working with mag forced me to hear layered sounds in my head before hearing them combined for the first time in a mix studio. This restriction pushed my imagination hard and over time, created a confidence, knowing what to use and what to leave out … and why." Mark Mangini working with "mag" in 1982 modern sound practitioners, learning on digital devices, don't experience this limitation and suffer because of it. There's no pressure to be decisive, be economical, or commit. In effect, say "This is the way I hear it." I think it's derelict to come to a mix without a point of view, a selection of the few tracks you feel best create what you want to hear, not a plethora of tracks and hope you can figure it out on the console. That aspect of mag was valuable but, arguably, not an intrinsic asset, more of a byproduct. Most everything else about mag was restrictive, especially when one's Moviola "ate" a long stretch of mag with hundreds of edits in it, stripping the sprockets and rendering it unusable. To be fair, in a digital audio environment, you could forget to hit 'save' or your hard disk could crash and you'd still lose those same hours' worth of work. I don't know, maybe there's no better or worse way, I still prefer digital editing. SSS: I could only listen to one track at a time in Foley. I couldn't play back all my tracks, so I never knew how it was going to play until we went to the dub stage. MM: But that's the point. On mag, you couldn't play back all your tracks to see what you had … or didn't have … until the mix. Working on mag forced me to imagine how they all sounded together and this enforced a valuable economic approach. Would it be better with tracks one, five and seven or two, four and six? Which is the better combination? In any case, I think I only had like a 16-track recorder … in my head. SSS: Yes, that's good training. MM: Yes, it's very good training. SSS: Mag taught me how to listen. MM: How so? How do you mean?