Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1545099
20 M PS E . O R G lesson about sound: Story is king. The best musicians knew when not to play. Leave space for the storyteller. Support the emotion. Never overplay. If you served the song properly, the audience responds and you got called back for the next gig. Story always comes first. At that stage of my life, I had no thoughts of becoming an engineer. I wanted to be a rock 'n' roll drummer. After leaving high school, I found myself helping support my mother at a young age. I figured I had two choices: get a day job and go to college at night or get a day job and play in bands at night. I chose the second option and made a deal with myself—if I didn't earn a gold record by the age of 25, I would go back to school. I jumped headfirst into the Chicago music scene, playing with any promising band that would have me. Eventually, I teamed up with Al Jourgensen, who I was convinced was destined to become a rock star. That was the beginning of the band Ministry. Our first album was recorded in Boston at a studio owned by the band The Cars. I was fascinated watching producer/engineer Ian Taylor work in the control room. Ian had been working with Roy Thomas Baker (the producer of the band Queen). Roy had produced two albums for The Cars, and Ian was his engineer. Seeing how sound could shape emotion and identity inside a song completely pulled me in. At the time, I still had no idea I would eventually become an engineer myself. A few years later, after leaving Ministry, I found myself producing and engineering demos for my next band Colortone. We landed a spec deal with Chicago Trax Studios, which allowed us to record during off- hours in the middle of the night. The problem was that my bandmate and Stephen George MPSE Sound Editor/Sound Designer/ Re-recording Mixer I am very excited and grateful to be accepted into Motion Picture Sound Editors. My career path has taken many turns, but one thread has always run through it—a love of creating sound. I got my first job in sound at the age of 15. It wasn't assisting an editor or working in a recording studio. It was playing drums in a country and western band in the suburbs of Chicago with musicians at least twice my age. That was where I learned my first BREAKING ENTERING & picking up whatever I could from the editors at the shop. (I think Flick eventually got me into the union by telling them he needed me to help with upgrades at the office and needed me to do Ethernet installation—something I learned how to do in work-study—and nobody on the Available List had that particular skill.) Looking back now, it was a perfect time to land at a place like that: the editors working there at the time were among the very best: Charles Maynes, Martin Lopez, Fred Judkins, and of course, Flick. Peter Brown, Dave Butler, and Greg ten Bosch had just started there too around that time; and Paula Fairfield, Kira Roessler, Dave Bach, and Dave Stone regularly circulated through helping out and doing their own things. I tried to stay in touch with everyone, and even though it was a slow time for the industry and independent shops were closing and reorganizing all over (not unlike now), I learned that the people are what count, and when everyone landed somewhere else, they'd put my name in if the crew needed another assistant. I bounced from there to Universal, Sony, Paramount and all over, working for Cameron Frankley, Ron Eng, John Leveque, and several years for Jon Johnson at his shop Fury and Grace, doing some music editing in-between for Amanda Goodpaster and Richard Ford. My first effects editing gig was on The Hurt Locker, and that was just being in the right place at the right moment. I was assisting and my supervisor at the time, Paul Ottosson, had gotten the job and was busy with Spider-Man 3 and other things, and just needed bodies that could cut scenes at home. It helped that the show was very low budget, had a very erratic schedule, and there weren't a line of people waiting to work on Kathryn Bigelow's next movie (different times, man). I did a scene at home over a weekend and sent it to Paul, he was happy and we just kept it going. I ended up cutting effects for him for the next eight years. I guess I'd broken in by then? I don't know. There was never a moment I felt like I'd "made it," it's not like stories I've heard about the old days when you'd get a staff job and be set for life, sitting at a bench all day reading the paper. I've definitely had opportunities to lock in steady work, but on the one hand, I'm a little restless and always need to be moving, and on the other, steady gigs aren't so steady, in my experience.