Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1546054
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S 15 rental warehouse in Burbank, was shown a room containing hundreds of XLR cables that needed wrapping, and understood my future there with perfect clarity. I did not return. The real door opened through a dear friend. Jacquie Shriver-Sladeck, a fellow Cincinnati grad, had landed at Soundelux Design Music Group (DMG) in Hollywood and got me an interview with Becky Allen, the general manager, who placed me as a PA at their sister studio, Signet Sound. Signet was recording orchestral scores and ADR for real films, and there was plenty to absorb. There were also several runners and PAs ahead of me in the pecking order, and I am not a patient person. I could see my next few years from where I was standing, and I didn't love the view. So I went back to Becky and asked what else existed. What existed was EverQuest II. Soundelux DMG had just landed the contract to record and edit dialogue for the entire game, and they needed an army of editors to top, tail, clean, name, and master a staggering number of voice files. (This was pre-RX, mind you—pencil tool for the win!) I joined the graveyard shift alongside Mark Camperell and Chad Bedell and we chewed through what felt like a bajillion lines. Glamorous, no. But I was inside the building with incredible, talented humans, and that turned out to be everything. Scott Gershin, the creative director at DMG, wanted to develop some younger sound designers and invited a handful of us to cut demos on our own time. I channeled my inner 8-year-old and built the sound of a sludge cannon in 5.1 surround. Whatever Scott heard in that goo, it worked. I was pulled into the design roster, where I started by pulling source material for the senior designers and shadowing people like Peter Zinda, Alan Rankin, Bryan Celano, Dutch Hill, and Glynna Grimala. Glynna deserves special mention as one of my earliest champions, and for taking one look at my mousing and informing me I would be learning a trackball before I touched anything. Twenty-two years later, I am still on a trackball. Thanks, Glynna. Y Peter Zinda changed the trajectory of my career. He was patient with me when he had no reason to be, and on the first Lost Planet for Capcom, he went out on a limb and trusted me with a few of the mech weapons while he handled the heavy lifting on the design. Terrifying. Also the most fun I'd ever had. The idea that my own creativity would land in front of players who loved this stuff lit me up completely. Peter kept putting me on his design crews after that, and over the years that meant Lost Planet 2, Devil May Cry, and a good run of the PlatinumGames catalog: Bayonetta, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, The Wonderful 101. Shannon, meanwhile, built her own incredible career in television sound at Larson Studios. Same field, completely different lane, and proof that Tom's advice had worked twice. Inside all that game work, I kept gravitating to the cinematics. In-game audio plays back dynamically and does whatever the player makes it do. A cut scene plays the same way every time, exactly as you intended it. That was the work I loved most, and it should have told me something about where I was headed. In 2011, Julia Bianco from our business development team met Jay Watford, the audio director at Riot Games, at GDC. Riot was looking for vendor partners. Julia knew there was a sound designer back at the studio who had been playing League of Legends since season one and was, frankly, an enormous fanboy. She introduced us, Jay and I hit it off immediately, and Riot became my client. I was on cloud nine. Then came an acquisition that clearly wasn't going to be good for Soundelux. Most of my colleagues were discussing a move to the soon-to- be-formed Formosa Group, and I was invited along. But I had spent years on the vendor side and wanted to know what life looked like inside a developer. I asked Jay if Riot had room. They did. In May 2013, I joined as a senior sound designer, and I've been there ever since, working my way through audio lead, audio director, and principal sound designer roles. Then, around 2019, the action figure kid finally got his movie. My studio at Riot was right down the hall from Christian Linke, a Riot composer, who was developing an animated series called Arcane. I wandered in one day to see what he was working on, and he handed me the pilot script to read over the weekend. I devoured it more than once and walked back in Monday morning to tell him I needed to be on this project. We made it happen. Alongside my ride-or-die partner in crime Eliot Connors, I co-supervised both seasons for Riot and Netflix while also working as a sound designer, dialogue editor, and ADR supervisor and editor. The show went on to be recognized in ways that 10-year-old me, scoring G.I. Joe battles in Ohio, would never have believed. If there's one thing I'd pass along, it's this: Don't let yourself stagnate. Every good thing in my career came from getting restless. Bored as a PA, so I asked Becky for more. Bored of waiting, so I built a sludge cannon. Curious about the client side, so I jumped. If the passion is fading, treat that as information. Channel the restlessness somewhere new and see what opens. Somewhere out there is a version of me still wrapping XLR cables, and I think about him sometimes. Don't be him. Go find your soundtrack.