Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1546054
18 M PS E . O R G BREAKING ENTERING & hours from me in Washington, D.C. After interviewing and accepting a contract, I moved down to D.C. to work at Defacto Sound, a post house that did film, television, and even game trailers. My big break! There I learned from the best, Samson Neslund, now at Skywalker Sound, and Ken McGill, now supervising sound editor at Warner Bros. That first time I opened a Pro Tools session and began to edit sound into a film was one of the most intense moments of my life. It was a blank canvas. I felt powerful and creative, pursuing ideas and inspiration in a fury of clicks and clacks. The intense illusion that happened when the right sound synced perfectly with picture was spellbinding. After my apprenticeship finished, the pull toward games was as strong as ever and I could feel my dream opportunity approaching. I began applying to video game studios for the first time with professional credits as a sound designer. Mark Kilborn took a chance on me and invited me to come work with his team on Call of Duty. My first gig as a sound designer was helping to develop one of the biggest games in the world and I seized the day. Learning interactive sound, scripting, recording, designing, mixing, temp music—I wanted to learn it all. Working alongside the amazing audio team at Raven Software was like getting shot out of a cannon. It was an intense period of learning and growing. After shipping four Call of Duty titles, there was an opportunity to combine all of my skills together into a role built for me. Paul Menichini at Blizzard Entertainment, our sister studio in the Activision Blizzard family, was looking for a sound designer to work on their legendary cinematics. Someone with video game chops but also broadcast workflow experience. I had been watching Blizzard cinematics and playing their games since I was a kid. I jumped at the chance. I moved from Wisconsin to sunny Irvine, CA, where I work currently as the principal sound designer at Blizzard Cinematics. I work with an incredible sound team on World of Warcraft, Diablo, and Overwatch, cinematics, trailers, short films, animations, and cutscenes. After 10 years with this organization, I still feel star struck coming into work. After Blizzard was acquired by Microsoft in 2023, I have come full circle. The 17-year-old kid walking around awestruck in Microsoft, inspired to pursue game audio, is now giving tours to young people on campus and introducing them into the world of game audio. I have a lot of gratitude for the dozens of once-in-a-lifetime opportunities I've been given. If it all goes away tomorrow, I'm happy that I got to live my dream life contributing to dream projects. My advice to my fellow Motion Picture Sound Editors is to never underestimate the impact you can have on young dreamers starting out on their journey! Sharing an hour of your day can last a lifetime. John Sawa MPSE Sound Editor/ Cinematic Sound Designer think I'm not alone when I say that my sound journey started with Star Wars and Jurassic Park. Watching these movies in my youth and listening to the sounds Ben Burtt and Gary Rydstrom crafted for these stories lived rent-free in my head and imagination. I've always been attuned to stories and how sound is used in telling them, but it didn't occur to me this could be a career until much later. In high school, I didn't know what I wanted to do for a career, so I didn't apply myself too hard toward school (or really anything productive in this phase of my youth). A career counsellor at my high school took the time to listen to what my interests were (video games, movies, media, and DJing for the most part) and arranged for me to have an informal internship working at a post-production studio in Calgary called Sync Spot. The studio director, Frank Laratta, was generous with his time and had me come to his studio twice a week where I'd assist with ADR sessions, select music from a stock music catalogues on CD for a beer and beverages around the world variety show, and do some basic editing for whatever projects they could afford to let a newbie take a swing at cutting SFX or BGs on. This is when it all clicked for me: THIS is what I want to do with my life. THIS IS IT! Frank became my first industry mentor who put me in front of Pro Tools (v5) for the first time and showed me the basics of editing audio. I'm pleased to say after all these years, we still keep in touch and when the right project comes along, I get to work with his team at Propeller Studios in Calgary. From there, I had the goal of "working in sound" for a career and that meant I had a reason to start applying myself toward my future. The closest thing to a post-secondary education that focused on audio production in Calgary that had some sort of diploma at the end (a requirement from my academic parents) was media and broadcasting courses at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT). I decided on a two-year radio broadcasting program which offered an applied degree, and I focused on audio I