Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1546135
C I N E M A A U D I O S O C I E T Y. O R G 67 We also rejected the revolving-door mixer/editor policies that some audio houses used. Rule: A mixer was assigned to a show, and it was his or her show. Reality is a one-mixer discipline—one re-recording mixer carries the entire show—so swapping mixers in and out week after week struck me as both inefficient and unfair to the client. I'd seen as many as eight mixers on a single series in a year. We didn't believe it served the show, so we didn't do it. The mixer also understood the show was their responsibility, and they were to see it through. In my 25 years with Survivor, I've been in the chair on every mix. I've never missed one. In fact, I was never an employee of any of the companies I worked with in those days. I felt my obligation was to the show, and I was rewarded with more shows than I could handle. I also had capable assistants. Matt Slivinski, who handled laybacks and setup but doubled as a stage editor and assisted in my duties as chief engineer. And his successor of the last dozen years, Lauren Alvarado, now a director at Mixers Post Sound. Having someone who could jump in the chair and handle an import, or re-edit a sequence or conform, is sanity-saving. Our typical track count on a reality show was 225 tracks—not counting stems. Which brings to mind another. Rule: Wear many hats. Matt and Lauren wore many hats. As I said, reality editorial requires its own bag of tricks. We spent real time training editors in the specific techniques' reality demands: cutting and filling noisy/ clean overlapping dialogue, smoothing transitions over rocky material, sneaking in and out of noisy scenes, managing "Frankenbites." That was reality TV. A single sentence might mix interiors with exteriors across 20 edits, splitting words, shifting pitch, changing cadence, and volume. That was the real work of reality for mixers and editors. FX editors needed "reality" guidance as well. Don't overcut, which was a common gripe. We don't want options. Just nail it. The mixer doesn't have time to sort through dozens of tracks evaluating your FX build. FX were very deliberately organized by the FX editors per the mixer's request. And when the mixer pushed an FX group fader up there had better be a sequence that worked. The style and nitty gritty had already been decided. We also did not encourage clients to provide their own FX. There wasn't time for the duplication of effort and chaos that created in the mix. "Temp love" was dangerous ground. We had a consistent, focused team, and we eliminated much of the chaos that kills schedules. By the fourth episode of any series, reviews were smooth—and only a few hours long. Most of the time. And the shows repeated. We were busy. Music editorial and delivery is a mixed bag in reality. A rough edit is usually performed by the video editor, with a quick cleanup done at the sound house. There is rarely a proper music editor involved. Survivor is an outlier on this. Their music editor, Michael Dobbins, is one of the best, as are their composers. On some shows—Fear Factor, for instance—the composers, Russ Landau (Survivor, Fear Factor theme) and Paul Haslinger, were highly involved week to week. But often it's just library tracks strung across a stereo pair. It's a big swing from newly scored weekly to library tracks, and the mix complexity and track counts span that range. The Noise Wars Reality is run-and-gun, and it's tough on dialogue. The noise demon is ever-present, and you learn to embrace it. Survivor is shot on a beach, with lots of whispering. Noise. Ugh. When I began, I reached for the only thing CEDAR's DNS-1000