Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/297945
24 Post • April 2014 www.postmagazine.com When I was 14 years old, I called the local building supply company and placed a big COD order for 2x4s and sheet-rock. Once my father got over the shock, we built my first studio… in my bedroom. I hated school and wanted to follow the sound, so to speak, but I was not allowed to abandon my education. So, I took a bunch of tests, got my GED and graduated high school at the end of that year. Then, following an ad in an audiophile magazine, I enrolled in the University Of Sound Ar ts in LA, even though I didn't speak a word of English. The first few weeks were rough. Little by little, aided by endless English TV watching, the teachers began to make sense. What never required any translation, how- ever, were the knobs, the speakers, the faders and that overwhelming quiet of an empty studio, nor the music being played on the other side of the glass. When I returned to Mexico, I faced a cultural and language shock of a dif- ferent kind. I had learned to record, produce and mix music that sound- ed a lot like "Eye Of The Tiger," and suddenly salsa, cumbia and mariachi were as alien to me as the first few weeks of my professors' lessons. Years later, I met a character with hair like a palm tree who wore eyeliner, á-la The Cure. Assuming he was a musician, I told him how fed up I was with the popular music I recorded every day and that I yearned to do again what I'd learned in school. Long story short, I discov- ered and produced what to this day remains the most representative band of the '80s' "Rock En Español" movement in Mexico and the US: a band named Caifanes. Cut to NYC circa early '90s. Having climbed the ladder of assis- tantship for a while, I got the pro- verbial "lucky break" when the lead engineer at my place of employ- ment called in sick one night. A few months later, I was made head engineer at Kampo Audio in SoHo. In 1994, I collaborated with David Yasbek (co-composer for Where in The World is Carmen Sandi- ego?). Together we created the jingle for Budweiser's iconic World Cup campaign, the success of which sky- rocketed me into a position to co- found a company of my own, Big Rumble Music, which became a ver y successful Hispanic music company at the time. In 1998, Big Rumble Music got a knock on the door. It was Nickelodeon, looking for music and sound for a pilot. The pilot was for an animated show with a heavy Latin influence; the heroine of the story was a girl named Dora and she was an explorer. Three Emmy nominations for "Best Sound Mixing in an Animated Show" later, her cousin, Diego, came a-knockin'. This time at Light At The End Of The Tunnel, an additional company that I founded in 2000. After spending some time with Light At The End Of The Tunnel and taking a few-year hiatus to direct and produce my first docu- mentary, I was approached by Sound Lounge in 2010 to help them create their Hispanic division. I accepted with the caveat that I didn't just want to do sound. I wanted to create content, as well. In 2011, we com- pleted our first campaign for MTV, which celebrated Hispanic Heritage Month. Since then, I've handled script adaptations and trans-creations, converting general mar- ket spots to Spanish, written many articles about the Hispanic market in the US, and recorded and mixed hundreds of commer- cials. I've also lent my voice to brands like Chrysler, American Airlines, Church's Chick- en, Budweiser and the USPS as a Spanish VO throughout my career. I guess that in the end, what matters is not how we get somewhere, but that, along the way, we are always learning, never losing the curiosity or the drive it takes to go further. And, most importantly, that we always keep our mind and ears open. Sam Hodge Cg Supervisor Rising Sun Pictures adelaide, South australia www.rsp.com.au I have always loved tinkering with things, figuring out how stuff works — a typical geek background. As a kid, I played with Legos for hours and read books about the future and computers. I was born in 1972, so I didn't grow up around computers, but as a boy I often took the bus to the State Library of South Austra- lia, where I booked time on a Commodore 64 to play games and hack. That eventually led me to an honors degree from the Uni- versity of Adelaide and a career in science. I was a bit of a tree-hugger so, at first, it was going to be environmental science. But then I discovered the beauty of recombinant DNA, and switched to molecular biology. Working in academic and research labo- ratories in the mid-90s, I was exposed to the early version of the Internet: newsgroups, gopher, WAIS, Veronica and graphics brows- ers. We had access to information from around the world for our research and per- sonal interests, and I started reading news- groups about computer graphics. I found that you could lock up computing resources for vast amounts of time using a process called ray tracing — to the annoyance of others using the same machine as myself. At some stage, a friend in the lab saw how much pleasure I got from messing around with pixels and how little interest I had in my research, and suggested that I should switch industries. Seeing the first Jurassic Park movie threw a switch in my brain and I thought, "I want to make that stuff." I retrained in multimedia at the college for Technical and Further Education (TAFE), and got a diploma in Applied Design. Our class came out in the middle of "dotcom" fever and pretty much all of the graduates had at least two job offers. I landed at an Adelaide start-up, Torson, that was creating a virtual RSP's Sam Hodge spent much of his youth playing with Lego, studying computers and reading about the future. Getting Started