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42 S P R I N G 2 0 1 6 C A S Q U A R T E R L Y 2015 CAS Student Recognition Award recipient Matt Yocum of Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) was lucky to attend Weaver Academy for the Performing Arts High School in Greensboro, NC, a school that allowed students to major in music production. Matt has been using Pro Tools since his freshman year in high school. Being a music program, Matt had to audition to get in. I n his senior year of high school, his instructor, Cirt Gill, encouraged him to learn Foley and sound effects to broaden his recording experience, and encouraged him to apply to SCAD. Because of his high school program, Matt already felt comfortable with Pro Tools, as well as the basic use of EQ, compression, and reverb. Cirt Gill responded, "From day one as a freshman, Matt was very interested in the process of recording and eager to learn. He always took pride in his assignments and provided leader- ship in the classroom. I am very proud of Matt and excited about his success." Matt feels that the foundation classes at SCAD were very strong and helped him get a good start. The three general courses on sound design led to much more specific classes, including dialogue editing, music editing, and surround sound. It was in the surround class where Matt found his passion for mixing. His professor, Robin Beauchamp, gave him a private course in his final semester on mixing in surround and, as a result, Matt mixed seven senior films that semester, graduating with a BFA in sound design. Matt not only won the CAS Student Award in 2015, he shared the Motion Picture Sound Editors (MPSE) Student Award in 2015 for the film Sea Odyssey, and was nominated again in 2016. He also traveled to Berlin to receive a Red Dot Award for his mix on the film No-A. Robin Beauchamp told us, "In my 33 years of teaching, I would place Matt in the top 1% of all students I have taught. He possesses all of the qualities that I believe necessary to enter and succeed in the professional world. He really was moved by the experience and made some tremendous contacts. At a recep- tion before the awards, Matt commented that, if he had to lose, he would not feel bad losing to the competition. I was really impressed that Matt was able to appreciate and respect the work of others. Over these four years, I developed a deep respect for the creative and intellectual potential of this young man. I was always impressed with the humility he possessed in the learning process and believe that he will thrive under the mentorship of any of the many great mixers in the Cinema Audio Society." Graduating from the SCAD program, Matt was Pro Tools 11-certified and Icon-certified. Matt's mentors at SCAD encouraged him to join the Cinema Audio Society. He spent some time in NYC, but decided he preferred to be in LA, so he moved to Los Angeles with no internship or job lined up. He arrived in LA in September and went to the Mix Magazine event at Sony Studios two days later. The event was co-hosted by the CAS and the MPSE. At the event, he made contact with several people who would become instrumental in helping him start a career. He first spoke with Tom Graham of Avid, who had moderated one of the sessions at the event, and Tom intro- duced him to sound editor and re-recording mixer Will Files, who had participated in one of the panels. They spoke for 30 minutes, and Will was nice enough to follow up after their ini- tial meeting and give Matt a tour of the Fox lot. Matt has now been in Los Angeles for seven months, begin- ning as a runner at The Farm LA, a small post-production facil- ity that does both video and audio. He has continued working on independent short films and shorts for friends. Eventually, he got his biggest project yet when Will Files referred a film produced by Jeff Nichols, the feature In the Radiant City. Matt was a dialogue editor on the film. From there, Matt moved on to supervising sound editor and re-recording mixer for a short film directed by James Franco, Tenn, about Tennessee Williams. This, in turn, led to him recording a rap album for Franco and Dangeruss, which will be used in an upcoming project by Franco. When asked how he felt about his success so far, Matt replied, "More work is always better! I feel that I've been pretty lucky with the connections I've had. I'm halfway to union hours at this point." Mixing feature films is his long-term goal. "The most satisfying thing is to be able to take all the different ele- ments of sound and combine them into something meaningful. The psychology of sound gives you the ability to affect some- one without their knowledge, like a puppeteer pulling the CAS STUDENT RECOGNITION AWARD by David Bondelevitch CAS MPSE RECIPIENT MATT YOCUM 2014 CAS Student Recognition Award recipient Danny Maurer, Sherry Klein CAS, and 2015 recipient Matt Yocum (right) Photo: ©Ana Gibert 2016