Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/713016
34 S U M M E R 2 0 1 6 C A S Q U A R T E R L Y When clicking on and opening a poly WAV file of a scene, it can sometimes be easy to forget the labor that went into creating it. So here's a call-to-action for any re-recording mixer reading who hasn't visited the set someday (when you have time). Heck, you may even be having an email exchange with your production sound mixer right now—so ask to stop by! ONE TEAM Time will always be the factor. Sometimes it seems like there is never enough time for this. We have worked our way up to a prestigious sector of our craft and now we are rewarded with the luxury of getting the jobs we want, killing it at these jobs, and then spending time with our families, enjoying life, and reaping the benefits of our suc- cesses. But, I still feel like production mixers attending the mix and re-recording mixers visiting the set is a worthy cause to add to our professional work priorities. For those of you who have already been engaging in this, I commend you and thank you. In the end, we are one sound team. Whenever I hear my work edited, polished, and noise reduced, it warms my heart to be lucky enough to be involved in productions with such talent in post. I'm sure post feels the same way when they are working with quality production audio tracks. We need to stick together and keep the dialogue amongst each other fresh and open. I look forward to seeing you at the next dub session and I appreciate your hospitality. I have a pair of headphones, HD monitors, a comfy chair and, hopefully, quality craft service waiting for you on set! • dialogue mixer, FX mixer, picture editor, and two executive producers) shared drinks at the bar down the street from the dub stage. This is a real-world experience where I had to acknowledge that sometimes this is where business decisions that determine your near future are made. While people are absolutely hired based on their merits, sometimes a little human bonding like this helps. JOIN US ON SET I have nothing but enormous respect for my post-production sound friends and understand how amazingly good you make the entire soundtrack become. Sometimes, however, during certain chats with sound supervisors or re-recording mixers, I get the impression that they may not fully understand how the severely complex poly WAV files that they work with come to be. There's the frequent tooth-and-nail fight in the chain beforehand, the tireless sweat from the boom opera- tors who have to formulate plans with complicated camera setups, and there's the unique skill involved in the strategic attachment of lavaliere mics by the utility sound technician, just to name a few of our everyday challenges. Every record has to go through a complex chain or cus- tom-figured complexities. As a production mixer, there is increasingly challenging RF engineering required in ever- changing environments in order to allow compromise- free (i.e., hit free), high-quality audio to magically leap through the air and land on our deliberately positioned antenna systems, then onto our wireless receivers, which then get patched into a miniaturized battery-powered mixing panel before finally landing on the digital mul- titrack recording system. It is a sincerely complex and challenging process. Now, they had the opportunity to make it even cleaner, crisper, and better bal- anced. We watched with great mystery as the dialogue mixer was cleaning up some dialogue using iZotope RX. Chris asked what he was doing exactly and I did not have a precise answer for him. We wished he could have given us a play-by-play of the steps he was taking—but it was day one of the mix and I knew that we couldn't slow the process. " "