Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/757053
C A S Q U A R T E R L Y F A L L 2 0 1 6 15 b y S h a u n C u n n i n g h a m C A S What led you to re-recording mixing? I started out as a musician when I was younger, grow- ing up in Northern California, playing guitar, both rock and classical, and eventually, got into recording myself on four-track cassette. I moved to Southern California in 1995 to go to music school for a certificate in gui- tar performance, which is a one-year program. Toward the end, I started an internship at a music studio in Hollywood, and I thought that, while I'm trying to make it as a musician, I could supplement my income engineering music. It was a tough gig and I wasn't sure it was right for me, but the studio started getting involved in post production and I learned as they learned and became one of the main editors at the studio. I had my hand in editing dialogue, Foley, sound effects, ADR, and I even did a little bit of mixing. After about a year or two doing that, one of our main clients hired me away because they were starting their own in-house post production department and the post supervisor wanted me to come work for them. So I started there as an editor/mixer, jack-of-all-trades. They offered me, essentially, their supervising sound editor position, but I didn't feel like I was ready at the time so I passed and then regretted not going for it later down the road. I felt like it was one of those times where I should have bit off more than I could chew and grown into it. But I still ended up supervising and mixing shows for them, and I would alternate shows with the lead supervisor. Most of the projects we were working on were direct-to-video horror features that were down- and-dirty. After about a year, they laid off the entire department, but the post supervisor was moving all of his equipment into his apartment to work from home and the apart- ment next to him opened up. He suggested that I move in next door and put in a Pro Tools rig, so that's what I did. I ended up working out of the apartment for a year or two on basically the same projects for the same com- pany. That's where I did my first 5.1 mix—in the living room of my apartment. Pro Tools at the time wouldn't even let you mix in 5.1, there was a third-party plugin that let you do it. Everything I had done before was either stereo or LCRS so it was a great learning experi- ence doing 5.1. I eventually outgrew what I was doing there so I moved on. This was around the time that shooting on DV started getting really popular and the budgets started dropping and sound wasn't as important to them anymore, so I looked for work elsewhere. After that, I went to work for a DVD authoring house that had a client that did a ton of Japanese anime titles. So I recorded most of the ADR and would mix them with the original M&E. I did loads of them for nearly a year. I did other stuff as well, like DVD commentaries and any other sound work that was needed. Chris Jacobson CAS shows for them, and I would alternate shows with the Chris Jacobson CAS An Interview With