Insights In Sound 213 – Charles Dayton, Re-Recording Mixer S22 E3

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0:2727 secondsI’m here with Charles Dayton. We are at Twisted Avocado Postprouction studio. He is a post-p production mixer.
0:3737 secondsMhm. A re-recordist. Mhm. A sound designer.
0:4343 secondsI just realized he’s just re He usually wears a hat. Yeah.
0:4848 secondsHowever, today we’re seeing him with our natural full chrome. Yes. Full dome exposed. Yeah.
0:5656 secondsOh my god. Yes. And it’s been a very long day. Yeah.
1:001 minuteJust so you know. And this is kind of how I do these anyway. It’s just warts and all. So you’re you’re right in the thick of it here. Yeah.
1:071 minute, 7 secondsBut I do want to talk about what you do because what you do is actually pretty important and people have no idea that it even exists.
1:151 minute, 15 secondsYeah.
1:161 minute, 16 secondsAnd you know, especially like music recordists as we call them, audio engineers, etc.
1:221 minute, 22 secondsUh a lot of times they really don’t understand this line of work at all.
1:261 minute, 26 secondsNot in the least. Now, you came up wanting to be a rock star. I came up wanting to be an actor.
1:341 minute, 34 secondsThat’s even worse.
1:351 minute, 35 secondsI know, right? Well, I came I came from a a family of actors and performers. So, you know, that’s true. And I do want to get into
1:431 minute, 43 secondsthat in a moment because that that also influences the whole thing. But I want to talk a little bit about the work that you do.
1:501 minute, 50 secondsOkay. because it’s very intrinsic to the whole process of making movies, making any kind of any kind of sound for picture.
1:571 minute, 57 secondsAs George Lucas says, it’s half the movie. Yeah. Yeah. If not more.
2:012 minutes, 1 secondYeah. Absolutely. Because you can have a black screen and still tell a story with the sound happening and scare the hell out of people or, you know, whatever it is.
2:112 minutes, 11 secondsUh but you know, when was the last time you went to a silent movie?
2:142 minutes, 14 secondsAnd the thing is too, even silent movies weren’t silent. They had music. They had musical. Sometimes they had foley artists who would really Yeah. Yeah. who
2:232 minutes, 23 secondswould provide specific sound effects that were necessary. You know, if somebody fired a gun or whatever it was, you’d uh they would provide provide that sound.
2:312 minutes, 31 secondsOkay. So, yeah, films always had sound.
2:342 minutes, 34 secondsSo, what you do is essentially a combination of cleaning up dialogue, blending all of the sounds together from
2:422 minutes, 42 secondsthe from the Foley to everything else and making it into a cohesive thing. We take we take all the elements
2:502 minutes, 50 secondswe take the the dialogue and it depends on the size of the project. So you know for a large feature film for a studio feature film you have teams of people
2:582 minutes, 58 secondswho are dialogue editors who are cutting the dialogue together and then you have uh sound effects editors who are cutting all the sound effects and there are see
3:063 minutes, 6 secondsit here it sound effects. you know, car door closes, you know, somebody sets a cup down, whatever. And then there are
3:133 minutes, 13 secondsstylistic sounds that convey emotion or danger or something like that that aren’t necessarily within the realm of the real, but help tell the story. And that’s where sound designers come in.
3:233 minutes, 23 secondsAnd you’re not talking about score here. You’re talking sound effects. Strictly sound. Strictly sound effects.
3:283 minutes, 28 secondsUh and then you have people who cut backgrounds which are everything from the air in the room to traffic in the
3:373 minutes, 37 secondsbackground to you know uh it tells you place and time. Is it nighttime? Are there crickets? Is it daytime? What is
3:463 minutes, 46 secondsthe economic status of the people you’re seeing in their apartment? Can you hear the apartment next door? Are the dogs barking? Or are they in a palatial condo
3:533 minutes, 53 secondsand you’re not hearing anything? So all these things are creative decisions.
3:573 minutes, 57 secondsYeah. that are well it’s not room tone. Room tone is is also is the tone in the room where the scene is recorded where the actors are
4:054 minutes, 5 secondsspeaking that we use to fill in. That’s that’s sort of the glue in the dialogue edit. Backgrounds are their own thing.
4:134 minutes, 13 secondsOh, okay. Okay. I see what you’re saying. Uh so it’s very compartmentalized, you know. Um and so uh let’s see. And then
4:214 minutes, 21 secondsthere’s Foley, of course.
4:224 minutes, 22 secondsRight. So a lot of people think Foley is just footsteps, right? you’ve got a guy, you know, in the shoes of the actor and they’re watching the screen and they’re
4:304 minutes, 30 secondswalking in whatever surface. So, Foley stage will have different surfaces.
4:344 minutes, 34 secondsIt’ll have dirt, it’ll have cement, it’ll have tile or wood, whatever it is.
4:384 minutes, 38 secondsUh, and they’ll they’ll do that, but it’s so much more than that. It’s it’s also part of the sound design process.
4:454 minutes, 45 secondsYou know, you’ve got this animated bird with a weird flap. How are you going to, you know, often times that’s the Foley artist with a feather duster or, you
4:544 minutes, 54 secondsknow, something completely unrelated to a bird, but sounds like something that might be right for that.
5:005 minutesSure. Sure. Like we were talking earlier about Rick Allen’s tire squeals water bottle, right? Genius. Absolute genius.
5:065 minutes, 6 secondsYou know, I’ll tell him he said so. I’ve told him myself. Yeah. Yeah.
5:115 minutes, 11 secondsSo, basically what you’re doing is you’re putting all those elements together and you’re making sure that they can all be heard. it.
5:185 minutes, 18 secondsAnd they all make sense in the context of the picture you’re looking at and that you’re hearing what you need to be hearing at that moment to further the
5:275 minutes, 27 secondsstory and uh uh heighten whatever element you you you know whether it’s
5:345 minutes, 34 secondsthe emotion or the fear or you know whatever it is you’re trying to push at that moment in the film. It’s not always
5:415 minutes, 41 secondsabout all the sounds happening that would be happening. It’s about the sounds that you need to be happening to tell the story at that point in time.
5:495 minutes, 49 secondsSo, it’s a selective process, I bet. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
5:535 minutes, 53 secondsAnd it’s quite an art form, especially having to do that and sync that. I mean, you’re doing much more with the visual aspect of it.
6:026 minutes, 2 secondsYes.
6:026 minutes, 2 secondsYou know, and that’s important, too, because you’re everything you’re doing is dependent on how it fits with the picture. Yes. Absolutely.
6:106 minutes, 10 secondsAbsolutely. and and some directors are very soundoriented and so it’s very much a part of what’s happening on the screen
6:186 minutes, 18 secondsand some directors look at sound as sort of a technical process that needs to happen at the end of the film for it to pass QC and get out there which is a shame because it’s it’s half your movie.
6:286 minutes, 28 secondsIt really is. It’s really a part of the creative process.
6:316 minutes, 31 secondsOh yeah. I mean bad audio is going to ruin any movie or any any video at all basically any video content. Sure. Uh
6:386 minutes, 38 secondssome school did a couple of videos where uh they did one video and it’s a person talking and the audio is terrible. There
6:486 minutes, 48 secondsare dropouts. It’s staticky. It comes and goes. It gets too low to hear and comes back, but the picture’s perfect.
6:556 minutes, 55 secondsAnd then they did the same video where the audio is absolutely pristine and the picture’s a little fuzzy and it get it
7:037 minutes, 3 secondsgoes dark and it’s and people were more likely to stick with the video that had the good sound than the good picture.
7:097 minutes, 9 secondsYeah, makes sense because that’s really what’s drawing you in in that sense. It’s it’s vital, you know.
7:167 minutes, 16 secondsSo tell me about your career trajectory because there’s a few there’s a few things here that that are very first of all, okay, let’s let’s
7:247 minutes, 24 secondsget into your background. And you grew up as a basically a Hollywood brat.
7:307 minutes, 30 secondsAnd I mean that in the nicest way possible.
7:327 minutes, 32 secondsI would have been a brat wherever I grew up.
7:337 minutes, 33 secondsWell, clearly. Yes, clearly. But your dad was a very well-known actor and comedian and character actor. My parents were
7:417 minutes, 41 secondsinteresting. They they knew everybody in show business and I suspect that show business was a lot smaller back then.
7:497 minutes, 49 secondsUm, but everywhere we went, you know, I remember coming out of Caner’s, no, out of Nate Allison and Beverly Hills and
7:577 minutes, 57 secondsJames Khan coming up to my dad and hugging him like, “How the hell do you know James Khan, you know, that just they just knew everybody, you know?”
8:068 minutes, 6 secondsUh, and so, uh, I grew up and of course my mom’s business, she was a personal manager, she handled actors. Uh, she
8:148 minutes, 14 secondsstarted as a singer. She started in the music industry. um and uh had uh um trios had the Charminires was one group
8:228 minutes, 22 secondsand the Allison sisters and they performed on there was a talent show on t TV back in the 50s.
8:308 minutes, 30 secondsWas it m Major Bose’s talent hour or Arthur Godfrey? Ted Oh, okay. Not Ted Max amateur hour.
8:368 minutes, 36 secondsNo, no, I think she was on a Godfrey and they liked her. They liked the group so much they kept bringing them back under
8:458 minutes, 45 secondsother names. It was the same three girls. Wow.
8:488 minutes, 48 secondsYou know, and they would keep winning and then eventually they just kind of relented them relented and made them a part of the show.
8:548 minutes, 54 secondsSo, uh, yeah, that that was that was mom. And she performed in nightclubs all all over New York at the Copa and, you know, up in the Catskills and stuff like that.
9:039 minutes, 3 secondsDamn.
9:049 minutes, 4 secondsYeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, she was a really very smart and savvy lady and so she owned the groups and
9:119 minutes, 11 secondsmanaged them and then she started managing other groups. That’s how she got that experience.
9:179 minutes, 17 secondsYeah. So, she started handling uh crossover groups, which were African-American groups that could perform for white audiences at white clubs.
9:259 minutes, 25 secondsSo, this would have been like the ‘ 50s. The the late 50s, early 60s.
9:289 minutes, 28 secondsOh, that was a that was a tough time for that.
9:309 minutes, 30 secondsYeah. So, she handled Brook Benton was one of one of the singers she handled. Uh um she handled a a a dance
9:389 minutes, 38 secondsgroup called Hines, Hines, and Dad. And it was I’ve heard of them.
9:439 minutes, 43 secondsGregory and Maurice Hines. Gregory Hines and his brother Maurice Hines and their dad had an act together and she traveled with them
9:509 minutes, 50 secondswith that act and would have to sleep in the car with them because they couldn’t stay in the hotels she could stay in and they wouldn’t let her stay at the hotels
9:599 minutes, 59 secondsthey could stay in. And so, you know, Wow. That’s how she traveled. Yikes.
10:0410 minutes, 4 secondsYeah. She also traveled with uh Spike Spike Jones and his orchestra. Really?
10:0910 minutes, 9 secondsYeah. Yeah. She said that was one of the craziest tours she was ever on. Oh, I can only imagine, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
10:1410 minutes, 14 secondsI mean, uh, you know, just knowing what I know about that band, you know, that was a that was a a nutty band to begin with, you know. Absolutely. Yeah.
10:2210 minutes, 22 secondsHave you talked to Leslie Jones about that? I haven’t actually. I should. That would be an interesting thing.
10:2710 minutes, 27 secondsHer dad was Yeah, cuz her dad was Spike. Yeah.
10:3010 minutes, 30 secondsOh, interesting. So, you have a sixderee connection there. Yeah. Uh-huh. And your dad was also a character actor and a
10:3810 minutes, 38 secondsregular on a lot of um a lot of 50s and 60s sitcoms and whatnot, right?
10:4410 minutes, 44 secondsYeah. Yeah. He uh he started in burlesque in New York with his burlesque partner Joey Fay. All right.
10:5110 minutes, 51 secondsJoey Fay was famed for have uh uh writing for have written the um uh Niagara Falls sketch. The three students
11:0011 minutesstep by step slowly. Right. That was Joey Fay and he did it with my dad.
11:0411 minutes, 4 secondsAnd um the other one they did too that he was famous for was uh they called it Flugal Street, but when Abbott and Costello did it, they called it the Saskuana Hat Company.
11:1511 minutes, 15 secondsSo, wow. A lot of gags basically. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Uhhuh.
11:1911 minutes, 19 secondsAnd then uh you know, Dad and his first wife, Dagmar, had one of the top nightclub acts in New York. Exceedingly
11:2811 minutes, 28 secondssuccessful. Uh, they were interviewed by Edward Aruro on Coast to Coast.
11:3211 minutes, 32 secondsDagmar had her own uh her own claim to fame. Yes. Yes, she did.
11:3611 minutes, 36 secondsYes. I believe there was a car bumper named for her.
11:3911 minutes, 39 secondsThe the the two uh the two missiles on the 50s bumpers called Dagmars. Yes.
11:4411 minutes, 44 secondsYeah. Mhm. Um but your dad also u obviously was a big influence on you in terms of just um the the the desire to
11:5311 minutes, 53 secondsgo into the business, right? you know, it was kind of all I knew. You know, by the time I came around, mom was a personal manager for actors,
12:0112 minutes, 1 seconduh, and she handled Marriott Hartley and Earl Hollowman and, you know, a lot of different actors.
12:0712 minutes, 7 secondsUh, and she handled me. I started doing plays in high school and, um, I guess I
12:1512 minutes, 15 secondshad some talent, so it’s debatable.
12:1812 minutes, 18 secondsYeah. Right. They Well, my parents didn’t say, “Hey, look, you know, think about doing something else.” All right. Okay. So, and they would have been very real with me about it.
12:2512 minutes, 25 secondsUh, so, um, and one of the professors at my school at Brentwood School went on to create a TV series, uh, called Family Ties.
12:3412 minutes, 34 secondsOh, sure. I remember that series.
12:3612 minutes, 36 secondsThey brought me in for the part of Alex Paton. That was one of my first professional uh, auditions.
12:4212 minutes, 42 secondsReally? And you lost out to Michael Michael J. Fox, huh?
12:4512 minutes, 45 secondsUh, I went to network, met with the network exacts. I mean, you know, I’d never done I’d never been on a TV show at that point. I had just done plays in
12:5212 minutes, 52 secondshigh school, but he pushed for me because he had seen me in the shows at school and said this this is the guy, right?
12:5912 minutes, 59 secondsThe thing was, you know, at the time I was 17 and looked like I was headed towards 20. Uh, and there was this
13:0713 minutes, 7 secondsmanager who was very persistent who kept pushing and pushing pushing. They’re like, “Oh, fine. We’ll see him.” And it was Michael J. Fox’s manager and he got he ended up getting the part.
13:1713 minutes, 17 secondsYep. And and he was damn good at it.
13:1913 minutes, 19 secondsHe was great. He was he absolutely should have been that role you know and uh so yeah so but I continued being an actor I
13:2713 minutes, 27 secondsdidn’t give up at that point and auditioned for a lot of things uh and studied you know script analysis and character analysis and seeing you
13:3513 minutes, 35 secondsknow how the scenes work and all this um went uh studied with teachers here studied in New York uh studied in London
13:4313 minutes, 43 secondsfor a short time at Rada studied improv and then taught improv for a little while um and then came out here and started working with a teacher the um
13:5213 minutes, 52 secondsnamed Roy London who was uh who was also Brad Pitt’s teacher and um Roy was a brilliant teacher and really took me
14:0014 minutesvery far as an actor but he got me to the point where I realized I didn’t need to do it anymore. I didn’t want to do it.
14:0814 minutes, 8 secondsSee, now that’s always interesting to me how people transition in their careers. Mhm.
14:1314 minutes, 13 secondsYou made a conscious decision to not want to be an actor and to want to do something else. Yeah. Tell me about that.
14:2114 minutes, 21 secondsYeah. I finally got to that point where I realized I wasn’t enjoying my life when I wasn’t working and I wasn’t
14:2814 minutes, 28 secondsenjoying my life when I was working. And so I said, so I thought I’m doing the wrong thing here, you know.
14:3514 minutes, 35 secondsUm and I had I had been a musician for you know since I was 11. So many actors are
14:4214 minutes, 42 secondsYeah. played piano and uh you know was in a garage band in in high school with some buddies and um I had built a little
14:5214 minutes, 52 secondsstudio for myself. Uh I never forget it was an Atari 1040 ST, a TAC uh 3340S
15:0015 minuteswhich I still have which is in the other room there.
15:0215 minutes, 2 secondsThat was my first multitrack. a time code uh to MIDI time code converter
15:0915 minutes, 9 secondsuh and a what was my first my first keyboard was the was this one which is a Corg SG1D which is a weighted 88 note weighted keyboard
15:1815 minutes, 18 secondsand um and and an HR16 drum machine anis drum machine right okay so and Qbase we had a lot of the same gear
15:2615 minutes, 26 secondsyeah okay yeah yeah yeah uh Steyber Qbase when it was black and white and you had to load the operating system into Atari. Yeah.
15:3415 minutes, 34 secondsYeah. Yeah.
15:3515 minutes, 35 secondsI I was a hybrid arts guy, but you know, same thing. Atari computer, TX4 track, you know. Yeah.
15:4115 minutes, 41 secondsYeah. That Atari had a built-in MIDI port. Exactly.
15:4415 minutes, 44 secondsYeah. I was I was pursuing that and um and writing music and writing songs and uh and my songs always tended towards
15:5315 minutes, 53 secondsthe more score type feeling. They tend to be tend to be kind of big productions for the time, you know, with the with
16:0016 minutesthe I got an M1 eventually and then now suddenly I had a string section in the horns, you know.
16:0516 minutes, 5 secondsI’d gotten together with my wife. We weren’t married yet. We were living together and uh still working as a PA on
16:1416 minutes, 14 secondsfilm shoots just to make money and and writing music. And I was trying to write music for films. I got short films and a
16:2116 minutes, 21 secondsbuddy of mine made his first feature and I scored his feature. Boy, was that a lesson. Oh my god. So, we get to the to the horn session and I’ve transport
16:3016 minutes, 30 secondstransposed the parts wrong for the horns. Oops.
16:3316 minutes, 33 secondsAnd they start to play and it’s disaster, right? And they’re just letting me sit and sweat burning studio
16:4116 minutes, 41 secondstime. And eventually the lead horn player stepped forward and said, “You transposed it wrong. I’ll help you out.”
16:4916 minutes, 49 secondsand he retrans because he it wasn’t like I was writing something so out of this world that they didn’t know what it was.
16:5516 minutes, 55 secondsThey they were just letting me key for the horns.
16:5716 minutes, 57 secondsYeah. It just they they just uh it just wasn’t written correctly. So he wrote it out and they did did the session but I thought I never want to get caught out like that again.
17:0717 minutes, 7 secondsSo I enrolled uh I had already gotten my degree theater degree at UCLA. I had graduated from UCLA um and uh as a sound
17:1517 minutes, 15 secondsdesigner. I started at UCLA as an actor, ended as a sound designer. Okay.
17:1917 minutes, 19 secondsStudying with Jonathan Deans, who you know. Yeah.
17:2217 minutes, 22 secondsAnd uh I was one of two sound designers at the school. Actually, this was an interesting introduction into into
17:2917 minutes, 29 secondssound. The director came to me and I I went to the director and offered my services to write music for his show.
17:3517 minutes, 35 secondsAnd he said, “Oh, that’s great.” He said, “Would you be the sound designer, too?” And I went, “Sure. What’s that?” that that is that is something that
17:4417 minutes, 44 secondshappens to almost all of us in this industry, you know. Yeah, I can do that. How do I do that?
17:4917 minutes, 49 secondsWhat is that? You know, and it was at that point that I had transitioned out of being an actor and suddenly I was in
17:5517 minutes, 55 secondsthe world of designing sounds for a show at UCLA and it was, you know, realtores and leaderless cassettes. There was that
18:0418 minutes, 4 secondsera, uh, pre-digital. And um I kind of had a I had an ear for it and I enjoyed it, you know, and uh ended up doing the
18:1318 minutes, 13 secondsscore and the sound effects for that show. Ended up staying up three days straight to finish that show with my assistant, this poor girl. The two of us were delirious at the end.
18:2318 minutes, 23 secondsYeah, that’s a right of passage.
18:2518 minutes, 25 secondsOh my god. But when you’re that age, you know, those are the sorts of grit and let’s do it. Let’s make it happen.
18:3318 minutes, 33 secondsSo, um, so I started doing sound design for the theater around Los Angeles and every little black box. I was, you know,
18:4018 minutes, 40 secondsmy with my leaderless cassettes or my real tore and uh uh I got enough drama awards to, you know, set them as
18:4818 minutes, 48 secondsplacemats to for a nice size crowd and basically decided at that point that that was sort of the direction you were going or
18:5518 minutes, 55 secondsI was still writing music still wanted to score and uh um and after that episode with the horns enrolled in the
19:0219 minutes, 2 secondscomposition program at Cal State Northridge.
19:0419 minutes, 4 secondsWow. Two and a half years into my stint there at Cal State Northridge, my father passed away. This was 1999.
19:1519 minutes, 15 secondsAnd uh my then wife, we were married at that time, said to me, uh you know, if we want to have a family, you need to get a job.
19:2619 minutes, 26 secondsSo, uh there was that, you know. Well, yeah.
19:3119 minutes, 31 secondsYeah. Uh, I had I’m just jumping all around here. I had gotten a job as a PA at an animation
19:3919 minutes, 39 secondscompany and one of my jobs at the animation company was to take the dats that had the dialogue on on them from
19:4619 minutes, 46 secondsthe voiceover sessions to a place out in Burbank. The the animation company was in the old house where Alis started.
19:5419 minutes, 54 secondsOh, okay. On Beachwood Canyon.
19:5619 minutes, 56 secondsYeah. So, uh, and we were in the back and in the back was this thing built onto the garage and I’m like, why is there a window in this small room to
20:0620 minutes, 6 secondsthis big room on the garage? What is that? Oh, yeah. Okay. Recording studio. Yeah.
20:1220 minutes, 12 secondsAnd uh we we uh I forget what the series was we were working on, but I you know every couple of days I’d go out to this place in Burbank called the film
20:2020 minutes, 20 secondsbusiness which was run by a guy named Rich Harrison and they would take the DAT tapes and they would transfer them to MAG.
20:2720 minutes, 27 secondsUh I don’t know if you know anything about this process in animation. Oh yeah.
20:3020 minutes, 30 secondsRight. So they they transferred the DATs to MAG and then the MAG would be taken to what was called a track reader for
20:3820 minutes, 38 secondsanimation. And the track reader would take mag. For for those of you at home who don’t know what mag is, mag is film.
20:4420 minutes, 44 secondsIt’s got sprockets on it, but it doesn’t have frames. It’s got magnetic coating on it. So, it’s just for audio. Right.
20:5220 minutes, 52 secondsRight. And the sprockets allow it to move in sync with picture with the movie. With the movie. Mhm.
20:5820 minutes, 58 secondsSo the track reader would take this mag, put it on a movie, and he would have sheets and on the sheets would written
21:0621 minutes, 6 secondsuh um vertically were the lines that the actors were saying. And as he was listening to the timing on the mag on the he would make notes of mouth shapes.
21:1821 minutes, 18 secondsThis mouth shape takes this many frames. This mouth shape takes this many frames.
21:2221 minutes, 22 secondsthis as they’re speaking on the from the VO record on the mag, he’s doing the timing sheets for the mouth movements.
21:3121 minutes, 31 secondsThat’s super geeky.
21:3221 minutes, 32 secondsThat’s that’s how animation was done before computers.
21:3621 minutes, 36 secondsAnd so um that was one of the services that uh uh the film business that Richerson’s place did. They were also an
21:4321 minutes, 43 secondseditorial house, a sound editorial house in the days when you could just have a a sound business that didn’t have a mix
21:5121 minutes, 51 secondsstage that didn’t mix. They just cut, right? So, they would cut dialogue for movies of the week and sound effects and uh they had a fully room.
22:0022 minutesWow.
22:0122 minutes, 1 secondAnd an ad and an ADR stage. Uh but no mix room.
22:0622 minutes, 6 secondsSo, so, so it was mixed elsewhere or So, we would we I’m getting ahead of myself. So, I was working at the animation company, but I said to them,
22:1422 minutes, 14 seconds”Hey, you know, I’ve got a little studio home and I’m interested in this and, you know, if you ever need somebody, uh, here’s here’s my information.” Okay. The
22:2222 minutes, 22 secondsanimation company I was working at went out of business and I’m, you know, I’m catering. I’m floating around. I’m doing sound design, which, you know, you do
22:3022 minutes, 30 secondsthree months of work and you make $1,000, you know. Uh, and um, I got a call from
22:3722 minutes, 37 secondsthem. Hey, you want to come in and be an assistant? I said, ‘Great. They’re like, okay, you’re going to do the night shift. And this was the beginning of
22:4522 minutes, 45 secondsdigital. They had what was called a timeline waveframe. God, I remember those.
22:4922 minutes, 49 secondsYeah, it was purpose-built by uh um ed by film sound editors. It wasn’t for music.
22:5822 minutes, 58 secondsAnd it was genius. It was absolutely amazing. And so my job, my first job as a PA there was to take the quarterinch
23:0623 minutes, 6 secondstapes from the production mixers on set and put them on an Atari uh threetrack machine. The third track was to read the
23:1323 minutes, 13 secondstime code on the on from the stereo ngagra and uh it had a zeta delta zeta
23:2023 minutes, 20 secondssynchronizer on top of it and the we would feed the timeline waveframe what was called an EDL. That’s called an edit decision decision list.
23:3023 minutes, 30 secondsAnd it would ask it would it would send a message to me, you know, up on the screen saying, “Please load real 27,”
23:3823 minutes, 38 secondsyou know, and I would load real 27 and it would spool through the reel, find the time code for the edit that the
23:4523 minutes, 45 secondspicture editor had made and load that dialogue into the digital system into the timeline for the dialogue editors. Okay?
23:5323 minutes, 53 secondsAnd so it would lose the if it had to spool far into the tape and it started going too fast, it would lose the time code and then it would spool off the
24:0124 minutes, 1 secondreel and I’d have to put it back on the reel. You know, I’m doing this at 2 o’clock in the morning. Nice.
24:0624 minutes, 6 secondsWell, listening to NPR or whatever the hell on the radio. Mhm.
24:0924 minutes, 9 secondsSo, I did this for a couple of months. I think I was making like $350 a week. Big money. Oh, yeah.
24:1724 minutes, 17 secondsWell, this was was it 1995?
24:2124 minutes, 21 seconds1996 around there. So, I mean, it was paying my rent.
24:2624 minutes, 26 secondsUm, and and Terry was working. She was still struggling as an actor as well.
24:3224 minutes, 32 secondsUh, and um, they hated the guy who was uh, mixing their Foley and mixing their ADR. So,
24:4124 minutes, 41 secondsthey fired him and they turned to me and said, “Uh, you’re now the Foley mixer. Go learn the system.
24:4724 minutes, 47 secondsHe you start tomorrow.” Okay. No pressure.
24:5224 minutes, 52 secondsSo yeah, my whole career was a lot of was a lot of that was a lot of I have no idea how to do this and they’re like go figure it out.
25:0225 minutes, 2 secondsIn certain ways that’s the that’s the way so many of us learn what we do. Yeah.
25:0625 minutes, 6 secondsYou know, under pressure. Yeah. Under a deadline.
25:0925 minutes, 9 secondsAnd and you know the interesting thing about that is that a lot of times you end up learning stuff that not only didn’t you know you could do but you didn’t know you wanted to do.
25:1725 minutes, 17 secondsRight. And it’s like, oh, this is actually pretty cool. I’m good at what a fully mixer was. Yeah.
25:2225 minutes, 22 secondsAnd I had a terrific teacher, not as a um not on the technical side, the the So it was uh Rich Harrison owned the place.
25:3125 minutes, 31 secondsHis brother Peter Harrison was one of the sound editors who worked there, who by the way worked on Beneath the Valley of the Dolls for Russ Meer. Peter
25:3925 minutes, 39 secondsHarrison was uh and Jim Harrison was Peter’s son who sort of ran the place and did the transfers and all that. and he walked me through how I would do a Foley session.
25:5025 minutes, 50 secondsOkay.
25:5025 minutes, 50 secondsAnd then the Foley artist I ended up working with uh there were two Foley artists but I only remember one of their names was Greg Barbanell who is kind of a legend in the business.
26:0126 minutes, 1 secondOkay, at this point and um he he taught me well, you know, he’s I got to watch, you know, move the mic
26:0926 minutes, 9 secondshere for perspective, you know, this is how we do these sounds, this is how we do these sounds. Mhm.
26:1526 minutes, 15 secondsYou know, uh and uh and of course as the foying mixer, you’re watching for sync. You’re listening for the sound quality.
26:2426 minutes, 24 secondsIs it is it what you’re looking for?
26:2526 minutes, 25 secondsDoes it match uh what you want it to sound like on picture and all that sort of stuff.
26:3126 minutes, 31 secondsUh and uh and then I ended up moving into not only mixing the Foley, but editing it. So, uh, because there’s a
26:4026 minutes, 40 secondscertain amount of time, process time between seeing the image on the screen and just being able to do the movement.
26:4726 minutes, 47 secondsSo, it’s never going to be spot-on frame accurate. So, there’s always shifting generally about three frames.
26:5426 minutes, 54 secondsSo, uh, I would do a lot of that and then edit and and layer different sounds that we had used put together like, hey,
27:0327 minutes, 3 secondslet’s do this, this, and this. for example, um, uh, we did a TV movie called Crazy Horse that we got nominated
27:1027 minutes, 10 secondsfor an Emmy for, which was nice. Uh, and so when you would do somebody riding on a horse, there were multiple layers.
27:1727 minutes, 17 secondsThere was the metal tack on the horse that would jingle as the horse rode. And then you’d have another pass of leather creeks, the saddle movement and the
27:2627 minutes, 26 secondsperson in the saddle. And then you’d have cloth movement of the person sitting in the in the saddle and their body presence in the saddle. And then
27:3527 minutes, 35 secondsyou might have their legs rubbing on the side of the horse.
27:3727 minutes, 37 secondsAnd of course the horse and then we’re doing the horse hooks.
27:4127 minutes, 41 secondsIt was a it was a very interesting challenge. We saved all the horse stuff for the end because Greg had a lot of experience with this and he knew it’s it
27:5027 minutes, 50 secondswould be three days in a dirt pit with dust. Oh. Everywhere.
27:5627 minutes, 56 secondsAnd so for this movie movie with Crazy Horse, you had the cavalry which had shod horses and then you had the Indians that had unshot horses which are different sounds.
28:0628 minutes, 6 secondsAnd so uh the thing about accuracy, right? The thing we found uh for the unshot horses that worked best was a old
28:1328 minutes, 13 secondspair of uh Converse high tops, slapping them on the dirt. Wow. Okay.
28:1928 minutes, 19 secondsEven in the mix booth, I was wearing like a bandana and a mask cuz we were all choking on the dirt from the dirt pits. So, I was doing that and then I
28:2728 minutes, 27 secondswas doing uh ADR sessions which are very stressful depending upon the temperament of the actor that you have in and how you have to tiptoe around them.
28:3528 minutes, 35 secondsEventually they, you know, they were doing movies of the week for Vonzernik Certain and we were doing animation for Disney. We were doing like Darkwing Duck
28:4328 minutes, 43 secondsand we did uh Mortal Kombat and we did The Mask, the Jim Carrey animated uh series.
28:5028 minutes, 50 secondsThat’s a lot of fun to do Foley for.
28:5228 minutes, 52 secondsI’ll bet because you’re getting into really fun sound design for that. Um eventually they went out of business.
28:5828 minutes, 58 secondsUh so or they didn’t go out of business.
29:0229 minutes, 2 secondsRich just decided to retire is what it was. He was he I’ll tell you where he started then and how old he was. He started on Clutch Cargo,
29:1129 minutes, 11 secondsthe the animated show where they had the guy where the animated characters had real human mouth and everything was animated around them.
29:1929 minutes, 19 secondsYes. And the animation around them was so cheap and so cheesy. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
29:2429 minutes, 24 secondsIt’s like everything else was just stationary and maybe there would be background moving and then the mouth was fascinating. So drawn to the mouth. Yeah.
29:3229 minutes, 32 secondsA little creepy. Yeah. very much so.
29:3429 minutes, 34 secondsHe also worked on um The Point with uh Harry Nson. Yeah. What a great animation that was. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
29:4329 minutes, 43 secondsSo that was sort of my beginnings in post-production audio really. And I was still writing music at that time and still sort of entertained the idea of composing for film.
29:5329 minutes, 53 secondsOkay.
29:5429 minutes, 54 secondsAnd you know getting short films and little things uh but nothing that really paid well. Mhm.
30:0330 minutes, 3 secondsUh and uh so once they closed it was back to a lot of freelance jobs, peeing on sets, catering.
30:1230 minutes, 12 secondsSo I was peeing on the Tao exercise, Billy Blank’s Tao exercise videos. Okay.
30:1930 minutes, 19 secondsRight. And uh the um the director was just having a hissy fit about the music.
30:2730 minutes, 27 secondsHe says it has no build. It just goes on and on and on and it’s you know it’s terrible and this and that. And I had been editing music for years on quarterinch tape. Uh I did it for my
30:3630 minutes, 36 secondsfriend Greg Wilson who’s a magician. I would edit out the lyrics from songs and just put the musical parts together for his act. And so uh uh I was very
30:4530 minutes, 45 secondsfamiliar with editing music. And so I I just kind of casually mentioned to the director, I said, “Hey, you know, I I know how to edit music if you want the
30:5330 minutes, 53 secondsmusic re-edited.” He’s like, “Really?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Well, we have a ProTools system in the back here. Uh do you think you could do it?” And I went,
31:0131 minutes, 1 second”Yeah, I didn’t know how to use a ProTools system.
31:0531 minutes, 5 secondsI’d been on Qbase, right?
31:0731 minutes, 7 secondsSo I wasn’t completely ignoramis around.” How hard could it be digitally? Right. Exactly. Oh, okay.
31:1331 minutes, 13 secondsThis is the cutting tool and okay, this is how I can scroll through the audio and blah. So, and I ended up recutting
31:2131 minutes, 21 secondstheir music and he was thrilled. They were thrilled.
31:2431 minutes, 24 secondsThey didn’t pay me anymore. or I was still a PA as opposed to a music editor, but I I did that thing. Uh, and so also on that
31:3331 minutes, 33 secondsset was a couple that were doing craft services, guy named Tom Tom McNamera, and I forget his ex-wife’s name.
31:4131 minutes, 41 secondsUh, and that’s the end of that. And a year later, I get a call from Tom McNamera, this guy who was craft services. He
31:4931 minutes, 49 secondssays, “Hey, uh, I don’t know if you remember me, we were doing craft services on, uh, sess.” and he had sort of a peripheral connection to my to a
31:5731 minutes, 57 secondstheater company that my wife was working with. He was friends with the director of that company. And so he said, “Hey, I’m head of post-production for the Game
32:0532 minutes, 5 secondsShow Network.” Gee, yeah. Year before you doing Craft Services, now you’re head of postproduction for the Game Show Network, right?
32:1332 minutes, 13 secondsAnd so, uh, he said, “You want to come mix game shows?” I I guess I had made an impression on him after re-editing the music. I said,
32:2132 minutes, 21 seconds”Sure, hell yeah. Sure, why not? I’ve never mixed a television show in my life.
32:2632 minutes, 26 secondsAnd I I was honest, you know, it’s not like I [ __ ] these people, you know.
32:2932 minutes, 29 secondsIt’s like I said I said, “Dom, I’ve never mixed a television show. You know, I’ve mixed my own music and things like that.” He’s like, “You’ll get it.” So, I went in, he said, “You’ll shadow
32:3832 minutes, 38 secondsthe guy who’s mixing shows for us.” So, I went into the mix room and um there was this guy who was mixing a show and
32:4832 minutes, 48 secondshe didn’t say two words to me the whole time I was sitting in the room and he was grumpy as hell.
32:5232 minutes, 52 secondsAnd uh I got Maybe he knew you were going to replace them.
32:5532 minutes, 55 secondsYeah. Well, here’s the thing. So uh uh and this was at the time, this was around ProTools 5 when you could actually mix in it. So it was all in the box mixing at that point.
33:0633 minutes, 6 secondsSo I went to Tom’s office afterwards and he said, “You got a feel for it?” And I said, “Not at all.” He said, “The guy didn’t say two words to me and he was
33:1433 minutes, 14 secondskind of hostile.” He’s like, “All right.” And grabbed me and he said, “Come on.” kind of short Irish guy with
33:2133 minutes, 21 secondsa bit of a temper. And he uh goes and there he says, “What the hell? I told you to train this guy in.” He was also from New York. So he kind of had that New York attitude.
33:3033 minutes, 30 secondsAnd the guy said, “Why the hell am I going to train my replacement?” And Tom said, “You idiot.” He said, “You’re going to have sick days, right?” He said, “You’re going to have one of
33:3833 minutes, 38 secondsvacation days.” He said, “This is the guy who’s going to spell you, you know?” He said, “Uh, so you don’t leave me hanging dry, right?” He said, “But you
33:4533 minutes, 45 secondsknow something, you’re fired.” and he turned to me and he said, “Figure it out.” Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
33:5233 minutes, 52 secondsSo, uh I I wouldn’t want to hear those first game shows that I mixed, but uh um I I I you know, I know what I knew what
34:0234 minutes, 2 secondsdialogue sounded like on television, what and what it should sound like and what I what I wanted it to sound like, you know, and I I had, you know, early
34:0934 minutes, 9 secondshairbrain ideas like I’m gonna put an oral excider on the dialogue to give it that sort of sparkle, you know. Okay.
34:1634 minutes, 16 secondsYeah. Uh, okay.
34:1834 minutes, 18 secondsSo, uh, not the best decision, but okay.
34:2034 minutes, 20 secondsAnd I’m and I’m voraciously reading Mix magazine and probably some of your articles probably, you know, like, okay, how does a
34:2834 minutes, 28 secondscompressor work? And, you know, what does that do? And, you know, okay, EQ and this and that and all right. Okay. I don’t want to hear the edits where the
34:3734 minutes, 37 secondsdialogue is cut together. So, I’m smoothing that out. Okay. And I figure out what handles are and how to handle and, you know, room tone and how to
34:4434 minutes, 44 secondspatch things. and I’m just kind of I’m inventing dialogue editing for myself and asking questions. There’s a guy there was a guy who came in to mix
34:5234 minutes, 52 secondspromos and so and he was very friendly and so I would ask him questions. He’s like, “Oh yeah, you know, do this blah blah blah.” And most of the time you discover that,
35:0035 minutesoh yeah, I’ve been doing that right, you know, or you know, oh, okay, I figured this out, but I didn’t do this, you know, and just when you’re thrown into the situation, you figure it out,
35:0935 minutes, 9 secondsright? And I was lucky. It was a time when, you know, the only requirement was, you know, don’t clip, right? There weren’t there wasn’t dial norm.
35:1635 minutes, 16 secondsThere weren’t, you know, Yeah. that didn’t exist yet.
35:1935 minutes, 19 secondsSo, it’s like as long as I wasn’t going past -10 on the, you know, uh, DB full scale.
35:2635 minutes, 26 secondsI was all right.
35:2835 minutes, 28 secondsThat I could do. And so, it was an interesting training ground at GSN because it was like a network run out of some teenager’s bedroom, you know? It
35:3735 minutes, 37 secondswas just this little network where if if a show got a what was it a.3 that was a hit you know
35:4535 minutes, 45 secondsso now but these a lot of times weren’t the game show networks weren’t they like old game shows that you were but they also produced their own content
35:5335 minutes, 53 secondsokay yeah and then I also got into mixing promos and things like that and then um they had producers there who created
36:0136 minutes, 1 secondshows and I ended up uh doing they had a little studio with robotic cameras that they had a control room for that the cameras rolled around the stage. And
36:1036 minutes, 10 secondsthen I became an A2 and had to learn how to place lav mics on people. All right.
36:1536 minutes, 15 secondsAnd um and uh uh and then how to mix them live.
36:2036 minutes, 20 secondsSo I was mixing them at the at this old Sony analog board and like what’s a VCA? What does that do?
36:2836 minutes, 28 secondsYou know, and then I had a Digi Cart with sound effects and that I got to play with and it was it was quite a learning process.
36:3536 minutes, 35 secondsYeah. Uh, and either nobody there knew enough to say, “What the hell are you doing?” or Tom
36:4236 minutes, 42 secondshad confidence in me or I mean I had good ears is what it was. I knew what stuff should sound like and so I could work towards that.
36:5036 minutes, 50 secondsWell, and obviously you were also a fast learner. I mean, you know, that’s I I mean, I do think that a lot of what many
36:5836 minutes, 58 secondsof us experience along the way in learning our careers is just that. It’s autodidacticism, you know. It’s it’s
37:0637 minutes, 6 secondsjust learning on the go, learning as you do, you know, and it’s um you know, I I like to call it, you know,
37:1337 minutes, 13 secondsbuilding the bridge as you walk on it, basically. Yeah.
37:1637 minutes, 16 secondsYou know, and I mean, if you have to, you do, right?
37:2137 minutes, 21 secondsAnd so, obviously, you you uh developed a love for this clearly.
37:2537 minutes, 25 secondsI was I was making good money and getting respect. I was making $30 an hour. Oh my god. Yeah. Right. Wow.
37:3237 minutes, 32 secondsYeah. and and I’m sure they’re like, “Wow, we got to steal with this guy.” But uh uh yeah, so that was kind of a
37:3937 minutes, 39 secondstraining ground. Um my favorite Game Show Network story is Alvara came in to do a uh to do a what
37:4837 minutes, 48 secondswe called turnarounds where, you know, coming up next is such and such and I hope you enjoyed, you know, it’s a turnaround from one show to the next. And we would have different people.
37:5637 minutes, 56 secondsBetty White came in and you know, all these different people who were on game shows, right? Uhhuh. would come in. Plus, we
38:0338 minutes, 3 secondshad a show, a talk show called Lovers Lounge where stars from the 70s and the 80s would come in and they would show
38:1138 minutes, 11 secondsclips of them on game shows and talk about those things.
38:1538 minutes, 15 secondsI have a fabulous autograph from um Adam West. He came in, Batman. Batman came in.
38:2238 minutes, 22 secondsSo, I’ve got my autograph Batman picture. So anyhow, Alvara came in to do turnarounds and I think we’re all
38:2938 minutes, 29 secondsfamiliar with Alvara and uh I I went to her dressing room and I had the the pack and the mic. And if you know anything
38:3638 minutes, 36 secondsabout mking people, there’s there’s this thing that happens with A2s and actors and actresses where you are reaching up
38:4438 minutes, 44 secondstheir shirt and you’re running the line and you’re placing the mic and it’s, you know, it’s just kind of how it’s done.
38:5138 minutes, 51 secondsAnd so I knock on the door and there she is in all her magnificent. She’s in the costume and I’m just standing there
38:5938 minutes, 59 secondsholding the pack of the mic and I’m just kind of looking at her and she’s she’s not saying a word. She’s just kind of looking at me with this sly smile on her
39:0739 minutes, 7 secondsface and watching the sweat kind of pour down the side of my head. And then eventually she gives me a break and she says, “My costumemer does that.” I’m
39:1539 minutes, 15 secondslike, “Oh, thank God.” I just just handed it to her and let her do it. Yes. Yes.
39:2239 minutes, 22 secondsMy other wonderful moment and very touching moment uh at the Game Show Network was with Betty White. Oh, I love Betty White.
39:3039 minutes, 30 secondsOh my god.
39:3139 minutes, 31 secondsSo, I I go to her dressing room and uh um she’s all miked up already. I did not reach up her shirt, her her costume person.
39:4039 minutes, 40 secondsShe might have liked it. Who knows?
39:4239 minutes, 42 secondsYou know something? She might have. Uh but uh um I escorted her and I’m um taking her to the stage and to get to
39:5039 minutes, 50 secondsthe stage you had to pass through the lobby and in the lobby were these huge television sets with the current game show that was playing and on the on that
39:5839 minutes, 58 secondsTV was Alan Luten and password her the love of her life who had passed away and she she grabbed my arm
40:0640 minutes, 6 secondsand she said do you mind if I just watch for a moment? I said not at all. I said they’ll wait. And we sat there and we
40:1340 minutes, 13 secondswatched, you know, her we watched her husband and she cried a little bit and kind of
40:2040 minutes, 20 secondsreally squeezed my arm and then when it went to commercial she said okay all right took her to the stage and and we did the
40:2840 minutes, 28 secondsshow. Uh, I wish I had thought to mention at the moment like who my parents were because my father I didn’t know at the time directed her and Alan
40:3640 minutes, 36 secondsLuton in a prod production of Guys and Dolls in Atlanta at the Atlantic at the Atlanta Civic Life Theater. I love it.
40:4340 minutes, 43 secondsSo there was there was a connection there.
40:4640 minutes, 46 secondsSo let me take you forward a little bit here. Okay.
40:4940 minutes, 49 secondsUm, you’re now doing this as a profession, so to speak, right? and you’re you’re figuring out that, oh, this is kind of what I want to do. I like this, right?
40:5940 minutes, 59 secondsOkay.
41:0141 minutes, 1 secondSo, as this is happening, the technology is also changing rather dramatically and rapidly, right?
41:0941 minutes, 9 secondsYeah. There was a big fight going on at the time.
41:1141 minutes, 11 secondsExactly. That’s what I’m getting to is the technology is changing and the the balance of power is changing. Yeah.
41:1941 minutes, 19 secondsSo to speak. How did that impact your work?
41:2241 minutes, 22 secondsYeah. So there was there were the in the box mixers who were coming up with ProTools, which is what I was doing.
41:3041 minutes, 30 secondsAnd then there were the out- of-the-box mixers who were the old school mixers.
41:3441 minutes, 34 secondsAnd like I told you that that whole thing where you had all the dummy machines feeding every channel on that, you know, mileong console with three
41:4141 minutes, 41 secondsmixers sitting at it going through and doing the moves. And then you had basically a completely
41:4841 minutes, 48 secondsautomatable system in ProTools where one person could do the work of three, you know, and I think it scared a lot of
41:5641 minutes, 56 secondsthe mixers. And I also felt that they they felt that some of the artistry might be lost because there’s a certain
42:0542 minutes, 5 secondsthere’s a certain music to working with the faders and moving the sound up and down and in and out and getting those
42:1242 minutes, 12 secondsmoves right. Um, you know, the days before automation, they would run the reel and they would do a rehearsal and
42:2042 minutes, 20 secondsthe three mixers would the the uh the uh effects mixer, the the music mixer and the dialogue mixer.
42:2742 minutes, 27 secondsDialogue mixer was usually lead mixer and led the session. Mhm.
42:3142 minutes, 31 secondsAnd they would run through the reel and do the moves, but it was a dance basically.
42:3442 minutes, 34 secondsIt was a dance. And and then they would roll roll all the mag and the film back and then do it again. And and the big
42:4242 minutes, 42 secondslike the big uh uh um technological advance was a system called rock and roll that could play the reels forward
42:5042 minutes, 50 secondsand then play the reels backwards. So they would do their mix moves playing it forward and then when it was running backwards they’d do all their EQing.
42:5842 minutes, 58 secondsThey they’d e okay as they were listening to it uh backwards. So anyhow, so you had these old school mixers on these very expensive stages.
43:0743 minutes, 7 secondsSo, uh, uh, at a certain point at the Game Show Network, I figured I know how to mix. I’m a mixer now. I’m a re-recording mixer. I’m gonna start
43:1543 minutes, 15 secondsputting, you know, my my resume out with all the shows I’ve mixed here, and I’m going to get a job at another place and start doing features. So, I I got a shot
43:2343 minutes, 23 secondsat a place called Wildwoods, uh, Derek L’s place. Still around, still doing it.
43:2843 minutes, 28 secondsThey do a lot of reality shows. And, uh, they’re like, “Yeah, we we need another mixer. Why don’t you come in and we’ll give you a show to mix. uh we need a
43:3643 minutes, 36 secondsnight mixer, so come in in the afternoon and you can start mixing the show. And I had been mixing for the past year uh
43:4543 minutes, 45 secondsgame shows that were recorded on soundstages. Everybody’s mic quiet sound stage. It’s uh you know, it’s very civilized.
43:5243 minutes, 52 secondsIt’s very civilized. All of a sudden, I’m mixing reality shows which are on location and running gun sound. Now it’s
44:0044 minutesreal dialogue editing and it’s real backgrounds and it’s it’s you know it’s tough. It’s documentary style work.
44:0844 minutes, 8 secondsYeah.
44:0944 minutes, 9 secondsUm and uh about 2 o’clock in the morning I was in tears. like not only not only was I out of my depth with the type of
44:1844 minutes, 18 secondsmaterial it was, but it was a um it wasn’t ProTools, it was a uh uh who who bought uh um Resolve who it’s
44:2744 minutes, 27 secondsuh fair light. It was a fair light system. Oh, sure. Uhhuh. Oh, that’s challenging.
44:3244 minutes, 32 secondsWas very advanced for the time because it had built-in video, you know, it was really quite the thing.
44:3844 minutes, 38 secondsSo, around 2 o’clock in the morning, I’m in tears and I I just I’m not going to be able to finish the show. I just I I don’t know what I’m doing. And they gave me an emergency number to call. And I call it and it’s somebody like, hello.
44:4944 minutes, 49 secondsAnd I’m like, sh I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m out of my depth. I don’t know what I’m doing. I thought I could do this, you know. And sometimes you got to
44:5844 minutes, 58 secondsknow that you’re banging your head against the wall and you don’t want to screw somebody. And I’m I’m like, I don’t know when you need to get the show done. And uh please, you know, if
45:0645 minutes, 6 secondsthere’s any way I can help to He’s like, don’t worry. Don’t worry. It was just a test. You know, it’s not a show that’s to be aired right away. Hey, we have time on it. Just go home. You’re fine.
45:1545 minutes, 15 secondsSo, I went home. Another year at the Game Show Network. More reading of Mix magazine, more asking asking questions. And now I know I really don’t know.
45:2445 minutes, 24 secondsUhhuh.
45:2545 minutes, 25 secondsAnd so, uh, I start putting out resumes again to try and branch out with a little less hubris and a little more
45:3245 minutes, 32 secondshonesty about where I came from. And uh the lovely people at Mixmagic called me in, a guy named Michael Sable,
45:4045 minutes, 40 secondswho was the salesperson there, who’s now a salesperson at Monkey Land. Okay.
45:4445 minutes, 44 secondsAnd uh uh Jim Corbett, whose uh uh company it was, and um
45:5245 minutes, 52 secondsthey brought me in and they went, “Okay, we’ll give you a shot.” And so they stuck me in mix room C. Jim was mix room
45:5945 minutes, 59 secondsA, which was the huge theater, you know, and he was doing the features in there.
46:0346 minutes, 3 secondsBut he would also do like television shows, which was funny seeing these reality shows up on a huge movie screen, but uh my room was one of the smaller rooms.
46:1246 minutes, 12 secondsAnd I had a little plastic uh Huey, remember the Huey mixers by Mackie? Yeah.
46:1846 minutes, 18 secondsUh sitting on top of a Euphonic system 5. Wow.
46:2346 minutes, 23 secondsYeah. Right. Okay. which I later found out John Hart sold them and and put in there. So, uh um so I’m there and I’m
46:3246 minutes, 32 secondsmixing this show. It’s was my first reality show and I’m doing all right.
46:3646 minutes, 36 secondsAnd it’s it was called Speaking of Women’s Health and it was with Florence Henderson. I I forget which network it was for. Okay.
46:4346 minutes, 43 secondsIt’s the early days of uh of cable, right?
46:4646 minutes, 46 secondsAnd uh I mixed the whole season and I’m like, “All right, okay. Maybe I got this.” The entire season was kicked back by QC.
46:5546 minutes, 55 secondsOops.
46:5646 minutes, 56 secondsYeah. So, now there’s a meeting and you’re not in it. Oh, no. No. I’m in the meeting.
47:0247 minutes, 2 secondsOh, yeah. It’s it’s it’s Jim, who I had been told had a bit of a temper like the old school mixers. And uh and Michael Sable.
47:1347 minutes, 13 secondsAnd Jim did not blow his top. He’s like, “Okay, what happened?” I said, “Um, I guess I got kind of cute and I put a
47:2047 minutes, 20 secondsstereo widener on the music so that the dialogue would sit in the center better.” You know, it was still a stereo mix, but in the in the Phantom Center.
47:2847 minutes, 28 secondsHe said, “Okay, that’s clever.” He said, “What was the QC fail?” I said, “The stereo widener screwed with the phase on the music, and when they put it up on
47:3647 minutes, 36 secondsthe phase meters,
47:3747 minutes, 37 seconds[ __ ]
47:3847 minutes, 38 secondsthey didn’t like what they saw.” Uh, he said, “Did you check it in mono?” I said, “I’m I’m supposed to do that?” Oops.
47:4847 minutes, 48 secondsHe’s like, he’s like, “Oh, boy.” Yeah, you’re supposed to do that. There’s a learning experience.
47:5347 minutes, 53 secondsSo, there was a learning experience. Uh, he said, “Can you fix it?” I went, “Yeah, I I can fix it. I just take this area widener off and I think the levels
48:0148 minutes, 1 secondwon’t shift. I think it’ll still sit well.” He said, “Okay, do it.” And that in in those days, we were laying our stems back to DA88s. That’s
48:0948 minutes, 9 secondswhere we we were at at that point with the micro links, which I freaking hated.
48:1548 minutes, 15 secondsYeah, if I never have to stripe another tape again in my life, it’ll be too soon.
48:2048 minutes, 20 secondsUh, so he gave he gave me it was one of those lucky breaks where he gave me that shot and he I mean he could have booted me to the curb right then and there and
48:2848 minutes, 28 secondssaid, you know, you’re not ready for this. The thing was, you know, in the old days of the studio systems, uh, studio system, you didn’t just
48:3748 minutes, 37 secondssuddenly sit behind the mixing board and start mixing shows. you came up, you were trained, but there was no training system. The studio system was gone at that point.
48:4748 minutes, 47 secondsAnd so I think he kind of realized that and was forgiving about it. And so uh
48:5348 minutes, 53 secondsyou know there were lessons but uh soon I was mixing more than reality shows. I was mixing they would throw me short
49:0149 minutes, 1 secondfilms and I was starting to do you know real dialogue editing and cutting backgrounds and you know and then they would have me do because they knew I
49:0949 minutes, 9 secondsknew how to do it. I was mixing ADR sessions and mixing the Foley sessions there for the features he was doing.
49:1449 minutes, 14 secondsAnd I would sit next to him and watch him work and ask questions. And eventually
49:2049 minutes, 20 secondswhat happened was uh um he was still doing it old school. He was using B he
49:2749 minutes, 27 secondswas basically using the outputs from ProTools as the oldfashioned dummy machines and feeding a Harrison console
49:3449 minutes, 34 secondsand then he was re-recording through the Harrison console to a radar. Okay. Which John Hart had also sold. I know the radar well. Yes.
49:4349 minutes, 43 secondsYes. Mhm.
49:4449 minutes, 44 secondsAnd that’s what he was recording his mixes to. Uh, and so, um, I had come up with sort of before
49:5149 minutes, 51 secondsthe algorithms that they came up with to upmix music. Um, you know, if you got
49:5849 minutes, 58 secondsstereo tracks, you had to be kind of cy about how to how to spread it out in the 51 uh field. And so I had come up with a
50:0850 minutes, 8 secondstemplate in ProTools that would take your stereo mix and with reverb and
50:1350 minutes, 13 secondsdelay and you know uh uh routing created a fairly nice upmix for stereo tracks
50:2250 minutes, 22 secondsand Jim was impressed with this and and he taught me how to mix. He became my mentor. Uh and I asked him years later I
50:3050 minutes, 30 secondssaid why didn’t you fire me you know when that when that whole series was kicked back? And he said, he said, “I knew you had good ears.” He said, “You
50:3850 minutes, 38 secondscould learn the technical.” He said, “But you can’t learn how to hear,” you know, and that is right there.
50:4450 minutes, 44 secondsThat’s a big part of how you get the gigs. It’s just, you know, knowing the basic, you know, it’s like there’s certain stuff you can learn. Yeah.
50:5250 minutes, 52 secondsThere’s other stuff you’ll never learn, you know? Right.
50:5450 minutes, 54 secondsAnd if you know how to listen, that’s a really good one. Absolutely. Yeah. So, let’s fast forward a little bit. Okay.
51:0251 minutes, 2 secondsum to where now you’re starting to do this for a living, right? And I’m starting to freelance around town,
51:1051 minutes, 10 secondsright? And again, the technology is now light years ahead because that was a that was a period of time where the technology was making really quantum leaps.
51:1851 minutes, 18 secondsSo Steinberg had invented the plugin the and then ProTools ran with and all of that stuff. Yeah.
51:2551 minutes, 25 secondsAnd so, you know, they were getting better and better at the time that what was ubiquitous was waves.
51:3051 minutes, 30 secondsYes. And the reason Waves was ubiquitous was because you could hack it and steal it.
51:3651 minutes, 36 secondsOh, I thought it was because they had good marketing. Okay.
51:3951 minutes, 39 secondsWell, they also came out with suites of plugins, right? So, you could get the gold bundle, you know, which was and everywhere you went, they had that.
51:4851 minutes, 48 secondsSo, it became a de facto standard. And for people who were starting out, they could get cracked versions of it.
51:5451 minutes, 54 secondsYou know, it was also how look, it’s how Final Cut became such a a huge success.
51:5951 minutes, 59 secondsAll apparently all the the first Final Cuts had the same serial number.
52:0452 minutes, 4 secondsSo obviously Apple knew you’re like, “Yeah, please steal it and please use it a lot.” Right. That’s one way to get your product out there. Yeah.
52:1352 minutes, 13 secondsAnd so uh uh yeah, I was using the Waves plugins and then I just I started freelancing around town. I started
52:1952 minutes, 19 secondsfreelancing at Media City Sound at um Gez, I can’t remember this uh all the places. There was a place called uh what was it? Sound dogs out in the valley.
52:3052 minutes, 30 secondsUm, uh, yeah. So, I just I started working in a lot of different places. I don’t even remember the names of a lot of them.
52:3952 minutes, 39 secondsDoesn’t matter. Santa Monica to here. I Oh, what?
52:4152 minutes, 41 secondsPacific, uh, Pacific Ocean, not Pacific Ocean Sound, Pacific Sound Waves. Okay. Was another place I worked at.
52:4752 minutes, 47 secondsNone of those places are going to be relevant to anybody watching now. So, yeah. No, no, no. The the one thing significant about Pacific Soundwaves was
52:5452 minutes, 54 secondsI was mixing a show for Discovery and a technician comes into my room and drops this box in front of me and it’s got a
53:0153 minutes, 1 secondlittle red LED readout on it and he said they want you to mix to this number now that’s it’s called a dial norm. And I
53:1053 minutes, 10 secondswent, “What the hell is that?” He said, “They want all the dialogue to be at the same level.” I said, “I mix all the dialogue at the same level. What the hell do they want?” They said, “No, but
53:1753 minutes, 17 secondsthey want it the same level from show to show to show for Discovery.” I said, “Really?” All right. They’re like, “They’re not going to count it on this
53:2553 minutes, 25 secondsshow, but you should get used to it.” So, that was that first Dolby. I forget what the number on that box was, but it was the first Dialorm box. I’m
53:3453 minutes, 34 secondslike, “What the hell is that?” And at first, you know, your first reaction to something new and and constraining like that. Like, why the hell are they telling me how to mix my
53:4353 minutes, 43 secondsdialogue? you know. Um, but I came to like it because one, the picture editor couldn’t mix in the uh in the Avid
53:5253 minutes, 52 secondsanymore cuz there was no way they were going to hit that number, right?
53:5753 minutes, 57 secondsAnd yeah, from show to show, your dialogue was consistent and it was very nice. Yeah.
54:0354 minutes, 3 secondsWhich is very nice. Uh, and it it guaranteed you a certain amount of headroom in your mixes and this was this was a very good thing. Uh, and so, uh, I
54:1254 minutes, 12 secondsgot used to it. Um, so that was the significance of Pacific Sound Waves.
54:1754 minutes, 17 secondsOkay. So, now you get to a point where everything’s changed. And how did you end up in your own little room?
54:2654 minutes, 26 secondsYeah. So, uh, that just the way the industry went or No, no, I was I was very ahead of the
54:3354 minutes, 33 secondscurve. Um, uh, uh, Jim was was sort of winding down the film, uh, the, uh, uh, Mixmagic.
54:4454 minutes, 44 secondsA studio had opened up across the parking lot from us called Chalice Studios, which was a music studio, and they were making overtures. Jim owned
54:5254 minutes, 52 secondsthe building for Mixmic. They were making overtures to buy the building.
54:5554 minutes, 55 secondsAnd so he was like, you know, I could spend all my time kite sailing now, which is what he loved to do at that time. Uh, and so he
55:0455 minutes, 4 secondssold the building and they and uh, now I was just freelance everywhere and I was working 10 to 12 to 15 hours in these
55:1355 minutes, 13 secondsstudios around town and Terry was pregnant with our son. And I realized that
55:2155 minutes, 21 secondsif if I kept pursuing this in this way, um, the show business was going to eat my life and I wouldn’t see my son grow up.
55:3155 minutes, 31 secondsYeah, we know that problem. Yeah. Mhm.
55:3355 minutes, 33 secondsSo I I made the decision to build a mix stage here. Uh and of course having come from uh Foline ADR, I made sure I built
55:4255 minutes, 42 secondsa behind the screen is glass and there’s another room which is our my my Foley and ADR room which has pits and stuff.
55:5155 minutes, 51 secondsAnd uh when I first started this room, I had a Pro I had a Pro Control, which is what they had at Game Show Network. Sure.
55:5855 minutes, 58 secondsWhich was a great mixing board. It had uh uh PNG faders in it which were just felt wonderful. Yeah. Yeah.
56:0456 minutes, 4 secondsAnd uh I had a a big huge tube television on a hydraulic lift. All right.
56:1256 minutes, 12 secondsThat would go up and down in the front so that I could put it down a little bit so I could see into the room when I had ADR sessions. And it
56:2056 minutes, 20 secondswas just a stereo room. So uh you know I went on all the at that time the internet was really happening and I went
56:2756 minutes, 27 secondson all the studio design websites like how do you do this? How do you build a soundproof room?
56:3456 minutes, 34 secondsThey they they were very generous. It was John Sales uh studio website or whatever. There were
56:4156 minutes, 41 secondsall these different you know and it’s funny you ask you know four different acquisticians how to do something and you’re going to get five different opinions at least. Yeah. So, I took what I
56:5056 minutes, 50 secondsthought made sense to me, uh, and built this room. Uh, my first monitors were Event 2020s, which is what I had at the
56:5956 minutes, 59 secondsGame Show Network, so I knew them and uh, and yeah, it was a stereo room and I was doing I I had some clients
57:0857 minutes, 8 secondsthat stayed with me from Game Show Network who came here and I started mixing their shows here. I still work with them. The the producers who produce
57:1657 minutes, 16 secondsuh Pen and Teller Fool Us. I started with uh the World Series of Blackjack at the Game Show Network back in the 90s. Yeah.
57:2457 minutes, 24 secondsSo, we’ve been working together forever.
57:2657 minutes, 26 secondsI did a show with them called Solitary, which is in which was an insane reality show.
57:3157 minutes, 31 secondsUh it was the greatest real reality show that no one ever saw. Awesome.
57:3557 minutes, 35 secondsYeah. The show wasn’t cancelled, the network was cancelled. It was on Fox reality. Even better. Okay.
57:4057 minutes, 40 secondsYeah. So uh so yeah I built this place and then I had a buddy who uh started producing movies. Mhm.
57:4857 minutes, 48 secondsAnd um he came to me with a fil I scored his first film and now I was a mixer. So
57:5657 minutes, 56 secondshe came to me with this uh sci-fi horror film that he was producing with the guy and it needed to be in 51. They had sold it to Blockbuster. M.
58:0858 minutes, 8 secondsSo, I was like, “Oh, okay.
58:1058 minutes, 10 secondsI guess I better buy more speakers.” So, I got I got uh three more Event 2020s and the 2020 sub and uh set up a an Airsats 51 system in this room.
58:2358 minutes, 23 secondsAnd we mixed that movie in this room with my Pro Controls and and Pro Tools.
58:2858 minutes, 28 secondsUh and it turned out pretty well, you know. Um and and that was sort of the start of
58:3558 minutes, 35 secondsdoing independent features in here. I you know at other places I mixed tons of tra trailers, animated shows, commercials, promos, epks.
58:4658 minutes, 46 secondsUh I I mixed uh um uh isn’t it ironic?
58:5158 minutes, 51 secondsUh oh, Elena Moriceet. Alanis I mixed EPK for Alanis Moriceet.
58:5758 minutes, 57 secondsUm uh yeah I mean I did a the list of things that I haven’t mixed is shorter than the list of things I have mixed.
59:0859 minutes, 8 secondsOne one thing I haven’t done is one hour dramatic.
59:1159 minutes, 11 secondsSo all that said Mhm.
59:1459 minutes, 14 secondswhat do you wish you had known coming up?
59:2259 minutes, 22 secondsWhat would have shortcuted things for you?
59:2559 minutes, 25 secondsI I don’t I don’t want shortcuts, okay?
59:3059 minutes, 30 secondsYou know, I want the lessons, you know. I mean, that’s kind of what it’s about. It’s about the it’s about the relationships. I’m so
59:3859 minutes, 38 secondsproud that I’m still working with the producers that I started with at the Game Show Network.
59:4259 minutes, 42 secondsAnd you know, you mentioned that a few times where people you ran into, you know, people you worked with originally and then you ran into them later on and that presented opportunities. That’s
59:5059 minutes, 50 secondshuge. so proud that Jim Corbett, my my mentor, came here and mixed things with me here after he closed the stage because he still had movies he was
59:5859 minutes, 58 secondsdoing, you know, or he invited me to come mix with him at Glen Glenn at at uh at the big stages there and I got a chance to mix with the big stage. I’ll
1:00:061 hour, 6 secondstell you this, the it’s the one thing I I wish I had learned earlier was about the the whole grass is always greener thing.
1:00:171 hour, 17 secondsThere was always a little part of me that was jealous of the people sitting in the big seats on the big stage mixing the big movies, right?
1:00:251 hour, 25 secondsYeah.
1:00:261 hour, 26 secondsAnd it really wasn’t until like a couple years ago, like two years ago, I was taking the student award
1:00:341 hour, 34 secondsnominees for the CAS awards on a tour with Carol Urban through uh Warner Brothers. And one of the mixers uh was
1:00:421 hour, 42 secondsnice enough to talk to the students and he uh he was mixing Star Trek and I I I wish I remembered his name. I’m terrible with names, but he’s a terrific guy. And
1:00:501 hour, 50 secondshe talked about the process of mixing Star Trek and mixing features. And he said, you know, the dialogue editors are editing the dialogue and the sound effect editors doing the sound effect,
1:00:581 hour, 58 secondsthe sound designers are doing their thing, blah blah blah, and it all comes together here and we mix it all together here. And it just kind of dawned on me
1:01:051 hour, 1 minute, 5 secondsat that point that I like doing all those other things. I like doing the dialogue editor. I like
1:01:141 hour, 1 minute, 14 secondshaving my fingers in all the elements of the sound. And you can’t do that at the big studios, right? You’re one thing or you’re and you’re one thing only.
1:01:221 hour, 1 minute, 22 secondsYou know, I mean, you can be the sound supervisor, but the sound supervisor is generally not going to be mixing. Some do mix, you know, but you’ve got a big
1:01:301 hour, 1 minute, 30 secondsteam of people who are doing all that stuff. When I work on an independent feature, depending upon the budget, you know, I’ll bring in people to do some
1:01:381 hour, 1 minute, 38 secondsdifferent things, but generally I’m I’m doing it all and I like that. That’s kind of cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
1:01:451 hour, 1 minute, 45 secondsAnd it enables you to stretch a whole bunch of different sets of muscles. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I didn’t get rich doing it.
1:01:511 hour, 1 minute, 51 secondsWell, you know that when you talk about the grass is always greener, there’s a lot of people who appear to be rich, appear to be successful, and maybe, you
1:02:011 hour, 2 minutes, 1 secondknow, truth of the matter is, you know, they have a cursory relationship with their children.
1:02:051 hour, 2 minutes, 5 secondsExactly. Exactly. Or they’re not as successful as you think they are, you know.
1:02:091 hour, 2 minutes, 9 secondsAnd I mean, yeah, that’s one of the things we we learn as we get older is that, you know, the only person you’re in competition with is you yesterday.
1:02:171 hour, 2 minutes, 17 secondsAnd because everybody else is on a different trajectory, you’re not going to be get there and you don’t want to be there, you know. Well, you were so wonderful about that.
1:02:251 hour, 2 minutes, 25 secondsYou know, I I had PTSD from seeing someone else’s uh home studio because it was it it was over a half a million
1:02:321 hour, 2 minutes, 32 secondsdollar studio. This is not a half a million dollar studio. It’s it’s a good studio. It’s a nice studio.
1:02:381 hour, 2 minutes, 38 secondsIt it does what it needs to do, but it ain’t that. Uh and um uh I was
1:02:451 hour, 2 minutes, 45 secondslike you know you know what am I doing you know this is you know and you were so like don’t compare yourself to others
1:02:541 hour, 2 minutes, 54 secondsthat what does what the hell does that have to do with you? Are you doing good work? Yeah. Like are you happy?
1:02:591 hour, 2 minutes, 59 secondsYeah. You know I’m doing good work. I have good clients. I’m I’m happy with how things sound when they come out of here and go into a movie theater. They they translate well.
1:03:071 hour, 3 minutes, 7 secondsAnd you can say I did that. Yeah. And that’s damn good right there. Yeah. Okay. So, my final question. Okay.
1:03:151 hour, 3 minutes, 15 secondsWhat would you tell 15year-old you coming into the industry now wanting to do your job? Wow.
1:03:251 hour, 3 minutes, 25 secondsUh I’m not talking about you when when you were 15. I’m talking about a 15year-old who wants to be in that chair now in
1:03:331 hour, 3 minutes, 33 secondsthis business now. Like I mean I work with a lot of students. I I work with a lot of younger people. Mhm. is, you know, if you love what it is you’re
1:03:401 hour, 3 minutes, 40 secondsdoing, do it. The business is going to be what the business is. It’s going to change. It’s going to shift. Things are going to, you know, be shipped overseas
1:03:491 hour, 3 minutes, 49 secondsor they’ll come back or, you know, at one point all the business was going to leave and go to Canada and it came back to Los Angeles and it was Yeah.
1:03:571 hour, 3 minutes, 57 secondsGeorgia, etc., etc. I mean, we’re we’re in tough times right now. I know people who are top professionals who worked on amazing projects and they’re looking for work.
1:04:061 hour, 4 minutes, 6 secondsUm, but we’re artists. Do the art that makes you happy. You know, find people who are
1:04:141 hour, 4 minutes, 14 secondsmaking films and help them make those films better. Help them tell those st stories. You know, apply yourself to
1:04:211 hour, 4 minutes, 21 secondsthat. If it’s your path, it will make itself evident to you. I, like I said, this was the unintentional career. I never intended to be doing this.
1:04:301 hour, 4 minutes, 30 secondsWell, you know, what do they say? It’s, you know, that it’s it’s the doors that close and redirect you to other things and, you know,
1:04:381 hour, 4 minutes, 38 secondsyou find yourself. I mean, I would have never imagined the half the things that I’ve done, you know? Right. And yet, you know, here we are, right?
1:04:461 hour, 4 minutes, 46 secondsYeah. Yeah. And so now I’m looking at picture editing. I’m thinking, you know, maybe I’ll try not not to be not to be disingenuous and and say, you know, I be
1:04:551 hour, 4 minutes, 55 secondsflippant about the art of picture editing. Um, but you know, like I said, I come from story analysis. I come from an understanding of scripts.
1:05:051 hour, 5 minutes, 5 secondsUm, I actually studied cinematography for a while at the school of visual arts. Um, I’ve done a lot of things on set. I’ve done production sound. Not a lot, but enough to know what it’s about.
1:05:161 hour, 5 minutes, 16 secondsSo, but you work in media composer, and I hate media composer. Well, that’s just me.
1:05:221 hour, 5 minutes, 22 secondsI’m going to start Resolve is actually is what I’m going to start at. Thank you.
1:05:251 hour, 5 minutes, 25 secondsThat’s a little better. Yes, Resolve is good. Uhhuh. Yeah. Yeah.
1:05:291 hour, 5 minutes, 29 secondsSo, uh, I love it. It’s got to play well with ProTools. Fair enough. Yes. Yeah. Cool.
1:05:361 hour, 5 minutes, 36 secondsCharles Dayton, thank you for being my guest.
1:05:381 hour, 5 minutes, 38 secondsIt was a pleasure. I hope I didn’t talk your ear off. Well, you did, but that’s the job. You’re supposed to do that. Yeah. Yeah.
1:05:481 hour, 5 minutes, 48 secondsHey, I’m Daniel Keller. Don’t forget to hit the subscribe button and join us each week for Insights and Sound.

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