Contributors to this edition
Rosa Costanza Tyabji
Rosa Costanza Tyabji has worked for over a decade as a Sound Mixer, as a Boom Operator and as a Utility Sound Technician. She has worked on locations in North America, India & Africa. Rosa is also a producer of films, music videos and of Grammy-selected music albums. She co-owns and operates an independent record label (Limitless Sky) and publishing company. She is a voting member of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) and is a publisher-member of ASCAP and BMI. She is the third generation of her family to work in TV and film, and grew up immersed in the behind-the-scenes processes.
Peggy Names
Peggy Names picked up her first fishpole after graduating with an MFA from USC in 1975. She joined Local 695 in 1977 as the first female Boom Operator. During her career, she has worked as Boom Operator and Utility Sound Technician on many commercials and television shows, but her main area of expertise lies in motion pictures. Her credits include Oz the Great and Powerful, Alice in Wonderland, The Hangover Part II, Castaway, Minority Report and Enemy of the State. In December, Ms. Names was elected to her second term as Trusteeof Hollywood’s IATSE Local 695. She is retired now after thirty-nine years, but her son, Alex Names, is forging his own path in sound.
Jennifer Winslow
Jennifer Winslow became a member of Local 695 in 1990, after working as a Utility Technician on films in Los Angeles and Dallas, Texas. She has been a Boom Operator on feature films, commercials and episodic TV, and recently has been working as a Utility Technician, while she raises her (fourteen-year-old) twins. She has worked on many films, including Problem Child, Lone Star, Spiderman 2, and Be Cool. Her television credits include Chicago Hope, Cold Case, Star Trek Deep Space 9, The Pretender, 7th Heaven, Family Affair, The Secret Life of the American Teenager and The Neighbors. Jennifer holds a bachelor of arts from UMASS Amherst and a certificate in screenwriting from UCLA. She enjoys writing and is happy to be a contributor to the Quarterly.
Cabell Smith
Cabell began mixing in the 1970s in New York, beginning in news, moving to documentaries, then features and, after the birth of her two children, to commercials. She moved to California in 1991, retiring in 2006. She now divides her time between Los Angeles and the Virginia Piedmont, where she manages a farm. She has just finished writing her first book, a mystery set in central Virginia. Mindful of how much our technology has shrunk with the advent of handheld devices, the plot revolves around “a geeky female journalist detective and her smartphone!”
Mary Jo Devenney
Mary Jo Devenney has been a Boom Operator and Sound Mixer of films and TV shows for more than thirty years. She enjoys being paid to witness wonderful entertainment firsthand and being in a position to capture it for others.
David Waelder
David has recorded sound for films for several decades and has been an editor of the 695 Quarterly since its inception six years ago.
Photos courtesy of the respective contributors