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by Doug Miller

I worked in television production for thirty years. When somebody asks me how I got my job, I start the story with my grandfather, Harold V. Miller, and I begin around 1930 because ours is a multi-generational story.

My grandfather came to this country with his parents as a very young boy from London. He was an engineer son of a bike shop owner. By the time he was a young man, he had purchased a small movie theater on the west side of Los Angeles. It was during this time, he made friends with another engineer type who worked at Mitchell Camera Company. With his knowledge of gears and bike chains, he and his friend came up with an ingenious idea. With two paired stationary electric motors and two bike chains, he locked a 35mm film camera with a 35mm projector accurately enough to shoot the projection and have no frame line flicker. With the addition of a translucent screen and a rear projection, they could place talent in front of the screen, light them, and shoot them with a moving projected background. The process was cleverly called “Process,” more accurately known as “Rear Screen Projector/Camera Interlock.” When two such electric motors are wired correctly, they sit idle. Any movement applied to one is replicated exactly by the other. With one motor on the camera with gears and a chain and a second on the projector connected also with a chain to replicate the movement of the camera, the two are perfectly locked and can never drift. Growing up in a bike shop had paid off. His work was written about in Who’s Who around 1932. The invention would change the way movies were shot for the next eighty years.

He was forced into early retirement by cataracts of the eye that made him legally blind before his untimely death from a heart attack and stroke while on his first trip back to the UK in 1964. The seeds had been sewn, however, for my father to follow in his wake.

Growing up in La Cañada and running movies at The Montrose Theatre, my dad, Robert V. Miller, became a Projectionist at the tender age of sixteen. His love of the moving picture was second only to his love of sound recording. While the gig paid well, he eventually went on to get a degree in sound from Pasadena City College.

An older neighbor down the block heard of my dad’s love of projection and bequeathed an old machine to him upon his death. It was the second projector ever owned by Cecil B. DeMille. The old man had one stipulation. If they ever built a Hollywood museum, he was to donate that old 16mm with the shutter in front of the lens to the museum. I grew up in a house with that projector displayed prominently. When they finally moved the Lasky Barn from Paramount to the location across from the Hollywood Bowl, my dad followed through and donated it. It sits on the floor at The Hollywood Heritage Museum in a glass case, but it needs a plaque or something to explain its importance—something I have been meaning to correct for years.

After meeting my mother, Peggi McClain, who was an usher at The Montrose, they wed in 1960. He was committed to projection, but he really loved sound. His first few calls beyond The Montrose were at Paramount as a cable wrangler in the sound shop. One day while working as a daily there on Dobie Gillis, he heard that the old Process Gear on Stage One had failed and a feature was going to be shut down for months while they shipped it to Minnesota where the only living guy left who could fix it was located. Dad went over and fixed it on his lunch break. When the Projection Department heard what he did, they came to his stage and asked, “Hey kid … how the hell did you fix that so fast?”

“Well, my dad invented that.”

He was swiftly offered a weekly in projection, which he of course, accepted.

After a short time there, I was born into the family the first week of ’63. Little did they know at the time, how this business would continue in our family. My mother’s brother, Tom McClain, studied to be an Industrial Design Engineer at Long Beach State College. When he met my dad, he expressed a desire to learn the art of projection too. My dad showed him all about the simplexes and carbon lamphouses he loved so much and helped my Uncle Tom get a trial in the Projection Department at Paramount Studios. Tom tells the story as a trial by fire. He was in the projection booth and in comes a big pile of track and picture. After threading up two picture machines and two sound heads, about two minutes into running, he hears over the intercom “Next!” so off they come to the rewind bench while reel two is running and he threads up reel three just in time to hear “Next!” again. Off goes reel two and while three is now running, he loads up four … “Next!” This went on while he was sweating up there trying to keep up. Which he did. He was told it was Robert Evans out there saying “Next!” but he always suspected it was my dad, who informed him shortly after that he had a job at Paramount. My father went on to become Chief Engineer at Paramount and was responsible for about fifteen screening rooms and eventually, Head of the Projection Department. My uncle Tom’s humble career started at Paramount, which had him working around Orange County on daily calls running all kinds of screening rooms. He got quite good. He was running shows at The Miramar Theater in San Clemente when the new young theater owner wanted to do some rock & roll shows there. Tom jumped at the chance to help. He helped build the stage and install all of the lighting and the sound equipment. After a successful run of music shows and similar work at the Orange County Performance Center, he eventually joined Local 504, Orange County Stagehands. He then landed a job as Head of Sound at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, where he spent the next thirteen years. He would go on to be the go-to technical director for Disney when they came looking for someone with live rock show experience to help with some ambitious movie premier events. He worked with Disney as a freelancer for about ten years from Pocahontas in Central Park to Pearl Harbor on the deck of an aircraft carrier under way to Hawaii with a full orchestra and a giant screen that he designed to fold out of and back into a tiny box on the deck, complete with working curtains. Since then, he has done things for The Pentagon, a presidential inauguration, and even the opening and closing ceremonies of the Summer Olympic Games in China, but his favorite was The Concert for Valor in Washington, DC. He was tasked with drawing up, planning, and pulling off a concert for seven hundred thousand people at the Washington Monument.
As a kid, I loved art and learned how to make stained-glass windows with my dad and wire sculptures with a soldering iron in my hand. I also helped my friends who were talented musicians with their sound equipment at rehearsal halls in San Dimas. One of the first semipublic gigs I had was as a roadie for my friend Brian Duffield’s band, Tygress, when they had two shows in a rented hall on the outskirts of Whittier with an unsigned local band called Slayer. I didn’t find my calling for sound quite yet though. First, I took a job from music legend Ken Scott, who had worked on The Beatles White Album and later mixed for the likes of Supertramp, David Bowie, and so many others. At the time, he was bankrolling a Zappa spin-off band called Missing Persons and was also managing and recording them. He hired me to sell merch at gigs. I was a senior at Burbank High and just eighteen. This experience got me hired by Bill Graham at Winterland in San Fransico to sell merch on tour with Night Ranger, where I drove a rental truck full of T-shirts from gig to gig for nine months in 1984.

It was at these shows that I saw the sound engineers installing and mixing where I got the bug. T-shirts were sold in the lobby while the real fun was down in the house.

Shortly after my return from tour, my dad heard a friend named Charlie Massa had purchased what was left of “Quad Eight,” a sound company, and had moved it into a tiny building in Burbank. He had drawings and parts but needed somebody to solder stuff together. He hired me at minimum wage, about $4 an hour at the time. He handed me a power amplifier, pointed me to a wall of parts, and said, “Can you build me a dozen just like this one?”

I did.

After a year or so, he sent me to a Pro Audio dealer around the corner to get a sub-woofer for a system upgrade we were doing at the home of Barbra Streisand. Pro Audio Services and Supply Co. was in a famous old recording complex once known as Kendun Recorders. It had two full studios with large control rooms and two extra smaller rooms. In the ’70s, everyone from Stevie Wonder to Paul McCartney had recorded there but the gear was gone, repossessed a decade earlier, and the buildings had been emptying for years.

I started bugging the new owner, Bob Hacken, for a job. He had built his company selling new and used gear for music studios and now his plan was to find tenants for the rooms and to sell them new and/or used gear, along with a service contract. After many visits, he agreed to hire me. He told me he had rented the first and largest room and sold a big package, including a big Trident 80B mixing console. My first day would be the day that console arrived from England in a 9’ crate. He needed the help to move it. He and his tech, Mark Bonasara, had me soldering mic lines and Tuchel connectors for weeks. I was up to about $8 per hour and I was learning a ton. Warranty repair on Crown and Crest amps, outboard stuff like Lexicon and TC. and 2” 24-track tape machines, Studer, Ampex, 3M, and Otari. I learned about 1/4”, 1/2”, 1”, 2” tracks, 4 tracks, 8 tracks, 16, and 24. A few weeks after that first studio opened, I found a drummer I knew from the club scene in Hollywood just walking across the patio where I ate my lunch.

“Hey Steven, what are YOU doing here?” I asked.

“Dude, I got a $120,000 record deal, can you buy me and my friend Slash lunch?”

They were penniless local kids from the Hollywood club scene with a little-known local band called Guns N’ Roses. They had the studio for a thirty-day lockout to do guitars and vocals for their debut album, Appetite for Destruction. I will never forget when the studio owner, Steve Smith, found me outside and pulled me in a week later so he could play play me rough mixes of “Welcome to the Jungle” and “Paradise City” through that Trident 80B from the MTR90 2” Master.

“Wow, this room sounds good!”

Well, the mojo was there and the acts that followed over the next four years included Heart, Cheap Trick, Billy Idol, Jason Bonham, Roy Orbison, and so many others. Subsequently in another studio there called Red Zone, in which I installed an AMEK Angela mixing console, we saw Green Day’s debut Dookie, LA Guns, Steve Lukather, Warren Zevon, Slaughter, Kenny G, and Vanessa Williams fresh from her Miss America falling out. Around this time, I joined the Orange County Stagehands Local 54 so I could take gigs working with my uncle down at Irvine Meadows. I only worked on shows I wanted and only if they didn’t interfere with my job at Pro Audio. It was a fun few years.

Then it happened. My father asked me if I was ready to make a little more than $8 an hour. Some years earlier, his local had merged with a small group of sound folks who recorded actors on sets of features and TV. He took me to meet Mr. Wacter and, with my experience and some entrance dues paid, I was allowed into IATSE Local 695 and was looking for new work.

The next two years went by fast. I was playing ping-pong with Ann Wilson and drinking beers with Slash but still only up to about $8.50 an hour when Bill Harrington at Paramount needed somebody to make fifteen thousand feet of mic cables in a hurry. He and Dan Brewer at Tech Services on the Paramount lot had been providing sound and video tech to Cheers and a few other sitcoms when they picked up another and had to scramble. I called in sick to Pro Audio on a Wednesday in December of ’89 and reported to the basement of Paramount’s Stage 31. I made a boatload of cables that day with Canare Star Quad and a few hundred nice new black Neutrik XLR’s with gold pins. They liked my output and asked me to come back the next day, and the next. Then Bill asked me if I could be a maintenance person on a sitcom. My mind flashed to the day my parents had taken me to the studio to see an episode of the I Love Lucy show, the one where Lucy worked at the bank with Vivian Vance. I still remember looking up and seeing the Boom Operators waving their arms around up in the green beds and thinking, “hmmm ,that looks like fun. I bet I could do that.” I think I was about twelve. However, I had never seen inside the sound booth. He took me to Stage 25 to see the booth on Cheers. What looked like a little baby console to me, a Yamaha 1516, and a pair of reel-to-reel decks? Otari B2 1/4” and a 1/2” MRKIII4. I could fix a couple limiters I had installed dozens of and a patch bay I could wire easily. Oh, and there were some of my new XLR cables on the floor standing by.

All I said was, “Well, I am a warranty repair trained tech on both of those machines and this console looks like a toy to me. Is that it?”

I was in, he was down. I was on Dear John for two nice twelve-hour days a week and would make more than a week’s pay back at my soon to be “old job.” I had to break it to my boss in Burbank that I didn’t have the flu for three days like I had said I did. I went in on Monday to give my notice. He asked what my new rate was and thought maybe he could match it and keep me …. I told him.

I think he actually spit out his coffee and said, “I’m gonna miss you, Doug!”

I stayed there at Paramount, installing and maintaining the sitcom packages for seventeen seasons. In the process, I learned how to wrangle cables on cameras, what a PL system was, and how to install and repair that. I learned how to string Fisher booms and move perambulators around, how to run four channels of microwave video assist transmitters and monitors, how to install mic lines and PL’s and effect speakers in the green beds and how to install a dozen little shotgun mics to capture audience reactions. I saw ways to make installation and un-installation more efficient by replacing hundreds of single-line mic cables with multi-pin snakes and I re-wired the packages, a couple a year, for a couple years till I had them all the way I liked them. Most of this work was done in the summer when the shows and all the freelancers were on hiatus. The stages got new patch bays and new mic lines and eventually, we replaced all the reel to reels with High 8 Digital DA98 and the Sony version, which I liked better as it had separate XLR ins and outs over the “D” connector fanouts on the Tascams.

I got derailed a year after I started at Paramount when the unthinkable happened. Dan Brewer had a heart attack and died while playing tennis with his cardiologist. By then, we had our new packages at Paramount, Universal, Fox, and Disney. Dan had been the keeper of those sweet rental deals and most of them went away when he died. Our department lost half its business and I got laid off. I think it was about eighteen months before Randy Dixon told the new guys, Tom Bruhl and Frank Estrada, about me. I was working with my friend Jamie Sutton out of a storefront in Burbank, installing and repairing music studio gear for about half what I had been paid in the union. We got pretty famous for taking old beautiful Neve Mic Pre/EQ modules from older desks and racking them up. I built racks for The Rolling Stones and for Heart and a bunch of studios around the country that ended up being used by big names like Pantera, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and many others. We were restoring a big API for a studio in Seattle when I got the call from Frank Estrada at Paramount. They had picked up a couple sitcoms again and I was back!

I worked on Cheers, Coach, Major Dad, Frasier, Becker, and all the rest. All in all, about eighty shows in and eighty shows back out again. Pilots counted. For me they were just as much work as a show that hung around for years. I worked steady from ’92 until 2006, when Paramount closed our department and laid me off again, this time for good. I had been there seventeen years and was in deep shock when that happened. I figured I would never again smell the inside of a hot stage. I purchased a little mixer from a new company called Sound Devices and with a 416 and K-Tek pole, I worked for Entertainment Tonight, grabbing B-roll at parties and a few other odd gigs. There was a one-day call to run a small PA at the equestrian center near my house for Warner Bros. Then, I was asked by an AV company in Santa Monica if I wanted to mix a couple bands down at Olvera Street. I had mixed weddings and bands at backlot parties at Paramount hundreds of times, so I said sure. I figured it was the little concrete bandstand at the top of Olvera Street. The day of the event, as I was parking at Union Station, I turned around to see the whole park fenced off for an international televised music festival and party sponsored by Seagram’s with a huge stage and lighting truss. I was to mix three big bands from a tent three hundred feet from stage on a Digital Yamaha 5D. I was mixing for the cameras and had to follow along during sound check between the Front of House and The Monitor guy … in Spanish! I don’t speak Spanish. I also had to track it all on a 48-channel Pro Tools and 48-channel Tascam. The Pro Tools crashed 3/4 of the way through but the Tascam lived. So did I, somehow by the skin of my teeth. I grew a few gray hairs that day.

After starving for another year or so, I got called by Warner Bros. again to do the same one-day PA gig at the equestrian center. I worked with Steve Blumenfield again, only this time, I realized WB really needed to hire me. Mike Riner had taken the job as Department Head and needed to replace himself in engineering. I lobbied hard and he told me he’d call me if and when he could. While I waited, I took a gig for a company installing video conferencing equipment at Amgen in Thousand Oaks with my friend Mark Aragon. We were to upgrade three hundred fifty rooms at Amgen with HD projectors, cameras, and all new audio. Mark and I were on about our fourth room when I was over at Disney in Glendale measuring a room for an upgrade late on a Friday by myself when I got the call.

Mike from WB said, “Hey, I’m thinkin’ about bringin’ you in Monday.”

“What time do you need me?” I asked.
“To be there? 8:30.” I replied, “I’ll see you at 8:00!”

WB had DM2000 digital consoles on the sitcoms and they also had mobile wireless single-camera show packages with Cooper mixers that ran on batteries. Wow, I was back in school! With Mike’s help and the tutoring I got from Mitch Quinones and Ara Mkhitarayn, I learned the WB version of a sitcom package and all about the single-camera stuff too. Then I went to work, first rewiring all those single-camera carts and then all new everything for the sitcoms too. It took a long time to get everything the way I wanted it. Like before at Paramount, I was able to work on the packages during the summer hiatus. After a few more years, every package had new everything. The single-camera shows got rid of the Fostex PD4’s and the DB824’s and moved onto Sound Devices. In two years, we purchased twenty-four 788T 8-track decks and helped the manufacturer with testing software versions and getting the bugs out. Then all the sitcoms got new patch bays, multi-pair snakes between racks all connected with Elcos for quick disconnect. We also added a nice A/V tie line rack down on the camera isle and got some Sound Devices PIX270i for recording the audio masters and for HD video playback for the sitcoms. I had the packages all right where I wanted them. In 2020, we were starting to buy Sound Devices’ newest Scorpios and CL16. I was there for twelve seasons. From Two and a Half Men, Old Christine, Cold Case, and Without a Trace to The Big Bang Theory, Mike & Molly, Two Broke Girls, Mom, The Mentalist, Shameless, Lucifer, and Young Sheldon and all the others. Another eighty or so. What a ride!

I went out for a two-week medical leave that turned into six weeks. The very day I was ready to return was March 27, 2020; the day they locked the gate and closed Warner Bros. because of the coronavirus. By the time the studio re-opened about five months later in August 2020, I had moved my wife and kids to Maui and I never looked back.

Most people have a job they go to where they see the same four or five people every day and they become like family. I had fifteen stages each with at least twenty people I considered family. My family was hundreds of people. I spent all my time with them, ate all my meals with them, and they truly became my giant family. I love them and miss them and I am forever grateful to each of them for being professional and personal and for making my career what it was.

I was twenty-seven when I joined 695 and now, in 2022, my son Skyler is twenty-seven. He has dabbled with sound a few times, once even mixing a school play on a Mackie in high school. Now he wants to join the family business. Skyler has been in Seattle since college but is moving back to LA this summer to join Local 695. He plans to learn how to operate Fisher booms and peds with his sights set on sitcoms. He will be the fourth generation in my family to enter this crazy business and when somebody some day asks him how he got his job? His story will start in 1930 with my grandfather Harold, son of a bike shop owner, and his “Process.” The next chapters are yet to be written.

by James Delhauer

There is a famous quote from Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight in which Batman says, “You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”

When Nolan, his brother Jonathan, and David S. Goyer wrote this line, I doubt they expected it to be applied to the wonderful world of non-linear editing software.

But alas, life is funny and here we are.

Now as a disclaimer, the jurisdiction over post-production editing falls squarely with our Brothers, Sisters, and Kin in Local 700. However, for Local 695 Video Engineers, whose responsibilities on the set include media playback, off-camera recording, transcoding media with or without previously created LUT’s, quality control, and syncing and recording copies for the purpose of dailies creation, an understanding and utilization of non-linear editing technology is essential. With that out of the way, let’s talk some history.

The practice of digital non-linear editing began in 1989, when Avid Technologies released the Avid/1, a turnkey, all-in-one editing platform. Though crude by today’s standards, the original Avid represented a monumental leap forward in editing technology. Where editors had been required to manually cut their films throughout most of the twentieth century, the Avid/1 was the first time a computerized system was powerful enough to take on the task. In 1991, Adobe Systems released Adobe Premiere as a standalone competitor to Avid and, in 1998, Apple unveiled Final Cut Pro as their entry in the non-linear editing race. For more than a decade, these three were regarded as “The Big Three” of editing platforms. While Avid quickly became and remains the industry standard for cutting film and television projects in Hollywood, both Premiere and Final Cut Pro developed dedicated followings of their own.

During the period between 1998 and 2010, all three developers worked to incorporate features and quality-of-life improvements that would steal users away from one another. The user interfaces began to resemble each other more and more, while features praised in one platform soon found their way into the others. At the same time, however, each attempted to leverage its own unique strengths to go places where their competitors couldn’t follow. Avid’s software was supported by its vast array of hardware peripherals to achieve processing results far and above what Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere could manage. To close this gap, Apple began to develop its Mac Pro workstations specifically with Final Cut Pro optimization in mind. Adobe, with no hardware portfolio at its disposal, began to integrate Premiere Pro with its other suite of award-winning software, including industry standards like Photoshop and After Effects.

As a result, all three products saw some degree of use in the Hollywood creative sphere. Avid Media Composer has maintained a majority share of the userbase since its release, but Final Cut Pro began to see use on major productions as well. Films like the Coen brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou?, David Fincher’s The Social Network, and Anthony Minghella’s Cold Mountain (for which retired 695 member Walter Murch won the Academy Award for Best Editing) were all edited in Apple’s application, demonstrating its ability to compete in professional work environments. Premiere Pro, on the other hand, struggled to break into the professional market, gaining a reputation for being a prosumer grade product.

Then, in 2011, it seemed as though Apple dropped the ball. It had been two and a half years since Final Cut Pro version seven had released and the application was beginning to show its age. Even as Apple’s workstations migrated from 32-bit to 64-bit processing architectures, their software had not. A Mac Pro might have shipped with eight, sixteen, or even sixty-four gigabytes of RAM, but without rewriting the software to take advantage of the new architecture, Final Cut Pro couldn’t utilize more than four. Multicore processor threading had been poorly implemented, meaning that Apple’s software wasn’t fully leveraging the power of the Apple computers for which it was exclusively made. Moreover, the application was designed only to work with Apple QuickTime files, meaning that many modern camera formats simply weren’t compatible and required transcoding before use.

To be sure, these were issues that Avid and Adobe encountered as well, but their solutions had been to patch their software accordingly. Both programs were optimized for 64-bit computer systems and multicore threading, allowing them to fully utilize the hardware of whatever system on which they were installed. Additionally, although both programs had been optimized for specific file formats (Avid DNxHD and Apple ProRes files respectively), both could also import and work with a multitude of file formats while Final Cut could only make use of Apple QuickTime files. At this point, it seemed as though Apple had puzzlingly elected to fall behind its competition. And then came Final Cut Pro X. At NAB in 2011, Apple unveiled a new edition of their editing program and the editing world collectively lost its mind … and not in a good way.

Final Cut Pro X may have carried the Final Cut name, but on a fundamental level, it was a brand new and untested program.Allegedly, Apple had internally developed a working version of Final Cut Pro 8, but it was rejected for being “evolutionary, not revolutionary,” at which point their software engineers were tasked with creating a new program from the ground up. This new version of the software lacked many professional features that users had come to rely upon, was not backward compatible with previous Final Cut Pro projects, and did not integrate with most of the infrastructure that users had invested in to support Final Cut Pro editing. At the time, this decision to so drastically change their product was viewed as a major betrayal of trust. The backlash was so severe that the Stephen Colbert show even did a segment lampooning the new Final Cut in primetime.

Now until this point, Apple’s market share in the editing world had been growing. Their suite of editing applications were becoming popular with independent and low-budget filmmakers who couldn’t afford the infrastructure to support editing in Avid. Many considered them to be in second place in “The Editing Wars,” but the release of Final Cut Pro X changed that. Their market share amongst professional editors dropped and, to this day, they still have not recovered. Adobe, keen to capitalize on the situation, fast tracked an incremental update to Premiere Pro that included the option to switch keyboard commands and shortcuts to match those of the old Final Cut Pro and began offering the reduced upgrade pricing they typically offered to their own customers to Final Cut users. They even began publishing tutorials on how to import old Final Cut projects into a Premiere workflow, proving that they did a better job of offering legacy support for Apple’s product than Apple did. This was a crucial opportunity for them as a company and their bid was successful. Premiere quickly became a major player in the low-budget, independent, and web video editing worlds, replacing Final Cut Pro as the number two player in the race. Though not as widely used on major Hollywood blockbusters, it is currently estimated that Premiere has the largest market share of all three editing applications as of this article’s writing. They’ve inspired a passionate fanbase, myself among them, who argue their merits over other applications until we’re blue in the face.

But alas, I fear those days might be numbered as well.

You see, in 2012, Adobe made the controversial decision to switch from a purchase business model to a subscription one. The justification at the time was that this would give customers the ultimate user experience. Rather than waiting eighteen to twenty-four months to access new features via paid upgrades, Adobe could now churn out bug fixes, new features, and software updates all year long by distributing them online. A single $600 a year subscription (this was the price in 2012) that included Premiere and all of Adobe’s other creative design apps was cheaper than spending $2500 every two years on the Master Collection of the newest version of Adobe’s Creative Suite. And, in response to Final Cut Pro’s misstep, Adobe was quick to assure users that they’d never lose access to their software because older versions of the programs would be hosted on the new Adobe Creative Cloud server.

Well, it has been ten years since that decision was made and those marketing promises have aged like fine milk. In recent years, the company has been accused of feature stagnation between releases. Depending on how you look at it, their “cost-saving” perpetual subscription model can be far more costly while offering less value to users. For example, if I paid $2500 in 2011, I’d still own my license for Adobe Creative Suite today. But having now paid $6000 for Adobe products since 2012, if I miss a month’s payments, I am left with nothing. This is to say nothing of service outages, which have on occasion left users unable to utilize the software for which they’ve paid. Worst of all, in contrast to the company’s promise to maintain legacy versions of their software, Adobe is no longer hosting all previous entries of their applications on their server, meaning discontinued features can simply be lost to time. In fact, in 2019, I was among many Adobe users who received an alert from Adobe that my licenses to previous versions of their software had been terminated and that if I did not upgrade to the latest version, I could face civil action from third parties. That’s not a good look.

Why did this happen?

Well, when a company sells someone a perpetual license to their software, like Adobe did before 2012, that user has permanent access to that software. It doesn’t matter if the company loses the intellectual property rights to the software and can no longer sell it. The new software owners can’t invalidate your previous perpetual purchases. That isn’t the case with a subscription model though. A company can only license you subscription software for as long as they have the rights to do so and Adobe Premiere, a program that has been compiled over the course of thirty years, has a lot of third-party code that Adobe doesn’t own in its programming. That third-party code costs money for Adobe to include in each version of their software and, in order to avoid raising subscription costs, they have started to remove third-party code that supports older and no longer commonly used features. But since they’re no longer paying for that code, they can no longer legally distribute older versions of their software that utilized it, meaning that users have lost access to features for which they have already paid.

When I called Adobe’s customer service center in 2019 to express outrage for a lost feature (support for .mkv files in case you’re curious), the service rep simply said, “Sir, it’s Adobe’s prerogative to add or remove features as they see fit.”

Touché. I suppose that it is. However, removing features has caused another problem and this is where I see Premiere’s downfall in the coming years. As I said, this program has been compiled over the course of thirty years. New code has been dropped on top of old code for three decades. And by constantly adding and removing modules, “load bearing” code has been impacted. In recent years, Premiere Pro has garnered a reputation for being very unstable. Projects are prone to crashing even on the most expensive hardware, especially on the Windows port of the application. Adobe users, particularly power users, are beginning to spend a lot more time troubleshooting their software than using it and I say that from experience.

This is the outcome of the software as a Service Model. By locking themselves into annual subscription releases and out of distributing older versions of their own software, Adobe has cornered themselves into a position where their product is struggling and they can’t even refer customers back to older iterations of it to tide them over. The unstable versions of Premiere are now the only ones legally available to customers without searching for a pre-2012 used copy. This application is in desperate need of the time and resources needed to thoroughly debug it or, as an extreme solution, to be rebuilt in the same manner Apple rebuilt Final Cut Pro. Of course, I’d recommend avoiding a few of the pitfalls from that experience. But as it stands now, Premiere is becoming a less viable option for industry professionals—especially in light of the new kid on the block.

Originally released in 2004, DaVinci Resolve has joined Avid Media Composer, Apple Final Cut Pro, and Adobe Premiere Pro as the fourth member of the professional non-linear editing club. Though initially released as a color grading and finishing application, it has had all the features necessary to act as a standalone editing solution since 2014. What’s more, as the industry standard color grading application, this program has a host of features that go far and above its peers in that area. Plus, the application includes professional audio and visual effects tools that Avid, Apple, and Adobe all keep in secondary applications. This makes working in Resolve particularly appealing, as project workflows no longer require round tripping sequences of edited media from one application to another. Resolve users can simply click a button to move from the Editing tab to Visual Effects or Audio or Color tabs. Best of all is the application’s pricing. There are currently two iterations of Resolve on the market: DaVinci Resolve and DaVinci Resolve Studio. The standard edition is completely free and comes with the vast majority of the application’s feature set. Support for resolutions higher than ultra-high definition, frame rates higher than 60fps, high dynamic range color grading, GPU acceleration, advanced noise reduction, and several visual effects plugins are exclusive to the studio version of the program. However, these features are unnecessary for many users—including many Local 695 Video Engineers. Still, if the extra tools are needed, the Studio Edition of Resolve only costs $300 (or comes for free with the purchase of any Blackmagic Camera) and includes a lifetime of free upgrades. My DaVinci Resolve license from 2015 still allows me to use the latest version with all of its enhanced features without paying a cent to upgrade.

So with a new competitor in the mix, Adobe’s seeming apathy for their product’s own shortcomings and their much maligned pricing model might spell the end of their reign in the editing world. For my part, I’ve found myself launching Resolve more often than Premiere in the last year and I see little reason to revert back to my old workflows. Learning a new application always comes with some trepidation, but any member interested in learning more about any of these applications can take advantage of IATSE’s LinkedIn Learning (formerly Lynda.com) subscription. All IATSE members are eligible for this service, which includes thousands of educational courses and video tutorials across a wide variety of topics and subjects. For more information on how to take advantage of this service, contact your Local office.

From the Local 695

This article includes language and discussion surrounding the issue of reproductive rights and bodily autonomy in the United States, including issues of violence. Reader discretion is advised.

While the focus of our magazine is Sound & Video, ultimately, Local 695 is a labor union.
With our focus on the film industry and looking forward to how we can continue to improve wages and working conditions, it’s sometimes easy to overlook how far society has come in the fight for labor rights across many industries, especially with regards to the rights of women. A commercially produced birth control pill wasn’t approved by the FDA until 1960. The Equal Pay Act wasn’t signed into law until 1963. These improvements are so recent, and yet it is still so easy to take them for granted. All of the women who fought for their rights in the past would be elated to know that we currently have legal protections and birth control.

On June 3, 1900, seven Locals in New York City founded the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU), which became one of the largest labor unions in the United States during the 1900s. In 1909, they led a strike that became known as the “Uprising of 20,000.” This strike lasted for three months. At the time, it was the largest strike by women workers in US history. Some months after that, 60,000 male and female cloak makers walked out in a strike that was known as the “Great Revolt.”

In 1911, the conditions that many of the striking garment workers were protesting in the Uprising of 20,000 reared their ugly head in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. 146 garment workers died in the fire. A week later at a memorial, union leader Rose Schneiderman was quoted as saying, “I would be a traitor to these poor burned bodies if I came here to talk good fellowship… Too much blood has been spilled. I know from my experience, it is up to the working people to save themselves. The only way they can save themselves is by a strong working-class movement.”

New York wasn’t the only place in which women were labor leaders. In Chicago, on September 22, 1910, 18-year-old Ukrainian immigrant Hannah “Annie” Shapiro led a walkout at HSM Shop No. 5 (a men’s garment factory). The strike lasted until February 1911, and at its peak had 40,000 workers on the strike line. Initially, some male garment workers and the United Garment Workers of America (UGWA) were hesitant to support a women-led strike. Years later, Hannah was quoted as saying, “We all went out; we had to be recognized as people.”

Today, we are back at a turning point in both labor history and the rights of people whose bodies can bear children. With the overturning of Roe v. Wade, our autonomy and ability to have careers, participate in the labor force, and just make decisions about our own bodies is once again in question. We are back to the time in 1910 when we were just asking to be recognized as people. We ask that our Brothers in the Local stand with us without hesitation; that they move more swiftly in support than men in the past. To that end, below are statements from the Women’s Committee that lay out just how impactful this decision is on our lives. Please listen to their words and stand at our sides.

It is easy to be discouraged. It is easy to feel defeated. It would be easy to give up. But Dobbs v. Jackson will not be the final word on this issue. Right now, people who believe in reproductive rights and bodily autonomy all over the world are fighting to reverse this injustice. We need to join together and get organized if we are to see our rights restored. So I am asking that everyone reading get involved. There are several organizations in need of support. I’ve extended mine to Women’s March, Planned Parenthood, the Center for Reproductive Rights, and the ACLU. All of these organizations are in need of donations and volunteers. Women’s March in particular has several amazing ways to get involved, including petitions, government correspondence, and phone/text banking initiatives. There is no contribution of either time or money that is too small, but at the very least, please get out and vote. Tell everyone you know to vote and help get out the vote in states where reproductive rights are under threat. There is so much that we can do. Do not be discouraged. We are not defeated. We will not give up.
–Anna Wilborn

Witch trials. Historically when a woman spoke out, she was burned at the stake for witchcraft. It was a quick and simple way to control a woman. Today, we are reverting to a draconian time of archaic rules and laws; laws designed to squelch the voices of women and our allies, same as the burning of a witch. As of last month, a person with a uterus can be jailed for exerting control over her/their body. Overturning Roe v. Wade will kill women. Don’t be naïve. They will find a way to end an unwanted pregnancy, and it will be disastrously unsafe.

I feel enraged, disappointed, and embarrassed about this moment in US history. Mostly I feel frightened for the future. Where will this lead? We live in a country that claims to protect us, to provide Liberty and Justice for ALL… Just as long as you ALL don’t have a uterus. We need to vote and voice our disgust at this blatant disregard to 51% of our population’s freedom. Take back control by showing up at the polls. Register to vote, and elect pro-choice, pro-women, pro-diversity, and pro-LGBTQ+ candidates.
This has gone far enough. Stop the apathy, get out this November and VOTE!
–Jennifer Winslow, Local 695 Women’s Committee Chair

The overturning of Roe v. Wade is something out of a nightmare for women and girls in this country.

I suppose in my youth while not exactly taking it for granted, I didn’t ever expect it to happen.

What this says to me is that our government doesn’t care about women. We don’t matter. We’re incapable of minding our own bodies and lives. It’s inhumane. What’s even scarier are the other attacks and setbacks that are coming under the guise of doing what’s just and best for Americans. We all work so hard. Now we must work and fight harder to change this nation into what it should be; a place where we all have freedoms to live our lives as we see fit and to all be treated fairly and with dignity.
That’s not too much to ask for, is it?
–Heidi Nakamura

While living in South Africa, I personally witnessed a 12-year-old child, who was raped by an “uncle” (no charges were ever filed), have to endure a full-term pregnancy. I watched as she went from someone I would ride bikes and climb trees with to a quiet, confused, scared little human who was forced to endure something that even adult women have a hard time with. As if the rape wasn’t bad enough. In my young mind, I couldn’t wrap my brain around how her little body could give birth to another human. Wasn’t this meant for grown-ups? 

In South Africa, where abortions are legal in cases such as this, most couldn’t afford it even IF a woman had access to a doctor who would agree to perform the procedure. It was hard enough as a white South African, but this and so many other young girls who are rape victims were black, just as my little friend was. She also had the added pressure of the church and their view on abortion. Women, especially black women, had no rights in South Africa, especially Black females. I remember my mom trying to explain this to me. We were both disgusted and saddened by this, but there was nothing we could do. 
Sadly, not much has changed.

And so she gave birth. It destroyed her little body, after which they took the baby away for adoption since her family could not afford to care for another child. The little girl I played with became a shell of her former self. I can’t even begin to describe the effect this had on me. It made me angry at the adults who allowed this to happen, angry at the churches who allowed this to happen, and angry at the medical professionals who allowed this to happen. I have not stepped foot inside a church except for a wedding or two since then. Surely this can’t happen in the USA? Right? And yet, here we are. How is that possible?? 
That experience has always stuck with me, and after immigrating to the States, I never would have believed this would become our reality. And yet, here we are, giving away our rights, quietly shaking our heads in disgust while we ponder on what will happen next.
It saddens me. It makes me very afraid for not only the women in our country, but for all our human rights here. Where do we go from here? 
–Yvette Marxer

It’s incredibly alarming that a 10-year-old (child) victim of rape had to travel from Ohio to Indiana to receive an abortion. That’s really gut-wrenching. A huge middle finger to Amy Comey Barrett especially. You’re a woman for f**k’s sake. And Clarence Thomas is a piece of work. He now wants to remove the right to have access to contraception, the right for consenting adults to enjoy the privacy of their home, and the right to same-sex marriage. He however omits Loving v. Virginia (the right to interracial marriage) as he is married to a white woman. While I wholeheartedly would hate for ANY of these rulings to be overturned, his selective self-serving process is pretty insidious. I suppose it’s too idealistic on my part to feel that our Supreme Court should rule from a place of compassion and empathy. MoveOn.Org has issued a petition to have him impeached. I have signed it. We really cannot move backward, but it’s pretty frightening to feel as though we are.
–Misty Conn

The day Roe was overturned was an exceptionally hard day on set. So many of us just lost human rights in this country in between camera setups.
When the abortion debate arises, we relive our trauma & that of our loved ones who’ve gone through it. I learned some co-workers had been raped and had abortions because they needed someone to talk to. Then they sucked it up before being called into set.
The crew asked for someone to say something, simply thanking us for working through a challenging day, but we were left with nothing to address what just happened. It’s grotesque to push forward as if we aren’t connected to the world outside of a film set. The work like a robot mentality is entirely connected to the issues we fought for in 2021.
I hope our union brethren recognize the pain and suffering of those losing their rights in this country as this Supreme Court tears us apart.
–Heather Fink

When I found out Roe v. Wade was overturned, unfortunately, I wasn’t shocked. Ever since the 2016 election results, I have been slowly saddened by the choices of this country and lack of empathy for each other. It seems over the years, the America I want to believe in does not and never has existed. Over the last few days of processing the court’s decision, I can honestly say I feel victimized and violated. To be told by our Supreme Court that I don’t have a right to my body, and that it’s up to how people vote in the state I live in, whether or not I can continue a pregnancy, feels as if I have an audience in my bedroom. The fact that a man can forcibly impregnate me and I could be forced to carry it to term, causing further trauma; makes me feel subhuman. I fear for my daughter who will come to maturity in the world. We have a medical right to privacy (HIPAA), and a person’s choice to medically remove a pregnancy is no one’s business but their own. I saw a group of women holding signs near my home to end abortion in California. One of the signs read, “I regret my abortion” and for her, I am sorry she regrets the choice she made, but at least she had a choice. Why should I be robbed of my ability to make a choice because of someone else’s feelings? I shouldn’t. 
–Alexis Schafer

Making abortion illegal is unconscionable and barbaric. Women are equal to men. We deserve respect and support not condemnation. There are a multitude of reasons why a woman must consider an abortion. Being forced to carry a child that was conceived through incest, sexual assault, and rape needs to be illegal. Being forced to carry a child that will cause detrimental health issues or even death to the mother is incomprehensible. Why is there not more concern about the man’s responsibility and accountability for their part in pregnancy. And why are there not harsher laws and condemnation for men who have committed sexual crimes. It has been revealed that many of the supporters that aided in the overturning of Roe v. Wade have used abortion as an option when it was inconvenient for them to bring a child into this world because of their stature. This is appalling and horrific.
–Jessica Bender

I am writing my representatives and supporting putting term limits on the Supreme Court justices. I feel it is the only way, besides voting, that we can have any control of our system of government.
–Michelle Wolf

The damage done by the Trump administration continues long after the grifter in chief was fired. Outlawing abortion only stops safe abortion. Now more women will be killed as they’re driven underground to seek the procedure through unsafe and unregulated means. They will also be murdered by men that don’t want the baby. This is only the first right these Republican religious zealots want to take away, more will follow. Separation of church and state is more important than ever. We must march, we must vote, and most importantly, we must not allow these zealots to take away our rights. If you don’t believe abortion is moral, don’t have one. You do not get to force your religious beliefs on anyone else’s choices. The only thing coming out of my womb is dust, but think of your daughters and granddaughters being forced to birth an unwanted child and get as mad as I am so we can stop this madness. 
–Carrie Sheldon

The struggle for 695 to receive enough statements is reflective of the history of violent terrorism by the “pro-life” movement. People are afraid to speak. It also reveals the true intent of anti-abortion groups. Women’s work doesn’t end when she clocks out, but continues at home with childcare. More children at an earlier age equals less free time and money—or, more succinctly, less power. The gender pay gap was recently defended “for people taking time out to, you know, birth children.” 
These statements are meant to disempower. 

Saying that victims of rape can’t get pregnant or that abortion causes infertility and mental illness is meant to misinform. Anti-abortion laws are created without exceptions for rape and incest, along with allowing manslaughter and murder charges against women who experience miscarriage. Tennessee now wants to allow a father to veto an abortion. So, a rapist could force his victim to carry his baby. This is all meant to terrorize.
Taken in total, “pro-life” is not pro-life. If it were, then they would care that the US has some of the highest infant and maternal death rates, uninsured, mass shootings, hunger, and poverty. “Pro-life” is a campaign to take power and freedom from half of the population. What comes next?
–Anonymous

New Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has elected its new Gubernatorial Board, with Local 695 member Peter Devlin becoming the newest Governor of the Sound Branch. This historic election marks the first time in 92 years that a Production Sound Mixer has been chosen for this prestigious position.Governor Devlin is a talented Sound Mixer and an excellent choice to represent one of our crafts within the Academy. Congratulations, Peter. I’d also like to extend my congratulations to all the newly minted members of the Academy from Local 695, including Douglas Axtell, Amanda Beggs, David Husby, Paul Ledford, and Edward Tise. These are exemplary members of the Local and our craft will be in good hands with them representing production sound and its interests within the Academy.

IATSE Education

The IATSE provides a multitude of continuing education opportunities for its members.

LinkedIn Learning (formerly Lynda.com) is an excellent source of online training tutorials covering topics such as Avid Pro Tools, Media Composer, Adobe Premiere Pro, Photoshop, After Effects, Illustrator, Rhino, Vectorworks, Final Cut Pro, FileMaker, AutoCad, Cubase, Logic Pro, Shot Put Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Vegas Pro, as well as Project Management, Software Development, Network Administration, Finance and Accounting, Marketing and much more. All IATSE members are eligible to sign up for a free LinkedIn Learning Account by visiting
https://www.iatsetrainingtrust.org/lil.

You can also view a multitude of free educational webinars sponsored by the IA Training Trust Fund online at www.gotostage.com/channel/iaeducationforall. These webinars cover a range of topics from labor and voting rights; the basics of equity, diversity, and inclusion; mental health subjects such as depression, substance abuse; physical safety and well-being at work; and so much more.

Safety Bulletin #35

As the summer heat sweeps the Southland, all members must take precautions to prevent heat-related injury and illness. For those who may not be aware, the Joint Safety Committee of Labor and Management issued Safety Bulletin #35, a notice pertaining to Safety Considerations for the Prevention of Heat Illness. All members working on location in the coming months are advised to keep a copy of this safety bulletin on hand in order to present it to producers if unsafe conditions arise. You can also anonymously report unsafe conditions to the IATSE Safety Hotline, which can be reached toll-free at (844) 422-9273.

COVID-19 Return to Work Agreements

The COVID-19 Return to Work Agreement, which was set to expire on July 15, has been extended to September 30 of this year in light of the current BA.5 variant spread. All vaccination, testing, and masking protocols shall remain in effect until that time. The subject of another extension will be considered nearer to the current expiration date in order to assess the state of COVID-19 spread at that time.

Late & Unreported MPI Hours

The Local has received complaints of late and unreported MPI Plan hours. All members are encouraged to check their MPI accounts through the MPI website. If any hours appear to be missing, you can call the support line at (818) 769-0007, ext. 2381 or email support at CPParticipantInquiries@mpiphp.org

Update Skills in Membership Directory

Following last year’s website rebuild, the membership profiles were reset and many of the profiles in the directory are still empty. The Membership Directory can be a powerful tool for finding work when used correctly. Everyone is advised to log into the Local 695 website to update their information in the director  and their status in the Available of Work list so that they can be recommended for work as needed.

In Memoriam

Arthur Golden – Y-8
April 2, 1926 – May 8, 2022

Doug Ensbury – Y-7a
May 15, 1964 – July 8, 2022

New Members

Local 695 Welcomes its New Members

Jordan Shafer Y-7
Masao Maehara Y-8
Vadym Medvediuk Y-16A
Andrew Davis Y-4
Chris Tappy Y-1
Benjamin Frausto-Rodriguez Y-7
Marlon Clark Y-1
Erik Bakhshi Projectionist
Tony Garcia Y-4
Oscar Alva Y-16A
Danita Clark Y-9
James Devore Y-1
Peter Song Y-4
Juan Marquez Y-7

Transfer Member
Judy Marks (Local 600) on June 3, 2022

James Delhauer

James Delhauer was born in Southern California and never made it very far from home. Since 2014, he has worked as a television engineer specializing in Pronology’s mRes platform. He joined Local 695 because he desperately needed friends. James is Co-editor of Production Sound & Video.

George Flores CAS

A Southern California native and a Local 695 member since 1995, George Flores CAS worked his way up from Utility Sound Technician to Boom Operator to Production Mixer. A member of the Cinema Audio Society and the Television Academy, some of his credits include Dexter, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Parks and Recreation, and NCIS.

Doug Miller

Doug Miller was born in Burbank, worked in recording studios before stumbling into television in 1989. After many years at Paramount and almost as many at Warner Bros. he retired to Maui, Hawaii, during the pandemic but misses working so hard and for the right price…

Thomas Pesa

Thomas Pesa is part of a collective of Local 695 audio Brothers and Sisters who regularly pull off some of the biggest live TV special events and TV award shows. He has navigated a thirty-plus-year career in live sound that has garnered him eight Creative Arts Emmy Awards and twelve nominations.

Yohannes Skoda

Yohannes Skoda is a proud IATSE 695 Member. He works as a Boom Op, a Utility, and a perennial flower giver.

Ric Teller

I’ve been very fortunate in my more than forty years working in television, going places and doing things that a kid from a small town in Nebraska could not have imagined.

It has been a busy summer, meaning we’ve got a lot for you in this fall issue of our magazine. Ric Teller’s back with another edition of “Ric Rambles,” where he discusses his experiences working as an A2. Doug Miller, a third-generation Local 695 member, shares the story of his father and grandfather’s contributions to the union. Thomas Pesa gives us some insight into the process or monitoring live sound during broadcast events shows. George Flores shares his journey from Day Player to Production Mixer on NCIS. I share my thoughts on the current offerings in the world of non-linear video editing software. Y-16A Graduate Yohannes Skoda reflects on his time in the Local 695 Trainee Program and tells us about his budding career as a Y-7A Utility Sound technician. And last, but certainly not least, we hear from the Local 695 Women’s Committee regarding the Supreme Court’s ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade and take a look at the ramifications this decision will have. It’s a full issue to be sure.

In Solidarity,

James Delhauer and
Richard Lightstone CAS AMPS

If you have never been to the Academy Museum, stop reading this article, buy a ticket, and go. I’ll wait.

Now that you’ve presumably done that, you can understand how special the museum is to me. Whenever I visit, I am immersed in the rich history of the industry in which I’ve built my life, my love, and my career. To look at the actual ruby slippers that Judy Garland wore in The Wizard of Oz or read the handwritten notes Gregory Peck scribbled on his script for To Kill a Mockingbird is to see history alive before my very eyes. It’s powerful. It’s profound. It takes something that is larger than life and makes it a tangible part of my own. I love the Academy Museum.

But the Museum isn’t just the artifacts preserved there or the exhibitions meant to take us back in time. It’s also the people. It’s the presenters, lecturers, preservationists, ticket takers, vendors, and custodians that keep the place open for the rest of us. Every day, some two hundred people get up and go to work running and maintaining this temple of film preservation. Like everyone reading this column, these people have their own lives to support. Some are single parents. Some are young people struggling to find their place in the world. Some have come to Los Angeles from other countries to make better lives for themselves and their families. But all of them care deeply about the mission and work of the Academy Museum.

Now these workers have come together with a mission statement: “It is because we believe in this institution that we are forming our union—Academy Museum Workers United.”

Unfortunately, after securing the majority support needed to gain representation from the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences initially chose not to voluntarily recognize the workers as a collective bargaining group. This was surprising, given the fact that the Academy’s Board, the Museum’s Board, and much of the Museum’s membership is comprised of members of the IATSE, WGA, DGA, SAG-AFTRA, and the Teamsters. The trappings of union membership have been made available to these people and they’ve benefited from their union status throughout their careers. To deny the same opportunities to people who work to maintain an embodiment of the history and grandeur of our industry is not Solidarity.

We use that word a lot: Solidarity. But what does it mean? In a nation that is more divided than any time since the Civil War, what does it mean to stand in Solidarity with our Brothers, Sisters, and Kin? To me, it has always been a pledge. When we take our Oaths of Membership, we commit to fight for one another because we believe in the principles and opportunities that unions represent. We agree to stand with all workers who wish to belong to a union so they have a voice in their place of employment. We stand with our fellow members when their rights and conditions are threatened because we recognize that while our own might not be under threat today, they might be tomorrow. We take care of one another so that there will be someone to take care of us when our time comes.

As it happens, the Academy employs various members of Local 695 in their capacity as Projectionists. I would like to give a personal shoutout to member Spencer Christiano, who took up the fight in support of the Academy Museum workers. These Projectionists are bound and protected by the existing Local 695 Collective Bargaining Agreement and therefore would not have been directly impacted by the Academy’s decision not to recognize the AFSCME status of its Museum employees. Still, with nothing to gain on a personal level, Spencer chose to stand up in support of his peers because it is kind, it is decent, and above all, it is right. His efforts, in conjunction with the efforts of countless others, helped to reverse the Academy Museum’s position in this matter. This is the sort of Solidarity that makes unions the force for good that they can be in the world and it is the sort of Solidarity we will need going into 2024 and beyond.

The Academy Museum’s decision was not one of Solidarity and I applaud them for recognizing this and changing their stance. As of July 12, the Academy Museum Workers United and AFSCME Council 36 have begun putting together a bargaining unit to negotiate their first contract with the Museum. I stand in support of the workers of the Academy Museum. By standing in true Solidarity with our fellow unions, we uphold the very strength of what it means to be in a union, gain allies in our battle for better livelihoods, and strengthen one another through mutual cooperation.

In Solidarity,

Scott Bernard, Business Representative
scottb@local695.com

Let’s talk about the Supreme Court.

As I write this article, I am hours away from recording one of the largest 4th of July firework shows in the country. I am front and center in the heart of Americana. This is my favorite holiday. From a very young age, I’ve loved everything about it. The festivities and traditions are over-the-top and beautiful, the food is fantastic, and we get to watch things blow up in the sky. There really isn’t anything more American than that. This year, it has been a little harder to feel patriotic when Independence Day rolled around.

On June 24, when the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling broke, I was sitting in the Hollywood Burbank Airport, on my way to represent Local 695 at the District 2 Convention in San Francisco. I found myself raging as I paced through the terminal, trying to make sense of this situation. How could we fix this? How could we make it right? Eventually, I fell back on a question I usually ask myself when I’m feeling stuck.

What would Ruth Bader Ginsburg do?

In trying to find the answer to this question, I was astounded to learn that the late Justice Ginsburg was a vocal critic of the Roe v. Wade ruling. To be sure, she remained a vocal proponent of reproductive rights until the day that she died, but to my surprise, she had her own grievances with the ruling. She felt that the Supreme Court of 1973 had been remiss in ascribing the right to reproductive freedom as being enshrined in the Constitution’s limited Right to Privacy, believing instead that that right fell within the purview of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. Had the court ruled on the basis of Equal Protection, the rights protected by their ruling may have been more insulated from legal challenge.

She also argued that at the time of Roe v. Wade’s ruling, the country was in a state of fluidity. The nation was undergoing a philosophical realignment at the time. Her theory held that if we had left the issue of legalization of rights to incremental change at its natural pace rather than the abrupt, hardline stance that Roe v. Wade imposed upon all state rights, the country may have adapted to the change better and this issue may not have become as polarizing a subject as we know it to be today. There is a lot to be learned from Justice Ginsburg’s lectures on the subject.

My personal takeaway from this has been to re-evaluate my own approach to progress and change.

• Perhaps our first approach to securing and maintaining our freedoms is not the best strategy or method to do so.

• Perhaps we need to pause and consider all angles before we approach a means to cement our new and changing ideologies about the freedoms we hold important to us. This includes inviting all sides of the argument, with everyone benefiting from productive discourse.

• And when we strategize, we examine each and every path to our end goal. We need to evaluate how it will be challenged in the future, which includes stretching our brains to think of future forward policies as our country continues to evolve forward.

The loss of reproductive freedom in this country has shone a spotlight on the fact that our victories, no matter how seemingly secure, are not. There is no ruling that cannot be challenged. There is no right so sacred that it cannot be brought under attack. When we fight, it must be with the understanding that we will need to continue to defend our victories and remount challenges against our defeats.

But more importantly, as we examine each and every path to our end goal, we need to evaluate how it will be challenged in the future. We must go beyond simple victory or defeat and stretch our thinking to include policies, procedures, and protections that will enshrine our victories for years to come as our country continues to evolve forward.

The most valuable aspect of defeat is the lesson we can learn from it. At the District 2 Women’s Event on the night of the Dobbs v. Jackson ruling, a well-seasoned member of a fellow Local confided in me she was too tired to fight for the legalization of abortion again. She had given everything to the fight when she had been younger and didn’t feel that she had the strength to go through it all again. I could tell that she was overwrought with emotion and this defeat was quickly taking a toll upon her. Rather than asking her to rejoin a battle she’d long since thought settled, I asked her to make me a promise. I said that while she might feel too old and tired to fight, the next generation—my generation—still needed the wisdom that veterans of the cause like her had to offer. By studying the last generation’s fight for reproductive freedom and how we arrived as this devastating defeat, we can come back, renew the fight, and win a ruling that does more than Roe v. Wade ever did to enshrine our rights in this country. So, I asked her to “help me find a way to stop this from happening again.” And through tears, she nodded her head and affirmed me she was in.

This is no different at the union Level. What we win at the bargaining table can be lost at the ballot box, and vice versa. As we approach our next round of contract negotiations in 2024, Local 695 will be putting together a group of committees designed to look at specific contract points. We’re going to try new approaches to fighting for better terms and conditions for all of our members. We will work together as members and leadership to build forward-facing, long-term strategies for success. On my end, I will be asking each of these committees to use the above thought processes to help create the best strategies for our negotiating points to bring to the International for bargaining.

The record button is aglow and our fireworks show is being safely recorded. The sound of the fireworks is thunderous as the vibration hits the walls of our broadcast truck. The rage I felt in the airport is subsiding and converting itself into explosive determination. It’s time to start strategizing both at a federal and a local level.

Sisters, Brothers, & Kin, who is with me?

Jillian Arnold
President