Features

Reprint from
International Sound Technician March 1953 Issue

Overview

The past ninety years of sound recording for motion picture production has seen a steady evolution in regards to the technologies used both on set and in studios for post production. Formats used for recording sound have changed markedly over the years (with the major transitions being the move away from optical soundtracks to analog magnetic recording, and from analog magnetic to digital magnetic formats, and finally, to file-based recording). Along with these changes, there has been a steady progression in the mixing equipment used both on set for production sound, as well as re-recording. Beginning with fairly crude two input mixers in the late 1920’s, up to current digital consoles boasting ninety-six or more inputs, mixing consoles have seen vast changes in both their capabilities and technology used within. In the article, we will take a look at the evolution of mixing equipment, and how it has impacted recording styles.

In The Beginning

If you were a production mixer in the early 1930’s, you didn’t have a lot of choices when it came to sound mixing equipment. For starters, there were only two manufacturers, Western Electric and RCA. Studios did not own the equipment. Instead, it was leased from the manufacturers, and the studio paid a licensing fee for the use of the equipment (readily evidenced by the inclusion of either “Western Electric Sound Recording” or “Recorded by RCA Photophone Sound System” in the end credits). Both the equipment, as well as the related operating manuals, were tightly controlled by the manufacturers. For example, Western Electric manuals had serial numbers assigned to them, corresponding to the equipment on lease by the studio. These were large multi-volume manuals, consisting of hundreds of pages of detailed operating instructions, schematics, and related drawings. If you didn’t work at a major studio, there is no way you would even be able to obtain the manuals (much less comprehend their contents).

Early on, both Western Electric and RCA established operations that were specifically dedicated to sound recording for film, with sales and support operations located in Hollywood and New York. Manufacturing for RCA was done at its Camden, NJ, facilities. Western Electric opted to do its initial manufacturing at both the huge Hawthorne Works facility on the south side of Chicago, as well as its Kearny, New Jersey, plant. These facilities employed thousands of people already engaged in the manufacturing of telephone and early sound reinforcement equipment, as well as related manufacturing of vacuum tubes and other components used in sound equipment.

The engineering design for early sound equipment was done by engineers who came out of sound reinforcement and telephony design and manufacturing, as these areas of endeavor already had shared technologies related to speech transmission equipment. (Optical sound recording was still in its infancy at this stage though, and required a completely different set of engineering skills.)

With the rapid adoption of sound by the major studios beginning in April 1928 (post The Jazz Singer), there was no time for manufacturers to develop equipment from the ground up. If they were to establish and maintain a foothold in the motion picture business, they had to move as quickly as possible. Due to the high cost and complexities of manufacturing, engineers were encouraged by management to adapt existing design approaches used for broadcast and speech reinforcement equipment, as well as disc recording, to the needs of the motion picture business. As such, it was not unusual to see mixing and amplifier equipment designed for broadcast and speech reinforcement show up in a modified form for film recording.

Examples of these shared technologies are evident in nearly all of the equipment manufactured by both RCA and Western Electric (operating under their Electrical Research Products division). While equipment such as optical recorders and related technology had to be designed from the ground up, when it came to amplifiers, mixers’ microphones and speakers, manufacturers opted to adapt what they could from their current product lineup to the needs of the motion picture sound field. This is particularly evident in the equipment manufactured by RCA, which had shared manufacturing facilities for sound mixing equipment, microphones, loudspeakers and related technology used in the broadcast and sound reinforcement fields.

It was not unusual to see equipment originally designed for broadcast (and later, music recording) show up in the catalogs of equipment for film sound recording all the way through the early 1970’s.

Design Approaches

While the amplifier technology used in early sound mixing equipment varied somewhat between manufacturers, much of the overall operational design philosophy for film sound mixers remained the same all the way up through the mid to late 1950’s, when the stranglehold that RCA and Western Electric had on motion picture business began to be eaten away by the development of magnetic recording. (The sole standout being Fox, who had developed its own Fox-Movietone system.) New magnetic technologies (first developed by AEG in Germany in 1935), began gaining a foothold after the end of WWII, and players such as Ampex, Nagra, Magnecord, Magnasync, Magna-Tech, Fairchild, Stancil-Hoffman, Rangertone, Bach-Auricon, and others began to enter the field. Unlike RCA and Western Electric, these manufacturers were willing to sell their equipment outright to studios, and didn’t demand the licensing fees that were associated with the leasing arrangements of RCA and Western Electric.

Despite these advances, RCA and Western Electric were still the major suppliers for most film sound recording equipment for major studios well into the mid-sixties and early seventies, with upgraded versions of their optical recorders (which had been developed at significant cost) in the late 1940’s still being used to strike optical soundtracks for release prints. Both RCA and Western Electric developed “modification kits” for their existing dubbers and recorders, whereby mag heads and the associated electronics were added to film transports, thereby alleviating the cost of a wholesale replacement of all the film transport equipment. Much of this equipment remained in use at many facilities up until the 1970’s, when studios began taking advantage of high-speed dubbers with reverse capabilities.

The 1940’s

After the initial rush to marry sound to motion pictures, the 1940’s saw a steady series of improvements in film sound recording, mostly related to optical sound recording systems and solving problems related to synchronous filming on set, such as camera noise, arc light noise, poor acoustics, and related issues. In 1935, Siemens in Germany had developed a directional microphone which provided a solution to sounds coming from off set.

Disney also released the movie Fantasia, a groundbreaking achievement that featured the first commercial use of multi-channel surround sound in the theater. Using eight(!) channels of interlocked optical sound recorders for the recording of the music score and numerous equipment designs churned out by engineers at RCA, it can safely be said that the “Fantasound”  system represented the most significant advance in film sound during the 1940’s. However, except for the development of the three-channel (L/C/R) panpot, the basic technology utilized for the mixing consoles remained mostly unchanged.

Likewise, functionality of standard mixing equipment for production sound saw few advances, except for much-needed improvements to amplifier technology (primarily in relation to problems due to microphonics in early tube designs). Re-recording consoles, however, began to see some changes, mostly in regards to equalization. Some studios began increasing the count of dubbers as well, which required an increase in the number of inputs required. For the most part, though, the basic operations of film sound recording and re-recording remained as they were in the previous decade.

The 1950’s

While manufacturers such as RCA and Western Electric attempted to extend the useful life of the optical sound equipment that they had sunk a significant amount of development money into, by the late 1950’s, the technology for production sound recording had already begun making the transition to ¼” tape with the introduction of the Nagra III recorder. Though other manufacturers such as Ampex, Rangertone, Scully, RCA, and Fairchild had also adapted some of their ¼” magnetic recorders for sync capability, all of these machines were essentially studio recorders that simply had sync heads fitted to them. While the introduction of magnetic recording significantly improved the quality of sound recording, it would remain for Stefan Kudelski to introduce the first truly lightweight battery-operated recorder capable of high-quality recording, based on the recorders that he originally designed for broadcast field recording. This was a complete game-changer, and eliminated the need for a sprocketed film recorder or studio tape machine to be located off-set somewhere (frequently in a truck), with the attendant need for and AC power or bulky battery boxes and inverters.

Later, Uher and Stellevox would also introduce similar battery- operated ¼” recorders that could also record sync sound. Up until this point, standard production mixing equipment had changed little in terms of design philosophies from the equipment initially developed in the early 1930’s (with the exception being some of the mixing equipment developed for early stereo recording during the early 1950’s for movies such as The Robe). Despite the development of the Germanium transistor by Bell Laboratories in 1951, most (if not all) film sound recording equipment of the 1950’s was still of vacuum tube design. Not only did this equipment require a significant source of power for operation, they were, by nature, heavy and bulky as a result of the power transformers and audio transformers that were a standard feature of all vacuum tube audio designs. In addition, they produced a lot of heat!

Most “portable” mixers of the 1950’s were still based largely on broadcast consoles manufactured by RCA, Western Electric (ERPI), Altec, and Collins. Again, all of vacuum tube design. The first commercial solid-state recording console wouldn’t come around until 1964, designed by Rupert Neve. A replacement for the venerated Altec 1567A tube mixer didn’t appear until the introduction of the Altec 1592A in the 1970’s.

A common trait amongst all of these designs was that nearly all of them were four input mixers. The only EQ provided was a switchable LF rolloff or high-pass filter. There were typically, no pads or first stage mic preamp gain trim controls. The mic preamps typically had a significant amount of gain, required to compensate for the low output of most of the ribbon and dynamic mics utilized in film production at the time (while condenser mics existed, they also tended to have relatively low output as well).

All had rotary faders, usually made by Daven. And except for the three-channel mixers expressly designed for stereo recording in the 1950’s, all had a single mono output.

Re-recording consoles were of course much larger, with more facilities for equalization and other signal processing, but even these consoles seldom had more than eight to twelve inputs per section.

The 1960’s

While the 1950’s saw some significant advances in the technology of sound recording and reproduction, with the exception of the introduction of stereo sound (which was typically for CinemaScope roadshow releases), there had not been any really significant advances in recording methods since the transition from optical to magnetic recording. Power amplifiers and speaker systems had somewhat improved, boosting the performance of cinema reproduction. However, most mixing consoles relied on circuit topologies that were based on equipment from the 1940’s and 1950’s, with some minor improvements in dynamic range and signal-to-noise ratio.

It was during this period that technologies developed for music and broadcast began to seep into the area of film sound, and the approach to console designs began to change. The most notable shift was a move from the tube-based designs of the 1950’s to solid-state electronics, which significantly reduced the size and weight of portable consoles, and also for the first time, allowed for a design approach that could use batteries as a direct source of power, without the need for inverters or generators required to power traditional vacuum tube designs. This opened up a significant range of possibilities that had not existed before.

With the introduction of solid-state condenser mics, designers began to incorporate microphone powering as part their overall design approach to production mixers, which eliminated the need for cumbersome outboard power supplies.

Some mixers also began to include mic preamp gain trims as part the overall design approach (also borrowed from music consoles of the era), which made it easier to optimize the gain and fader settings for a particular microphone, and the dynamics of a scene.

The 1960’s would also see the introduction of straight-line faders (largely attributed to music engineer Tom Dowd  during his stint at Atlantic Records in New York). In the film world, straight-line faders showed up first in re-recording consoles, which could occupy a larger “footprint.” However, they were slow to be adopted for production recording equipment. This was due in part to some resistance on the part of sound mixers who had grown up on rotary faders (with some good-sized bakelite knobs on them!), but also due to the fact that early wire-wound straight-line faders (such as Altec and Langevin) fared rather poorly in harsh conditions, requiring frequent cleaning.

Still, even by the end of the 1960’s, not much had changed in terms of the overall approach to production recording. Four input mixers were still the standard in most production sound setups, with little or no equalization. But the landscape was beginning to shift. While RCA and Westrex were still around, they had lost their dominance in the production world of film (although RCA still had a thriving business in theater sound service arena).

Things were about to change however.

Part 2 will continue in the next edition.
–Scott D. Smith CAS

by James Delhauer 

When looking at the history of the technology that defines our industry, the acceleration of progress that has occurred in the recent past is truly staggering. In 1953, the National Television System Committee (NTSC) introduced the color television broadcasting format, which is colloquially known today as NTSC Standard Definition. Though minor variations on the format were introduced over time, it remained mostly unchanged until the first high-definition television standards were officially adopted in the United States more than forty years later in 1994. But just twenty years after that, in 2014, that resolution was made obsolete when the first digital streaming services began to widely distribute content in a 4K Ultra-High Definition (UHD) television resolution. Though 4K UHD is the current highest standard of content distribution, current speculation suggests that mainstream adoption of even larger 8K displays will begin in the United States in 2023 and that distribution platforms will start officially supporting it shortly thereafter. If accurate, this would mean that the amount of time between home media standards has halved between each leap forward. And in the not-so-distant future, that could be a very real challenge.
 
A digital image is made up of what we call pixels—tiny dots that come together in rows and columns to make up a single image. What we call resolution is a measurement of the number of pixels in a given image. NTSC Standard Definition format images are made up of six hundred and forty vertical lines and four hundred and eighty horizontal lines, commonly represented as 640×480. Though a variety of different high-definition formats do exist, the one referred to as True HD increased those figures to one thousand, nine hundred and twenty vertical lines by one thousand and eighty horizontal lines. This is referred to as 1920×1080 or simply 1080 for short. This increase in pixels results in substantially more dots being used to make up the same picture, allowing for more detail, precision, and color shading when replicating what a camera’s sensor captures, making for a more nuanced product.  
 
But while we all love to be dazzled by the absolute clarity, color, and sharpness that high-resolution imagery can offer, there are very real logistical quandaries that filmmakers need to consider. For Local 695 data engineers in particular, whose responsibilities can include media playback, on-set chroma keying, off-camera recording, copying files from camera media to external storage devices, backup and redundancy creation, transcoding, and syncing, digital real estate is a growing concern. At four times the number of pixels as Full High Definition, 4K UHD means four times the amount of data is captured over the same amount of time. The impending move to 8K will multiply this amount by another factor of four, as 8K is double the number of both horizontal and vertical lines of 4K and not just double the number of pixels. In practical terms, productions will need to spend sixteen times as much money on media.  
 
But drive space isn’t the only issue. Just because our data quantities are increasing does not mean that the films and series we make can accommodate turnaround times that are four and sixteen times longer. Therefore, we need faster drives and more powerful computers.

In simplest terms, a hard drive’s read and write speeds determine how quickly it can access the data stored within and add new data onto itself. For data engineers, this is of critical importance when transferring media from one location, such as a camera card, to another, such as a production shuttle. A standard spinning disk hard drive’s speed is determined based on how fast the disk inside of it spins. Typical work drives spin approximately seventy-two hundred times per minute when brand new. In theoretical terms, these drives are capable of transferring between eighty and one hundred and sixty megabytes of data per second. Unfortunately, even at this speed, these drives are not always suited for high-definition work—let alone the more intensive labors of 4K and beyond. A convenient way to get around the problem is through a process known as Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID. Though RAIDing can be done in a variety of ways, the basic concept is that multiple drives are used to accomplish a single task. By using two hard drives (or more) instead of one, the task being performed can use the performance speed of each drive simultaneously. In live broadcast environments, it is common to use RAID configurations that are making use of anywhere from four to sixteen hard drives at once in order to ingest multiple cameras’ worth of media simultaneously.

However, while those speeds are impressive and more up to the challenge of high-resolution production, they do come with serious drawbacks. Every hard drive introduced into the configuration represents a potential point of failure in the RAID array. In a simple RAID configuration, the loss of a single hard drive could mean the loss of all footage contained within the array. More complex configurations take this into account and create redundancies but these require additional hard drives, returning us to the issue of real estate. Newer solid state hard drives—media devices that have no moving parts and therefore, don’t rely on disk speed—may represent a possible solution to the RAID issue in time. Though they are currently significantly more expensive (a single terabyte 7200rpm hard disk drive can be bought for as little as $44, whereas a solid state drive of the same size and brand will run you $230), they are significantly faster at performing the same tasks. This theoretically means that fewer drives could go into a single RAID configuration, reducing the points of failure in the array. Moreover, with no mechanical parts to jam or degrade over time, they may be less prone to failure in the first place. Unfortunately, we will need to wait for production costs to bring retail prices on solid state media down before this becomes a viable alternative.

This is all assuming that a hard drive is not limited in any way by its connection speed to the computer with which it is communicating. The physical port that a hard drive uses to interface with a computer may have a speed limitation completely unrelated to the drive’s. The most common type of port, USB 3.0, has a theoretical limit of five gigabits per second, with one gigabit equaling approximately one-eighth of the more commonly measured gigabyte. A single spinning disk drive does not read or write faster than that and so there is no problem.

However, an array of drives working together can easily exceed that limit, at which point, data is going through a choke point when passing through the wire connecting a computer to a hard drive. At the time of writing this article, the fastest connection port on the market is tied between Thunderbolt 3 and 40g Ethernet. These two port types both have theoretical maximums of 40gbps, though neither has seen widespread adoption within the industry at this time.

All of that being said, engineers don’t just need to be able to move data around faster if we are to keep up with the demands of higher resolution. It is of equal importance that we process it more quickly too. Since working with ultra-high definition and larger formats requires a prohibitive amount of computer processing power, our editor friends in Local 700 rarely do it. Instead, they make use of a process known as “Offline to Online Editing,” where they use lower resolution proxy file copies of the camera media when assembling their projects and then swap out those proxies for the original high-resolution camera media when preparing to color grade and deliver. Where do those proxy files come from?

Us.

Local 695 data engineers can be tasked with creating these proxies on set, which necessitates being able to work with the raw, high-quality footage captured by the camera. This means more powerful and efficient computers are becoming necessary. There are several factors that determine how powerful a computer is for our purposes. Processor speed, memory, graphics memory, hard drive speed, and connection speed all need to be taken into account. For these reasons, and a few others, the majority of the industry has become reliant on Apple computers.

Unfortunately, Apple’s professional line of computers tend to stagnate for long periods of time. The Mac Pro, Apple’s line of professional grade editing machines, has remained unchanged since 2013. The company has announced a replacement, tentatively to be released in 2019 and a stopgap solution was introduced in 2017 when the company unveiled the iMac Pro but these computers are not cheap. An introductory iMac Pro costs $4999 while a fully upgraded machine can be bought for as much as $13,200. And this assumes the use of only one machine at a time.

While the world of major motion pictures has largely embraced the move from lower viewing resolutions to higher ones, with digital cinema cameras recording in 6K and 8K resolutions already, television has yet to catch up with the current Ultra-High Definition standards. In the United States, many series still record in high definition. It’s understandable when the sheer volume of footage is taken into consideration. While feature films record enough footage to assemble a presentation lasting between ninety minutes and three hours, television series spanning multiple seasons can last hundreds of episodes. The need to process and preserve all of that footage requires a staggering amount of resources. Doing all of that in 4K or 8K makes it an even more monumental challenge. But as the cost of 4K televisions, computer monitors, and even cellphone screens continue to plummet and as 8K displays are introduced into the market, our audience is going to demand that this challenge be met.

These concerns are not new. The jump from standard definition to high definition presented the same obstacles in the late 1990s. The new factor at play here is time. While we, as an industry, could no doubt rise to the growing needs of 4K production with time, the advent of the 8K world is already within eyesight. How far behind that is the realm of 16K? Another ten years? Or maybe just another five? It will be interesting to see at what point the innovation of one avenue of technology collides with the reality of another.

My Life as a Commercial Sound Mixer

by Crew ChamberlainI

My name is Crew Chamberlain, yes, that is my real name, ever since the spring of 1952 when I was born in Fullerton, Calif., at the edge of what we now call the “Thirty Mile Zone,” a child of the baby boom, as well as a fourth-generation Californian, from a large family that settled in and around Orange County. Many of them worked the “Oil Patch” for the Standard Oil Company, others had their own businesses, but not one of them worked in Hollywood or even knew someone who did. Media back then was a black-and-white television (five stations), radio (lots of stations), and a Saturday-afternoon trip to the Fox Fullerton to see the latest double feature for thirty-five cents.

As much as I loved the films and TV that I grew up with, it never occurred to me that there was a system of people, places, and companies that made the content I consumed. We just loved the grand and silly movies like Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Nutty Professor, The Great Escape, or TV shows like The Twilight Zone and The Man From U.N.C.L.E.. I was totally oblivious to the process of film production. That started changing in high school where I was a proud C student. I only enjoyed having fun, playing drums in my garage band, body surfing, drawing, or painting.

In my sophomore year at Sunny Hills High School, an art teacher gave our class a unique assignment. She had us paint patterns on exposed 16mm film (a clear strip) which we then projected in class and played songs to. We  all liked this so much we asked to do it again and again. She next suggested if we could get access to an 8mm camera, we could try and make a short film. We did and it was terrible. Not a Spielberg in the bunch, but we had a blast doing it. That little spark started a slow smoldering interest of film within me. With parental pressure to go to college, the Vietnam War spinning out of control, and a very motivational mandatory draft, I discovered that there was a thing called “Film School.” Not the ubiquitous film schools of today, at the time there were only three: NYU, UCLA, and USC. It took me a year at ASU to get my grades up, but with some hustle and a lot of luck, I got into the USC School of Cinema in 1971. I had found my calling.

The USC Film School was a nerdy endeavor in the eyes of the student body back then, until the release of American Graffiti by fellow Cinema School alum George Lucas during my second year. All of a sudden, everyone knew and thought highly of our little dilapidated barn and stable complex on the corner of campus. What a deep dive I took. We lived, breathed, and endlessly discussed cinema. I watched at least two films a day from every genre and era. A very talented group of professors like Mel Sloan, Ken Miura, and Drew Casper engaged and enlightened us. We had to make many films, write a screenplay, and learn the nuts and bolts of the gear. Film cameras! Sound recording on Nagras with microphones! History & criticism!

Editing … sweet editing. A filmmaker’s last chance to make a story into something. That hands-on creativity is what I loved the most. That was going to be my choice of career path after college. I would become an editor and of course, some day a director….

After USC, I landed a job at Wexler Films (not related to Haskell or Jeff) that made medical and health-related shorts for high school education departments. I was an ‘assistant editor,’ but really a PA. On shoot days, I did everything needed, including the sound recording for interviews on a Nagra 4L with a 415 or Sony ECM 50 lavs. I loved production shoot days and these interactions lead to other sound gigs. Soon I was sound recording on docs, interviews, and low-budget films. I also started booming for other mixers which seemed very natural to me as I had the coordination and enough sound knowledge to get it going. Looking back, the progression was a steady one. I went from working on drive-in-level Corman films, to a John Cassavetes movie (Opening Night), to Albert Brooks’ first film (Real Life).

For the first thirteen years of my career, I pursued films above all else and landed some good ones. I was fortunate to get better and better movies and experience with some of the best mixers of the day, Jeff Wexler, Jim Webb, Art Rochester, and Keith Wester. Between all the films that I did, I boomed for many good commercial mixers, but mostly Roger Daniel. As much as I appreciated the work, I wasn’t a fan of commercial shoots. No one whoever went to film school wanted to do commercials.

Films were the goal and I did about as well as possible thanks to Jeff Wexler and Don Coufal mentoring me. Thankfully, Roger continued to hire me between films and showed me many of the valuable aspects to commercials that I had overlooked. Like the time/money ratio.

It all came into focus for me in 1986. I was thirty-five years old with a wife and two kids under five years old that I loved and I wasn’t able to be a full-time father and husband for. That year, I was on location for nine of the prior twelve months. I took a good long look around, I felt good about where I’d been and all I had learned and decided that a change was needed and my path forward was going to be in the commercial realm. At least until the kids grew up, I consoled myself.

Commercials. Yep, commercials. Still hard to believe. When I got in the IATSE in 1977, film was the undisputed king of the crop. Television was a different beast than today, closer to the old factory system of the studios that were cranking out a steady stream of cop shows or three-camera sitcoms, and commercials were, well, commercials. The stigma was understandable as commercials were formulaic and square at best. That all started changing in the mid-’80s as a new sensibility and atheistic took hold. Directors like Joe Pytka, Ridley and Tony Scott, Rick Levine, Bob Giraldi, Adrian Lyne and others brought a cinematic look and approach to the process. An entertaining thirty- or sixty-second movie/story was the new direction. These directors all did commercials, as well as the emerging music videos and feature films. For them,  work was work. Another day to practice and perfect their craft was the sensibility. Money was a motivator too. The commercial stigma started to evaporate a bit.

For a Sound Man (that’s what we were called and mostly were back then), the commercial work left the two walled sets on quiet stages and more often ventured out to practical locations where the challenges were more difficult, exactly like film and TV. The work was still ninety percent one boom and a mono Nagra and luckily one camera, so our success rate was high. Roger and I did so well that I was working more days a year than I had prior, but the big difference being I was home every night with my family. I was happy and seldom looked back. On commercial shoots back then, many a day was short for the Sound Department. We’d have a later call, record our part, and go home early. A lot of six- to eight-hour days in the eighties and early nineties. The glory days as it were.

Roger had a very loyal clientele of the top players in the commercial world, the LA, NYC, and London production companies and directors called him first. I nicknamed a lot of people and I called Roger “The Godfather.” Not that original but true. He handed off many, many gigs to other mixers. I and others benefited greatly from him doing this to keep his customers satisfied. That’s how I moved up to mixing in late 1987. I started covering for Roger on the weekends when Pytka would fly a small group up to Santa Rosa to do “Bartles & Jaymes” commercials. Simple shoots: A Nagra, a 415, and a radio mic. Only one of the two actors spoke. As much as I loved booming, the handwriting was on the wall and by the end of 1988, I bought two used Nagra 4.2’s and a stereo Sela from 20th Century Fox, a Lectro Quad Box with 195’s in it and six Comteks. I already owned two Schoeps MK 41’s. So there I was, a Commercial Mixer.

Hard to believe it was ever that simple. I continued to cover for Roger most of the time but I soon got new clients of my own.

We were working nonstop and I learned so much about being a team leader because Roger was my sign post and guru. As a mixer, I rely on my boom ops to run the set and I run the gear, get the calls, baby-sit the production people, agency, and clients. I have been fortunate to have so much help from my boom op friends when I started, pros like Steve Bowerman, Randy Johnson, Jim Stuebe, Mychael Smith, later with Pam Raklewicz, Dan Kent, my brother Moe, Alenka Pavlin, Anna Delanzo, Peter Commans, Bryan Whooley, and for the last eighteen years, my niece Marydixie Kirkpatrick. My two sons Case and Cole even boom for me now and again as they are up to speed in our unique world of production sound recording for picture. With that kind of help, it has been easy and fun to do my end of the job all these years. I want two qualities in a teammate, a good work ethic and the ability to find the humor each and every day in the absurd work we do. These women and men are all champs in this regard and I owe them my successful career. While we had some killer days, it never seemed like work, always an adventure.
 
The work. It is really no different technically than film or TV. This is as true in today’s multitrack workflow as it was with a mono Nagra and a boom, maybe a radio or two. The biggest difference between long form or episodic media creation and the thirty-second epic is that sound is a two-person department 99.9 percent of the time. To do our job successfully, we have to pull together to get whatever needs doing done so that “waiting on sound” is never heard. The division of labor is equal, running/wrapping cable, putting down sound blankets, etc. We have to be ahead of the curve as much as possible. On any given day, the cooperation with other departments gets limited due to the time constraints on all of us, so when help is needed, we have to request it early when it can be accommodated, not after we set up a shot. This is true for all the departments in commercial production. With only a storyboard and a few confused conversations with an often overwhelmed production manager, we all show up at a location with sixty-five other craftspeople and make a commercial. We work not only for the director (like films and TV), but also the ten to twenty agency people and clients.

This aspect of the work is what took me a long time to come to terms with. Often these fine people have little or no filmmaking experience or just enough to be dangerous. If you let it, this fact alone will make your life hard, perhaps joyless. Communication is essential in our commercial world as we try to put their fears to rest and assure them it will be great. Then we tear it down and do it all again the next day with a different crew and for a different director and client in some high-rise or on nasty a pig farm. Like our brothers and sisters in TV and film, we work at every location imaginable. Hot or cold, often both in the same fourteen- to eighteen-hour day, as we do our best to make it sound like it looks. It still surprises me that this system works as well as it does.

Our simple workflows of the eighties and nineties have all transformed into the new modern work style of multi-camera shoots, with all sorts of rigs to move cameras everywhere, and no money and time to do what is on a storyboard, so sadly we have even less discipline and protocol than before and therefore, sound wires them all to their own tracks as we try to create useful mixes for the director, agency, and the editor in post production. Still, we do this with a two-person Sound Department, even though it would be a full day for three people.

The key for my team is the ability to look two, three steps ahead of what we read on paper and are told by production and actively stay evolved on set, and then have the gear to do almost anything that comes our way. What starts as one woman talking on the phone can morph into a car-to-car shot with four people singing a song as they drive down the road with a video village bus trailing along with always helpful suggestions. In my experience, this wouldn’t happen in TV or film without advanced warning, permits, and sides. Not so in commercials. When it happens and it will, the response “I can’t” is not an option as far as I’ve ever seen. Somehow we need to make it happen. Our video assist brothers know this all too well. They deal with unrealistic expectations and demands all the time. We  help each other. I’ve always been there for them as they have been there for me. It’s been an education to have witnessed the introduction of video assist in the late seventies and the evolution into the modern-day NLE-based multi-cam systems we have today. Really a remarkable group of people who made this happen like John Hill, all the Cogswells, the Hawks, Willow Jenkins, Tom Myrick and his gang, and Cal Evans who makes it fun regardless the shoot.

I know for many, the uncertainties of the day in the commercial world can be stressful but whether it is a personal defect or talent in me, I really like what I do. I may work twenty days in a row, then have fifteen days off. I can always say I’m booked if I’m called for a rap music night shoot in Palmdale. I always try to pass any job I can’t or won’t do to a member of my close network but I have little control where production will go after calling me.

Some in production want a known person to do the sound, others just want to cut a deal and sadly, there are those in our community who think low balling on rates and gear is a smart move. There are a lot of sound people in LA, so the competition is always there and at times, adversarial and short-sighted by a few, but most of our community is on the up and up and play by the unwritten rule that we never actively try and steal an account if a job comes to us from another mixer or undercut their rate.

My favorite aspect of working on commercials is the people we get to work with as they pass through our arena, be they the “Hot” new cinematographer, or the old “Pro” you’ve known for thirty years and their talented crews. Also, the energetic young women and men just starting their careers in Art, Hair, Wardrobe, and Production Departments who are fun to be around and prove that hope springs eternal. The athletes and stars can be fun but for me, the crews are the best part of the job. Ageism, while very real in the workforce in general, seems less so for a mixer. At sixty-six, I am often a decade or two older than most of those I work with. I enjoy the energy and modern culture they expose me to and for those who are interested, the sound and production knowledge I’m able to pass on to them.

While it would be impossible for someone to follow my career path today, that world is long gone and the future of commercials seems destined to a slow demise, as the world of new media is expanding, I do think a rewarding career can be had. Hopefully, the lessons of the past might be helpful for those going forward in what we call Hollywood. At some point in the next four years, I will hang up my headphones and get out of the way. I will do so knowing I met and worked alongside many of the most interesting and talented people in the film business and had a lot of fun doing so. And for the record, I do direct, shoot, and edit personal media projects so I guess my original game plan worked. Just not the way I thought it would.

We don’t hear a lot about Local 695’s Y-16a Production Sound/Video Trainee but it’s a position that has been finding its way onto a wider range of film and television productions as it becomes more useful to both Producers and 695 production crews.

WHAT IS THE Y-16a?
Local 695’s Y-16a Production Sound/Video Trainee can be hired to work alongside any video crew or production sound crew.  As the name suggests, this is a Trainee position, but these aren’t newbies. In fact, virtually all Y-16a’s come to the set with solid experience in the responsibilities and job tasks they’re expected to perform. Most of our Y-16a’s have extensive history in production sound and/or video and bring considerable talent to the job. For example, on a production sound crew, Y-16a’s can set up the carts, jam slates, swing an extra fishpole, lay out sound dampening carpets, set up the red lights and bell, service Comteks, prep the wireless mics, operate music playback equipment, secure gear for safe travel and lots more. Y-16a’s can provide support for video crews in all aspects of setup and video engineering.

One important thing to note is that the Trainee doesn’t replace an existing journeyman position on the crew but can be used as an additional hire to increase the efficiency of a standard-sized crew when the production company can benefit from extra help. Within one year as a Trainee, the Y-16a upgrades their status to a journeyman classification.

HOW PRODUCTIONS SAVE MONEY WITH A Y-16a
We’re very aware of the cost constraints that Producers face in every aspect of production. While one might assume that an extra hire represents additional expense, we have enough experience at this to assert with confidence that adding an extra person to the crew at the Trainee rate will consistently SAVE the company money in the form of improved production efficiency. There are many ways to pick up a few minutes on production. For example, our crews use Y-16a’s so the company doesn’t experience delays when multiple video monitors need to be relocated quickly or when there’s a large number of actors waiting to get wired and when the shooting schedule calls for challenging company moves.

Producers and some of our own members have told us that they didn’t know this option existed, but once they hired a Y-16a, it was easy to see the cost benefits when sound and video crews are able to complete the work with greater efficiency on heavily loaded days.

WHAT ABOUT THE INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE ROSTER?
The unique thing about the Y-16a is that, as a Trainee, although they must meet all of our expectations before even being considered for the job, it’s not necessary for a Y-16a to have previously completed all the requirements of placement on the Industry Experience Roster. In fact for many, it’s the days worked as a Y-16a that satisfy the Roster Placement requirements. The big bonus is that 695 members in this job classification have access to first-class apprenticeship training that would be completely unavailable anywhere else.

DIVERSITY IS OUR FUTURE
The film and television industry has long been known for attracting creative and energetic young people and yet for reasons we are all aware of, many of them face a variety of hurdles that can sometimes block entry into the industry.   Given those obstacles, we’re excited when we have the chance to work with studios and production companies who share our commitment to implementing diversity initiatives that extend job opportunities for underrepresented members of our community. For that reason we want to be sure that Producers know that the Y-16a job classification can be used to offer employment opportunities that might otherwise be out of reach. Industry Roster Placement can be a significant impediment for many who seek entry into the motion picture business, but since Roster Placement is not a requirement for the Y-16a, this path opens doors for women and men who struggle for a way into our industry. Local 695 welcomes the chance to partner with Producers who share the desire to build a more diverse and inclusive production community.

CASE HISTORIES
Production Mixer George Flores uses Y-16a’s whenever he can, including Iris Von Hase and Daniel Quintana on FX’s It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. He says, “On this fast-paced ensemble TV show, I believe the Producers were very happy with the Y-16a’s I brought in. One of my reasons to have had a Trainee in the Sound Department is to save time and ultimately save money and that always proves to be true.”

Y-16a Kendra Bates joined Production Mixer Scott Stolz and his crew, Alex Burstein and Cara Kovach, on The Affair for Showtime. Scott says, “Kendra was great to work with and a huge help to us and there’s no doubt that production benefited greatly from having her there.” Just a few months after wrapping, Kendra has already moved up to working as a Utility Sound Technician on Season 15 of Grey’s Anatomy.

Production Mixer Scott Harber gave Set PA Erik Altstadt a chance as a Y-16a on ABC’s Castle Season 7. Scott and the rest of his crew, Chris Walmer, Howie Erikson, and John Agalsoff, were able to share decades of production experience with Erik. And Scott says the Producers at ABC were quick to see the cost benefit in having the extra hand.

SUGGESTIONS TO VIDEO ENGINEERS AND SOUND MIXERS
Pay it forward. Use the Y-16a when you can. Help educate Producers to understand how this extra hire can save them money and open doors for young people who work so hard to get into this business. Make ours an industry of inclusivity and opportunity. And pass on your extensive knowledge and vast experience to an eager Y-16a who shares the energy, excitement, and enthusiasm that first brought you to Local 695.

The Local 695 Young Workers Committee
We Work for our Members and our Community

by Aaron Eberhardt and Nathan WhitcombYWC Hike 2.jpg

The Young Workers Committee (YWC) works actively to better Los Angeles through extensive community service and political action, while also creating a truly positive environment for the younger generation of Local 695 to network with their peers. It might be the annual LA River Cleanup, hosting a local Blood Drive, or adventuring on a beautiful Saturday-morning hike with our 695 sisters and brothers. We inspire our members to get out and make a difference.

As the newly appointed co-chairs of the Young Workers Committee, myself Aaron Eberhardt and Nathan Whitcomb, would like to thank you for giving us this wonderful opportunity. We want the YWC to act as a constant resource for the younger members of the Local, but also to help any new incoming members make a smooth transition. The Young Workers Committee has toiled very hard the last couple of years to create useful, beneficial activities, and services for all the members of Local 695.

The Young Workers Committee at the LA River Cleanup

One of the best opportunities the 695 Young Workers Committee has been able to take part in is the annual LA River Cleanup. The LA River Cleanup has become a community service tradition. Over the last twenty-nine years, the organization “Friends of the LA River” has come together to help clean up the entire length of the Los Angeles River, removing over one hundred tons of trash in 2017 alone. Last year, the 695 YWC organized over twenty members all decked out in Local 695-wear, and headed to the Glendale Narrows to help. It was quite the fun time indeed, messy, but loads of fun. Descending into the LA River and grabbing old mattresses, clothes, and trash was an arduous job, but we felt that we were doing a huge service for our community. We also had a fantastic time chatting with our sisters and brothers, great stories were told, hard work was performed, and we had bonded together to truly make an impact. This community tradition continued again in 2018 with a passionate group of Local 695 members and friends who wanted to do fantastic work, while enjoying the best company of sound and video professionals around. We will be continuing this great tradition for many years to come.

We hosted a hike at the Stough Canyon Nature Center in Burbank. On a delightfully breezy Saturday morning this past spring, over fifteen came to participate in a pleasant hike up the trail. We had a wonderful time talking about our careers, sharing stories, offering useful advice, and most of all, enjoying all nature had to offer. One of the favorite moments of the hike was seeing a younger prospective member, who was hesitant about joining the Local, having a conversation with a longtime member about the benefits of joining and what it’s provided over their long career.

We also continued our work with the annual Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive. The National Association of Letter Carriers conducts the Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive to help get food to those in need across Los Angeles. On May 19, 2018, the official IATSE Volunteer Day, members of Local 695, their friends, and families journeyed to the Salvation Army Warehouse in Bell, CA, to take part in the massive sorting of all the canned food before it was to be delivered to the many organizations partnered with the food drive. Members of 695 worked with other union members to help sort thousands of cans that day. We even met one of the co-chairs from Local 705’s Young Workers Committee as we were sorting some green beans. It was inspiring seeing so many union professionals working together to help the community. Needy people received the food within a couple days and it was very satisfying knowing we played a part.

The 695 YWC has many more events coming up but we’d also like to discuss our political activity. The Local cannot use our quarterly dues to promote politicians or legislation. The IATSE-Political Action Committee or PAC was created to help raise money for political activism through donations to support pro-union legislation and political representatives who work to keep our unions safe and our members’ rights protected. You have a choice to sign up for a one-time donation or contribute an amount each month to the fund. We must support pro-union legislation in any way we can, especially in these most trying political times. 

We at the YWC decided to support the IATSE-PAC fund and held a fundraiser on the Local 695 Dinner Cruise this past June 16. We set up a booth on the main deck, posted our trifold describing the benefits of the PAC Fund, and our newly designed YWC banner. We threw on our Caribbean leis and worked hard to inform our members of the benefits of donating to the PAC. We worked exceedingly hard to spread the word to our members and pulled in two hundred and thirty dollars in donations. We were extremely proud of our efforts to help raise money for this phenomenal fund and know that even the smallest little bit can make a difference. A key message we want to stress is that support can be found all around you in Local 695. You will always find a member who is willing to help you in a difficult situation or offer insightful advice.

The YWC hosts these events to help create a bridge between the younger generation and the experienced professionals. We are here for you one hundred percent.

The Young Workers Committee is actively working with Laurence Abrams, Education and Communications Director, in creating an introductory course for incoming members. Laurence has done a phenomenal job creating the content for this course and the YWC will be there for anyone who has further questions on ways to network and become involved in the activities of the union.

Nathan and myself and the many members of the YWC, such as Ben Lazarus, Eva Rismanforoush, Evan Freeman and Chris Thueson, encourage you to become involved in the Young Workers Committee events and activities. Please reach out to Aaron Eberhardt via email at ae.sound@yahoo.com or Nathan Whitcomb at Nathan.whitcomb@gmail.com for more information. Thank you to the Board of Directors of Local 695 for the opportunity of a lifetime to work as the co-chairs of the Young Workers Committee and we look forward to creating the most beneficial opportunities to for our members.