Features

by Bryan Cahill

Is gravity getting you down? Have you taken a look in a mirror or at a photo recently and thought, “I really need to straighten up”? Whether the bulk of your work is as a Mixer, Microphone Boom Operator, or Utility Sound Technician, we are all susceptible to postural deviations that can lead to more serious conditions.

Now, I’ve always been aware of my own fitness level, trained as much as time will allow and tried to take care of my body. Even so, this has not always prevented me from injury on and off the job.

As Chair of the Injury Prevention Committee at I.A.T.S.E. Local 695, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking particularly about how Boom Operators might avoid injury in a world with takes lasting twenty, twenty-five, and thirty minutes or more.

We need a three-pronged approach that includes devices such as the exoskeleton, contractual obligations, and corrective strength training. I’ve written a few articles on devices and will give an update on that approach soon. In spring of this year, the Safety Awareness Sheet for Long or Successive Takes became Safety Bulletin #45. I thank our leadership for spearheading what was an arduous and lengthy negotiation, yet I believe excessive takes is an issue that must be addressed in our next basic agreement.

Finally, there is corrective strength training which is the subject of this article.

Due to the constant work with our hands at shoulder height or higher, Boom Operators are susceptible to a condition called thoracic outlet syndrome or TOS. It is a term used to describe a group of disorders that occur when there is compression, injury, or irritation of the nerves and/or blood vessels in the lower neck and upper chest. While our work already puts us at risk of developing TOS, that risk is exacerbated when combined with upper crossed syndrome (UCS) which is another condition that can be caused by our line of work.

According to WebMD: When the muscles of your shoulders, neck, and chest are out of balance—that’s called upper crossed syndrome… When your shoulder, neck, and chest muscles do not work together as they should, the results can be quite noticeable and painful for you.

Having TOS and/or UCS can present real-life dangers for your long-term health. Symptoms can include chronic pain in your back or neck, numbness in your hands, and on and on. Many of those conditions will also interfere with your ability to work and can lessen your quality of life.
Severe cases may even need corrective surgery. Stephen Strasburg, the fireballer for the Washington Nationals, recently had a rib and two neck muscles removed to relieve TOS.

The good news is that in most cases, TOS, UCS, shoulder impingement, and other disorders can be fixed or prevented without surgery. Just as muscles and joints have been trained through years of misuse, they can be retrained to find the correct resting position and this is where Luke Kelly comes in.
Luke is a Boom Operator/sound guy-turned-personal trainer. While working on a show in icy conditions, he tore a muscle rescuing sound gear from collision with a sliding truck.

Compensating for the injury led to a shoulder impingement which put him out of commission for eight months, at which time he decided to change the course of his career. According to Luke, “I myself had a career-altering preventable shoulder injury. I was very fortunate to have skills to fall back on, but not everybody does.” Although he still does some sound work, his steady gig is as a corrective strength training specialist and owner of Elemental Movement Personal Training. With experience both as a personal trainer and as a Boom Operator, Luke has unique insight regarding the type of strain we endure and how best to train our bodies.

Luke and I found we have the common goal of helping Boom Operators avoid injury and work relatively pain free, possibly extending careers and avoiding surgery which brings me back to the question I asked at the top of the article.

I looked at a photo of myself and saw my shoulders rounded forward: an indicator of upper crossed syndrome. I also deal with chronic pain in my hips, ankles, and feet from years of standing so many hours each day. So, I proposed that Luke design a program around me and I’d write about my experiences.

5/20/22:
Luke and I meet over Zoom for an assessment of my current physical state documenting fifty-nine years of injuries starting at my feet and working up. I state my goals as correcting my posture, increasing flexibility, and decreasing pain. Luke agrees and says those are our goals for the first year!

5/25/22:
I attend a Zoom workshop Luke is holding specifically for Boom Operators. He goes through the anatomy of the shoulder and demonstrates stretches, exercises, and movements with names like Wall Angels and Dolphin Press. It is great information but too much to absorb at once. Fortunately, Luke records the session and I review it many times so I can get a head start doing some of the routine on my own.

6/7/22:
In my first private session over Zoom with Luke in Michigan and me in my Los Angeles office, we stuff as much into an hour as possible. My space is a little small but we make do. The session is challenging, requiring a great deal of concentration to maintain correct shoulder position throughout the tiring routine. And that is the point. As we become more fatigued, maintaining proper form (form that prevents injury) becomes increasingly difficult.

I continue the sessions with Luke’s expert tutelage once a week throughout the summer, sometimes in my office and other times from home very early in the morning before anyone else is out of bed. As I get stronger and more adept, Luke adds exercises and increases the difficulty.

Everything is interconnected and needs to be kept in balance. So some days, we concentrate on abdominal work and lower body exercises. A weakness or injury in one part of the body can lead to overcompensation injuries and other problems elsewhere.

On days in-between sessions, I incorporate many of the exercises into my daily routine and stay mindful not to over train some parts of my body to the detriment of others focusing on what I am doing and why. After each workout, I do my best to take notes but, my emphasis is on the doing not the note taking.

How do I measure success or progress? There is a device called a goniometer that is used for measuring the range of joints but it can be quite subjective when measuring range of motion. So, we measure improvement by eyeball and feel.

On some weeks, I seem to make significant progress while on others, I seem to remain the same or even regress. I don’t let this get me down because I know that progress is not linear. Instead of week to week, it is better to measure in longer time periods such as six months. Some temporary regression is natural and just part of the process. Two steps forward, one step back.

After working with Luke throughout the summer, we both become too busy to find time for our weekly meet-ups but I continue to incorporate what I’ve learned into my workouts. After six months, I can see improvements in my posture. I am definitely stronger through my upper back and I believe my pain has decreased.

I have always trained on my own but now understand how working with a personal trainer like Luke Kelly has been quite useful in assessing my strengths, weaknesses, and needs while keeping me on track and improving the efficiency of my workouts. While we don’t currently meet weekly, I do plan on checking in with Luke regularly to get an assessment.

The bad news for Boom Operators is that there is no magic pill. The difficult work required to stay healthy will never end. We will need to maintain a certain level of fitness and body awareness throughout our careers.

Once the pain is gone or minimized, what’s next? It’s time to set new goals. Maybe get back to some activities you enjoyed in the past but haven’t felt able to do recently or something new. As for me, I’m looking forward to training for a triathlon and more!

To summarize: Exercise, movements, and stretching can be extremely beneficial but are only part of the equation. Making your production aware of the Guidelines for Long or Successive Takes Safety Bulletin and requesting options such as Fisher booms and exoskeletons or extra crew members when necessary, will help you stay safe, healthy, extend your career, and defy gravity.

by James Delhauer

It has never been in the interest of employers to let workers organize. Even today, companies often do everything they can to discourage workers from forming or joining a labor union. It is not out of the norm to see them refuse to voluntarily recognize a unionization effort, and instead be forced to recognize a union by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

The NLRB was founded on July 5, 1935, after the passage of the National Labor Relations Act, which federally recognized the rights of workers to band together for the purpose of collective bargaining. Before 1935, it was very dangerous to take a stand against employers. In fact, the earliest members of the labor movement weren’t just facing down their angry employers, but were being subdued by government forces. When the Homestead Strike of 1892 broke into violence, Pennsylvania state militia forces were deployed against the striking steelworkers. The Pullman Strike of 1894 saw twenty thousand federal troops dispatched to put an end to the strike in Chicago. And in 1903, the Colorado National Guard was deployed against the Western Federation of Miners to end their strike during the Colorado Labor Wars. Despite the dangers, working men and women fought and died in solidarity with other workers because they knew a better life was possible for them and their families. A life with days off, safe work environments, and living wages. Their grit and determination led to the passage of the National Labor Relations Act. The gains won by the early labor movement continue to be felt to this day, but the fight for fair wages and conditions is far from over, as it faces a continually changing employment landscape.

Today, the IATSE represents filmmakers, artists, and craftspeople working for some of the largest multi-national corporations around. Old studios like the Walt Disney Corporation, Warner Bros., and Universal have been joined by the likes of trillion-dollar companies like Amazon and Apple. Altogether, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) represents almost three trillion dollars in corporate interests. Negotiating equitable contracts with such powerful forces is a lopsided affair to say the least. We cannot outspend them. However, that is not to say that we are powerless to continue to improve working conditions. As a union, our greatest strength lies in our core value: Solidarity.
But what is Solidarity? For as much as we casually use the word, there seems to be confusion about exactly what it entails. Does Solidarity mean paying your union dues and going to work? That’s part of it to be sure. But if that is where participation within the union ends, our outcomes will never meet our needs or expectations. Here are three simple ways you can build Solidarity and make your union stronger.

Report Your Jobs

At the bottom of nearly every Local 695 announcement email that the office sends out, there is a link to a form labeled, “Report Your Jobs,” which serves several important functions.

Our members are our union’s eyes and ears in the field. Our office staff cannot be everywhere at once and cannot know everything that is happening on all of the shooting sets in Hollywood. And as you might imagine, the production companies aren’t always forthcoming when it comes to sending us this information. But with your help, we have the ability to watch every production in town. When a member calls to report a grievance or dangerous working conditions on the set, the 695 Reps can be more reactive and resolve issues more quickly if they already have the information you submit on the Report Your Job form. In cases where a job is near the end of its run, having this information ahead of time can mean the difference between whether or not your Representatives have enough time to intervene and address the issue or not. In the case of union productions, the information in the job reports is critical to enforcing our contracts.

This job information is just as important, if not more so, when it comes to non-union productions. It may seem counterintuitive to report non-union productions to your union, but the IATSE takes great interest in what is happening in the non-union world. Many union signatory companies will use a series of LLC’s or subcontracted production companies in order to dodge their responsibilities to our members and launch productions without union representation. These non-union productions undercut the terms and conditions that producers agree to when they sign our contracts and gives them access to skilled craftspeople working for less than the conditions we negotiate. It’s understood that sometimes we take non-union work when there is no alternative. But by making the office and the IATSE aware of non-union productions being crewed by union members, it presents an opportunity to flip these productions so that you, your family, and your colleagues will receive improved wages and working conditions, as well as the benefit hours to fund your healthcare, pension, and continuing education programs. Reporting non-union work and helping us to flip non-union productions is to everyone’s benefit.

Article X in the Local 695 Constitution & Bylaws (www.local695.com/constitution-bylaws/#blart10) outlines the members’ responsibility to report ALL jobs to the Local. Whether the work is IA or non-IA, a long-running production or just a day-call, live-broadcast, commercial or music video, reality or sports… Please report your jobs to the Local!

Submit Your Working Conditions Report

At the bottom of almost every Local 695 announcement, there is a link to the Working Conditions Report directly beside the Report Your Jobs form. This is where members can report issues they face on the set, including meal break abuses, long and excessive hours, turnaround violations, harassment, discrimination, and other unacceptable behaviors. The Working Conditions form helps to address these problems in two ways. The first is to keep the office continually informed about the challenges our members contend with at work, regardless of whether or not they are prohibited by contract. Just because an issue is not acknowledged or prohibited by a working contract does not mean that it is not an issue that needs to be addressed. And if it is one that is occurring regularly and affecting a sizable portion of our members, it is worth trying to regulate during our next cycle of contract negotiations. To do this, your Representatives need citable examples, with details and dates. This means that ongoing problems that you experience should be reported early and repeatedly. Did a problem you reported on your last production happen again on your next one? Report it again! Each case study provides more weight when our Reps argue for a resolution, whether that be in a grievance, in an arbitration hearing, or in contract negotiations. So members are encouraged to fill out the Working Conditions form whenever they encounter a problem on set. Remember, if you’re facing a problem at work, you probably aren’t the only one.

But secondly, the Working Conditions form is designed to assess the effectiveness of the conditions outlined in any given contract. Have excessive meal penalties diminished since the contract was ratified last year, or is this an issue we need to revisit in 2024? Entire days without meals? Fraturdays? We know that the producers try to subtly (or unsubtly) sidestep the contracts they’ve signed. Plenty of addressed problems are still happening on set. But when these issues are brought up during negotiations, we present a stronger argument when we can back them up with facts and figures. Detailed reports that outline what productions and companies are harming our members or violating their contracts give the IATSE the tools to act.

Please remember that when these problems are not reported to the office, it only serves to perpetuate the ongoing cycle of abuse.

Report All Contract Violations

In preparation for this article, I asked all the Local 695 Representatives what part of their job occupies the majority of their time. Every one of them said the same thing: “Contract Violations.” Contract violations are, quite possibly, the most important day-to-day duty performed in the office. Violations such as wage discrepancies, penalties, jurisdictional disputes, and wrongful hires are just some of the most prominent problems that we work on in the office. But like abusive working conditions, many contract violations go unreported. If the office doesn’t know it happened, it can’t be fixed. If it’s not fixed, violations persist and our contracts are diminished. But you can help change that.

One notable issue is the hiring (or mis-hiring) of personnel. On the sound side of things, Local 695 has the sole jurisdiction over on-set communication systems, such as Comteks and set-wide PL systems. Similarly, our video members are contractually responsible for off-camera recording, video playback, and projection. However, too often we find that members of other locals are being hired to perform these duties. Our members who have lost jobs as a result of violations like this are voiceless, as they cannot report on jobs they don’t even realize they were passed over for. This is why it is critical that 695 sound members step in to support our video members and vice versa. Have you seen members of other guilds performing video playback work? Is a DIT playing back video files for a director or script supervisor or even recording takes using a device on their carts? Or is someone from camera setting up communication systems between departments? This is absolutely not allowed. Our members should be the ones performing our work. So if you see something, please say something.

Every week, problems on the set are being resolved when members bring them to the Local. But still, some members are hesitant to report contract violations and poor conditions for fear of reprisal from their employers. The office is very aware of these concerns and is adept at working with you and the company to prevent unwanted outcomes. And state and federal laws protect you too. When you report information to the Local, we will work with you, and together we’ll map out a strategy to resolve the reported problem. Your help can mean the difference between you or another member qualifying for health insurance or making rent payments. It can be the difference between putting food on the table or going into debt. By reporting our jobs, our working conditions, and contract violations we observe, we keep Solidarity strong within our Local and stand together with our union Brothers, Sisters, and Kin. These steps can go a long way toward helping us change the culture of Hollywood. There is always work ahead of us. We have a lot to do. And with your help, we can do it.

Report Your Jobs
www.local695.com/membership-services/job-reporting

Report Working Conditions
www.local695.com/working-conditions/

by James Delhauer

Lux Machina began as little more than a group of programmers with a dream to transform the production world by developing and engineering cutting-edge technical solutions for their clients. In time, the company developed into a team of bold industry explorers, nerdy systems architects, and seasoned expert technologists. Today, they are responsible for some of the most impressive and jaw-dropping virtual productions in Hollywood and, at the core of their team, are members of Local 695.

Virtual production as it currently exists is a combination of techniques developed for VFX workflows and in-camera SFX techniques that have been developed since the creation of motion pictures. In-camera visual effects (ICVFX) is a subset of virtual production that is the natural evolution of the rear-screen process shot work that Local 695 engineers have done for decades. In its most primitive form, the process shot involves shooting an actor or actors in front of a translucent scrim, which is then hit with a projected image from behind to create the illusion of a three-dimensional background behind the talent. The process was first developed by Harold V. Miller (who was the first in what is currently a three-generation Local 695 family) and the process shot’s first known use was in the 1930 science fiction film Just Imagine. Though crude at the time, the process allowed filmmakers to create a believable illusion in-camera and, with almost ninety years of innovation, this practice has grown much more sophisticated. Lux Machina has pioneered its development, which can be seen in the 2013 film Oblivion. If you are a cinephile and have not seen this film, I cannot recommend it highly enough. Almost a decade later, the visuals are still nothing short of breathtaking.

For the film, Local 695 member and Lux Machina President Zach Alexander designed and operated a 360-degree projection system in order to create The Skytower—a futuristic science lab located miles above the Earth’s surface. By using a media server system and stitching together images from twenty-one projectors, the team was able to create a fully immersive panoramic set that allowed the cast and crew to feel as though they really were miles high in the sky. This advanced process subverted the need for the costly and time-consuming visual effects required by a green screen setup and post-production artists would no longer be required to remove the green hue from objects reflecting the color or from the actors’ skin tones. Moreover, the actors were able to fully bring themselves into the film’s world when they could see the scenic backdrop all around them. The benefits of this workflow are too numerous to count.

Following Oblivion’s success, the team at Lux Machina continued to innovate and refine their workflow, bringing their talents to productions like The Titan Games, The Academy Awards, The Emmys, multiple Star Wars films, and this year, the Sony Pictures film Bullet Train.

I had the privilege of sitting down with one of the team’s best and brightest, Local 695 member Jason Davis, who serves as a Media Server Supervisor and whose storied work history includes titles like Solo: A Star Wars Story and Top Gun: Maverick. Jason served as the Media Server Supervisor on Bullet Train, where he was responsible for overseeing the implementation of the LED wall systems that allowed Director David Leitch to achieve his vision for the film.

For this production, the team made use of a video wall system built by Sweetwater, with the Lux Machina team taking responsibility for ingesting and playing back assets to the wall. On set, Jason operated a series of media servers in order to sequence and ingest clips into the system. The LuxMC team made use of a media server to play assets provided by production back to the LED wall. That resulted in an interactive image that synchronously worked with the camera department.

“It’s almost like video editing,” Jason told me when we spoke. “Even though the art team sends over the files, you need to be able to manipulate them in the system.”

Drawing from experience on other productions like Solo, Jason and his team utilized what is called a Disguise Media Server (formerly called the D3 Media Server), which includes an integrated generative content creation platform called Notch. Once assets were converted into Notch’s proprietary Notch LC file codec (which required a top of-the-line Ryzen Threadripper transcode machine in order to process the large and unbelievably dense files), the system was capable of making on-the-fly adjustments to scale, position, luminosity, and coloration of the picture.

“Thankfully, we’d already worked out most of the kinks in-house and on projects like Solo and Mandalorian, so the workflow was pretty refined coming into this one,” Jason explained.

This had confused me. “Was Solo a video wall shoot?” I asked.

“No, we were still using laser projectors on that one,” he clarified. “But we were still using Disguise servers on that one too. So there was a lot of overlap. The mapping is obviously different, but the playback part is pretty similar.”

“What were some of the big challenges on this one?”

“Honestly, the biggest thing was COVID. Communication on set was very different. It was harder to troubleshoot issues, or bring on extra help because no one could come on set without being tested. But as dumb as this sounds, the hardest thing to deal with was the face shields. The way the plastic reflects light meant that there was always a glare right in my eyes and I’d have to crane my neck or look at the screen funny just to see what was right in front of my face. Pretty funny actually. But frustrating and a little time-consuming.”

“That’s funny. How do you feel the film turned out?”

“I think it looks great. We were really pleased with how everything came together.”

“You pick up any cool tricks for the next film?”

“We’re always refining the process and trying to improve it. What we learned on Star Wars helped us make Bullet Train better and what we did on Bullet Train just helped us make Black Adam better.”

When I asked Jason how an interested member might go about getting involved with virtual production, his advice was to get hands-on with the gear as quickly as possible. “This isn’t something you can really learn online. You just need to get in front of the gear and start learning it,” he told me. “As far as the software side of things, start learning Unreal. Learn how to run and manage media servers. Look at Disguise and Notch. These are the tools everyone is using and you’ll have a better chance of standing out if you already have an idea of how those products work.

I’d like to thank Jason for taking the time to sit down with me and share his experiences working on Bullet Train and in virtual production as a whole. This is a growing area within our Local and professionals like him and Zach Alexander are helping to blaze the trail that 695 members will walk for years to come. To see Jason’s work for yourself, check out Bullet Train on Amazon or home media.

by Jamie Gambell

My career began in the dark Hackney Odeon Picture house in London, when I was just four years old. A small Rebel cruiser passed overhead, pursued by a gargantuan, imposing Star Destroyer. Like the rest of the world, I was enthralled by the characters, the aliens, the robots, the fantastical weapons, and the spaceships, but there was one thing that stayed with me on a deeper level: The Sound. Nothing in the world had ever sounded like Star Wars. I became, much to my parents’ chagrin, that kid who sat in the cinema after the film had finished, taking in the credits and trying to learn all of the different job titles. My passion for film coincided with the growth of home video systems, and I would watch anything and everything I could, rushing home from school to catch Das Boot and getting a pass from my parents to stay up late to catch Paris, Texas. Throughout all of this, I always kept an ear turned to the sound.

Eventually, I made my way into the film industry and was lucky enough to find myself under the tutelage of someone whose passion for sound in cinema exceeded my own, Simon Hayes. As mentors go, I really won the lottery. Between Simon and his Boom Op, Arthur Fenn, I had the greatest teachers anyone could want. It made me really appreciate the importance of not only doing the work and learning new ways to approach the craft, but also making sure that you give back to the future generation of potential sound engineers. Simon and Arthur both provided the perfect balance of demand for excellence and a nurturing environment to learn in. They instilled the idea that you could succeed or fail, but you better try your best no matter the circumstance. This was reinforced by my next mentor, Douglas Axtell. He, Simon, and Arthur all tried to instill a passion for learning, and more importantly, to always think about what you can teach and pass forward to your crew.

In this spirit of giving back, I sat in on the cable making and wiring classes offered by the Local, which was a rewarding experience that I felt was of great value to the participants. However, I felt that there should be something more concrete; something that codified the value of taking the opportunities afforded to us and passing them along to the next generation. So, just before the initial COVID shutdown in 2020, I visited Scott Bernard and Laurence Abrams at the Local about trying to formulate a more structured training program for our members and prospective members. Scott quickly told me that both Ben Greaves and Devendra Cleary had asked the same question within the space of a few weeks. Then they asked me the million-dollar question: “Have you heard about Y-16A?”

The Y-16A is a non-rostered classification that has existed in Local 695’s Collective Bargaining Agreement since the ’90s, and allows for a Sound or Video Trainee to come onto the set and, at a living wage, shadow, and gain hands-on experience from experienced industry professionals. It had seen relatively little use in the twenty-five years since its inception, but it had the potential to be repurposed for tremendous good. The kernel of an idea started to pop.

Later in 2020, I found myself picking Ben Greaves up to take him to collect his car. He had been part of a protest following the murder of George Floyd. Before I dropped him off, we discussed how the media and politicians were all saying the same things they had been years before, and how we could only hope that maybe, this time, we’d see something resembling meaningful change. We were both white men. We were both lucky enough to have worked with people who were both willing and able to train, teach, and mentor us early and throughout our careers—for no reason other than a passion for the craft and a drive to share that passion. We’d been trying, on a small scale, to help people out; to offer advice and support where possible, but both felt that the expansion and demands of the Sound Utility duties on set always made most mixers reluctant to hire someone without a wealth of experience, or who might need help around the sound cart and set.

The time afforded us by the temporary shutdown during the early days of COVID, as well as the constant reports of studios and networks willing to put the money into promoting diversity, let a volunteer group of us (made up of technicians and office members) cobble together a plan to use the Y-16A Trainee classification as the basis of a codified trainee program.

Productions could hire a Trainee as an additional member of the Production Sound or Video departments. As a non-rostered position, trainees could come onto the set and begin accruing benefit hours without the need to interface with Contract Services. At the same time, they would work under the direct supervision of industry veterans, giving them hands-on, on-the-job training without the need to displace another member’s job. With the right person guiding a trainee, it could serve as an alternative route to union membership than the non-union route.

As we were a small group, we wanted to make sure that we weren’t overstretched in what we could offer prospective members. We did not want to overpromise and underdeliver, which by necessity meant keeping the program small at first and building onto it over time. Our earliest efforts involved vetting potential candidates, both to get a sense of how suited they are for the work they are pursuing, but also to help them determine whether or not the rigorous hours and lifestyle of Hollywood production is something they’re prepared to embrace. Once we had a sense of an individual’s personality and strengths, we began working to place them on the correct production with a mentor team suited to their specific needs. This could be challenging, as convincing productions to hire an additional member of the crew is always a struggle. But the combination of greater events taking place in the world and relentless dedication on the part of our team began to see progress. One by one, we were able to find work for trainees on productions for Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, ViacomCBS, NBCUniversal, Amazon, Apple, and Lionsgate.

It has been a process of trial and error. To be sure, not every trainee we’ve worked with has been ready to step into a Hollywood lifestyle. Two years in, however, our workflow has been continuously refined to the point where success stories far outweigh our negative outcomes, and we are able to offer trainees and potential trainees more resources than when we started. Earlier this year, we began holding our first pre-training events for the Y-16A’s, allowing them to simulate some of the work on set in a safe and controlled environment. Our office team has begun working with trainees to understand basic industry faire like reading a call sheet or filling out a timecard. Trainee meetups and mixers take place every few months in order to give trainees the opportunity to network with one another and potential mentors.

That being said, the success stories that we have seen have been nothing short of inspiring. Some of our earliest program graduates, like Yohannes Skoda, Britney Darrett, and Terrell Woodard have become full Y-7A Utilities and are quickly becoming some of the most sought-after young workers in our Local. The training program has taken a mother living out of her car with her two children and put a roof over her family’s head. Through our program, a young Ukrainian man was able to gather the money necessary to evacuate his mother to Poland following the outbreak of violence by Russian forces. People who might otherwise have never found an opportunity to be a part of our industry or community are now thriving because of the program we’ve built, as well as the ambition, dedication, and hard work of the trainees themselves. We’ve come a long way, but there is still much work to be done.

Now, there are several other programs that ostensibly share our goal of bringing representation to the Hollywood crafts. Various studios and organizations are all trying to tackle the difficult issue of racial disparity and systemic obstacles that have been put in front of those from underrepresented backgrounds. However, there are key benefits to the Y-16A initiative that stand to make more of a positive impact than similar programs. For one, all of the “intern” or training programs I have found seek to hire workers of color at a reduced rate. Minimum wage and “for the experience” oriented programs are becoming quite popular among the studios. Why shouldn’t they? Being able to hire workers of diverse backgrounds while paying the least amount of money is a win/win, right? The problem is that this is tokenism at its finest. These programs seek only to increase the visibility of disenfranchised individuals without considering their overall well-being.

The Y-16A program gives trainees nearly all of the benefits of union membership. They are entitled to all of the representation and protections that the union has to offer. Their worked hours contribute to the union’s health and pension programs–benefiting not only the trainees, but the whole of the union as well. The trainee rate, which stands at $24.65 an hour, has been calculated based on the minimum cost-of-living index for the Los Angeles area. These factors work together to set the minimum standard for which a person—any person—should be expected to work and be compensated in our industry. Any diversity program that offers less is essentially saying that people of diverse backgrounds are expected to work in the lesser tier of a two-tier system; that they are not entitled the sort of union representation, wages, conditions, and benefits that people who look like me get to enjoy every day. From my point of view, that is unacceptable. As we work to bring diverse representation to our productions and to our crews, it must always be with the intention of bringing equality and equity to those who help us diversify. That said, we are grateful for the support we have found. Our program would not have grown to the extent that it has without the support of the employers who believe in the work that we are doing and have extended life-changing opportunities to our trainees.

In an ideal world, more shows would have trainees and all crews would have the skills and time afforded to them to help these people. In time, it is our hope to expand the program to include in-classroom training, mentor workshops and seminars, and a more clearly defined path for our Y-16A’s to transition to full Y-7 or Y-7A classification. We will continue to see the program evolve and grow into an even more positive force for good in our world. A better represented workforce helps our industry, a better trained union helps our Local.

There are several ways that members of our Local can become involved and help this program grow into an even larger force for good in our community. If you are interested in becoming a mentor, contact the Local so that we can begin discussions with your productions. Donate your skills to our next trainee event so that the next generation can learn from your wealth of experience. Take a chance and bring on a recently graduated trainee as the Sound Utility or Video Assist assistant on your next production. Buy-in from our members is how this program has built up to what it is today, but with more support from the membership at large, Local 695 can build something unique and wholly positive within the culture of Hollywood.

Real change can come around. At the very least, a few of us old white men can try to help where we can.

by Erik H. Magnus CAS

Devotion is a movie based on a nonfiction book of the same name. Taking place in the first year of the Korean War, it tells the story of the friendship of two Navy pilots: Ensign Jesse Brown, the Navy’s first Black carrier pilot, a sharecropper’s son from Mississippi played by Jonathan Majors, and Lieutenant Tom Hudner, a white New Englander from the country club scene, played by Glenn Powell.

We filmed on location in Savannah, GA, including at a military base. On an airfield landing strip, a full-scale set of the top of the Leyte aircraft carrier ship was constructed with green screen extensions so that actual working fighter planes from the Korean War could land and take off during the scenes to be filmed. A variety of authentic Korean War fighter planes were brought in from out of state, including F4U Corsairs, F8F Bearcats, AD Skyraiders, a Mig 15, and Sikorsky H0S5-1s. These were the last propeller-based planes to be used in combat before the jet age started.

Coincidentally, Glenn Powel and our aerial camera unit had recently completed flight sequences for that other Navy fighter pilot movie in the pipeline, Top Gun: Maverick. I knew this was going to be a fun and satisfying production sound shoot, and it didn’t disappoint!

For my part, I just enjoy working on motion pictures with historical stories. Any script set prior to the 1980s always seems to give us an extra edge in recording good clean production tracks. The lack of all the modern technology noisemakers and generally slower pace of life in the past makes for a less acoustically polluted set atmosphere. Frequently, the props from a bygone era afford us opportunities for onset sound effects recording as well. I find that directors on films taking place in the past are often more open to discussions with me about production sound. The environment triggers nostalgic sounds from their childhood, which puts them in a good frame of mind to imagine the soundtrack of the story we set out to tell.

My Zoom interview with Director J.D. Dillard went as well as a Sound Mixer could hope for. Most of the interview was spent discussing the needs of production sound and what he envisioned for his story. The first thing he told me was that his father had been in the armed services and had always felt that movies and TV shows that portrayed military stories were rarely accurate in the details. He promised his dad he would make this movie as true to life as possible, and that included the soundtrack. To achieve this, J.D. wanted to record the authentic propeller planes we would be filming with as much as possible. In flight, take off, landing, etc., the Korean War was the last time propeller-based planes were used by the Navy. After that war, the jet age was upon us and propeller propulsion was a thing of the past. So it was important to him that the soundtrack be as authentic to these planes as possible.

He also wanted to record dialog while the planes were in the air. This was an understandable request, but a challenging one to fulfill. At times, the cockpit canopy would be open, and even when closed provided very little supression of the engine/propeller noises in flight. Moreover, these original Korean War planes had very small cockpits. Whatever available room wasn’t being taken up by an actor or the pilot was occupied by multiple cinema cameras. The Sound Department was told we had to use the smallest recorder possible.

At first, we didn’t think this would be a problem. The plane did have a communications system that we were told worked and that we could tap into to record during flight. With modern aircraft and helicopters, I have successfully recorded an actor in the scene by using an aviation specialty CAAVMIC cable from the Remote Audio company (a Trew Audio company) to tap into the flight communications connected to the boom mic of the flight helmet the actor is wearing. The aerial crew provided me with an interface cable built to connect to the modern jet used in Top Gun: Maverick, but unfortunately, the 1940s era Corsair plane we were using on Devotion was not compatible with this custom cable. The next stop was contacting a company called Bell’s Aviation, which specializes in historical flight gear. The owner said he could make an interface cable for this 1940s plane, but the pandemic had disrupted supply chains. The part we needed was not going to be available until well after we would be done filming the scenes. We could not escape the fact that this 1940s technology was too old school for our modern recording solutions.

So we had to get creative. Our first attempt was connecting a Lectrosonics SPDR Stereo Portable Digital Recorder to the original Sound Devices Mixpre so we could take advantage of the superior limiter in the Sound Devices unit. This was another piece of equipment purchased years ago that had not been used in quite a while. This and a couple of plant mics mounted around the cockpit were to be connected to the Mixpre mic XLR inputs, providing us with what we believed would be a workable solution. During a test flight, this proved not to be the case. The noise level in the cockpit was way too high to record any usable dialogue and the Mixpre pan pots kept getting hit by the actors knees. Back to the drawing board.

Our next idea evolved over time to become something workable. The sound team experimented with using a red dot, black Sanken COS-11D padded lavalier wired under the actor’s chest to see if that gave us the sort of clarity and quality we needed. It was an improvement to be sure, but still not quite up to par. Thankfully, our Sound Utility, John “Hank” Martin, is pretty handy at rigging and soldering, so he was able to thread the COS-11D into the flight helmet mic boom. Only by using this lavalier mic that was almost touching the actor’s mouth were we able to cut through the deafening noise and record something intelligible. Best of all, the setup passed inspection by our Director of Photography, Erik Messerschmidt, ASC, who was confident that it would not be seen on camera. In the end, our compact rig consisted of the Sanken COS-11D wired directly into the flight helmet mic boom and plugged directly into the Lectrosonics SPDR Stereo Portable recorder and powered by an Ambient Eumel. Dual mono recording right track recorded -5db to be lower with limiters on both.

In addition to filming during flight, we had about a week and a half on Video Wall stage where each of the actors would film coverage shots in the plane on a buck rig that was synchronized with the LED backdrop.

The Director and First AD both needed to be able to communicate with the actors in the buck rig (a full-sized gimbal mount which is used to articulate the plane to simulate flight), so an earwig was requested. This made me nervous. The uncomfortable helmets the actors needed to wear were often pulled off in frustration at a moment’s notice. The real possibility of my one remaining Phonak Invisity ear wig falling into the bottom of the cockpit floor where it could be stepped on or fall into any of the small dark crevices made us come up with a new solution. The Sidekick 3 IFB single-ear monitor from Bumblebee has a cable so thin as to nearly be invisible when properly hidden and had just become available for sale. Version three was now universal for either right or left ear. The first two generations required you to choose either the left or right ear. We connected it to a Comtek PR 216 receiver so that there was no chance of it falling out. Our Director and First AD had individual push to talk handheld microphones feeding into each actor’s Comtek PR 216 receiver, allowing direct communication as required. Another problem solved.

But of course, there were plenty of challenges outside of the planes as well. Many of our sets were large and spread out, meaning that a remote antenna setup was required. Hank assembled the first iteration of the remote antenna cart using my active Wisycom LPDA antennas. Seventy-five feet of cable was usually enough to get the job done, but starting with the aircraft destroyer scenes, the Wisycoms began struggling to reliably pick up the actors’ transmitted signals as they darted to and from the Corsair planes. To solve this RF issue, we switched them out for a couple of professional wireless brand Helicals. The circular polarization pattern of Helical antennas made it possible to pick up the RF signals despite all the metal plane bodies that had been interfering with signal transmission. I tend to collect sound carts and gear in general. I don’t like to sell or get rid of older equipment when I upgrade to more modern tools. Sure enough, an old rock-and-roll brand cart I picked up years ago at Guitar Center ended up forming the base of the remote antenna cart. After we got to the muddy battlefield set, I was forced to upgrade to bigger front wheels and added the top shelf for stability.

One of our main exterior sets that was built to scale was the flight deck of a Navy aircraft destroyer. It was built on an airstrip outside of Savannah, Georgia. Some of the scenes to be filmed included Corsair planes landing and taking off. This required an aerial unit located in Seattle, Washington to begin shooting coverage several weeks prior to the start of principal photography, and continuing their work concurrently with our own. Scenes with 1940s cars were going to be filmed as well. Plenty of opportunities to grab on-set production sound effects. I knew we were going to have to capture any sound effects on the fly, as holding up production was not an option. I set about to build a quick deploy stereo sound effect recording rig based around the Sound Devices Mixpre3 II that I already owned. The size of those Mixpre 3s is so small and light that they are easy to deploy quickly. Up to 192 kHz recording capability, Mid side, and jamable time code made it the perfect choice for the assignment. To supplement my Audio-Technica BP4025 condenser XY stereo microphone, I added a newer Sanken Short M-S Stereo Shotgun mic. The smallest K-Tek Stingray bag and a Sound Guy solution belt clip made for a very tidy rig. A Triad-Orbit tripod and a sandbag made for a stable mic mount to set up on set. With all that, we were ready to go.

During battlefield scenes, explosions were so loud we used a couple of Shure SM 57 dynamic mics attached to Lectrosonics plug-on transmitters sending a signal back to the venue receivers and on the back of my main sound cart.

The story of Devotion and our director’s wish for a period accurate soundtrack afforded us many opportunities throughout filming to record many on-set sound effects. It is always a team effort. My crew consisted of Patrick M. Wylie, Boom Operator, John “Hank” Martin, Utility Sound, Alex Lowe, Pro Tools Music Playback Operator and Graham Kicklighter, 2nd Unit Sound Mixer assisted us with additional plane recordings. Devotion is a Sony/Columbia Pictures/Black Label Media production releasing exclusively in theaters on November 23.

by Lisa Piñero

My first opportunity to work with Noah Baumbach was on Marriage Story (2019). I have been a fan of his films for many years, so I was excited to be involved in the project. We had a great sound team on that show which included Randy Johnson (Boom Op) and Eva Rismanforoush (Sound Utility and lots of 2nd Boom). We enjoyed working with Noah and I was happy to hear back from his team in September of 2020 that Noah wanted us back for his next project that would shoot in 2021. White Noise is director Noah Baumbach’s first film adaptation of another writer’s work. In this case, the writer Don DeLillo and the work, his 1985 novel of the same name. Noah had assembled a great cast, including Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, Don Cheadle, Jodie Turner-Smith, and Lars Eidinger. It’s a story narrated by the character played by Adam Driver but features many others in his life, including his family, his colleagues, and other members of his community. There are also large crowd scenes and several sequences that take place in cars.

Having worked with Noah previously, I knew that he would encourage his cast to talk the way people naturally talk in large familiar groups. Conversations overlapping between individuals inside of larger groups would be rehearsed and shot many times until he and the cast developed the rhythm and execution that Noah was looking for. We always boom everything and wire everyone to give Noah and the cast the freedom to say the words wherever, whenever, and at whatever level they want on the set without worrying about losing even a syllable, no matter the location, set, or lighting.

I mixed a film here in Los Angeles the summer of 2020 during the height of COVID. Even though the city was working at one quarter of its capacity, we had been very challenged in finding clean frequencies at our practical locations with the hybrid wireless system I was using at the time. There were a lot of scenes with high cast counts and I found myself scanning and coordinating frequencies multiple times during the day which was time-consuming. I used Shure’s ADX system previously on a music show we shot in June 2019. That introduced me to the power of Shure Wireless Workbench software and reliability of Shure Axient Digital wideband wireless system. After using it, I was smitten with the range, the sound, the rugged build quality, the well-designed body pack, and the bulletproof implementation of Dante which made the system amazingly easy to scale. Along with many others, I had been begging Shure for a 12-volt DC option on the rack receivers and hoping for a portable slot-based receiver. As soon as the 12V DC receiver option was available, my order was in for twelve channels of Shure ADX. By early 2021, I had converted my Cantar X3 recording cart to fully Dante based with Shure ADX wireless. Shure came through with three ADX5D slot receivers in early May, assuring that White Noise would be our first show with 100% Shure ADX wireless.

On the first day of scouting in Ohio, Noah asked me to always have at least twenty wireless mics available for cast. The cast counts on the schedules showed frequent scenes with cast numbers in the teens but he wanted to be able to upgrade additional people he chose from our background players at any time. The plan was that he would write and give them lines on the spot, and we were likely to have very short notice as to how many additional there would be. I was glad to have the heads up early and I got to work with Matt Tenero at Gotham Sound’s rental department which had already built up a rental inventory of Shure ADX. Matt and his team put together a single rack case housing a couple of Shure AD4Q receivers (four channels each), a Shure AXT600 Spectrum Manager, a network switch, antenna, and power distribution. The rack case fit perfectly on the bottom shelf of a Backstage Junior cart we keep on the truck for extras. Only two connections to make—one to my antennas and the second to the network switch on my cart. Just like that, we were ready to go with twenty channels of wireless available on Dante inputs at the recorder. The system worked flawlessly throughout the show, including some very wet, hot, and dusty locations. Adding a wireless router allowed us to change transmitter settings easily using the Shure Channels App and Showlink without ever going near a cast member. We also had a chance to utilize Q5X AquaMic waterproof transmitters which work with Shure ADX receivers for a scene with five cast members waist-deep in water floating across a creek in a station wagon. Shure Axient Digital has been the go-to wireless system for mission critical applications like arena touring, live theater, and broadcast for years. I’m glad we finally have these robust tools available to us in production sound.

As is almost always the case, doing the best work requires teamwork and collaboration with other departments. We had our share of challenging locations but one set worried us the most. In fact, I had been sent an iPhone video from a director’s scout of this location months earlier because the acoustics were so bad that pretty much everyone on the early scout thought it would be impossible to shoot there. Everyone except Noah, who wanted us to find a way. The space had been a reception area of a now defunct theater space in Cleveland. The room had an octagon footprint with twenty-one and a half foot tall walls and a parabolic ceiling. All surfaces, including very large glass windows were hard and reflective. There were two adjacent rooms. On one side double doors opened to an even larger lobby area with a parabolic ceiling. The other side opened to a circular ante room with a very high ceiling and a stairway. This wasn’t your average variety reverb situation. The existing acoustics in this space made speech barely intelligible. The scene to be shot here would be a spirited debate between two professors. The written dialog was expected to be performed in a dynamic fashion and came at a pivotal moment in the story. After sharing room recordings and discussing the situation with Sound Designer Chris Scarabosio, we worked with our producers to bring in an acoustical consultant to run a series of impulse-response tests in the space and make recommendations on possible treatment options. Enter Quincey Smail of ABD Engineering and Design, who was brought to Cleveland to acoustically model the space and make recommendations on modifications to improve reverberation time and background noise. Production Designer Jess Gonchor and Art Director Chris Farmer took Quincey’s findings and materials suggestions to make the space completely suitable for recording the scene while keeping intact all the visual design elements that Noah loved.

Our “stage” had been a Walmart store in a prior life. It was part of an abandoned mall where our production was based. It was a funny setup with the production office occupying a space previously used for a bank and every other department using a former retail space. The so-called stage space was plagued by the usual problems associated with using a space designed to be one thing for another thing entirely. The room had a metal roof which is extremely problematic in the very rainy and stormy Cleveland, Ohio, summer. You could not hear a person talking to you from a foot away during the frequent downpours. There was also a club in the mall which had remained open and had extremely loud music scheduled for just about every evening between 6 to 11 p.m. This was a tad distracting to our cast who had a hard time ignoring it while we attempted to shoot through it. There were many more challenges in the space, including a haphazardly assembled air-conditioning system that persisted as a work in progress throughout our shoot and the hideous acoustics in a hard wall and floored square box. Our grip team headed by Mike Popovich made the place somewhat workable for recording dialog by surrounding our sets with heavy floor-to-ceiling velvet drapes. Teamwork and good inter-department working relationships can make almost anything doable.

Another of the many instances when the Art and Grip departments helped us improve the sound for a scene was in the lecture hall film projection sequences. The scene would have a large and loud commercial grade projector running in a college lecture hall’s booth while one of the professor characters in the film spoke on the featured sequences. During our scouts, I noticed that the booth was not soundproofed, making it difficult to get clean dialog while the projector ran. To isolate the noisy projector inside the booth, we lined its interior wall with mass loaded vinyl (MLV). “We” in this case means Randy and Eva, along with some help from our Art Department and grips. MLV is a VERY difficult product to work with. It’s very heavy and unwieldy. I located a local source for the MLV product and Randy hit the hardware store to get the hardware and tools together. Randy and Eva cut custom-shaped pieces from large rolls and then drilled the heavyweight soundproofing into the walls. It was a grueling job that they managed to get done on our last day of prep so that we could shoot the scene the next day. Their work made a huge difference in terms of the quality of our recording and allowed our director to shoot the scene in the way he preferred.

It doesn’t take long for anyone who works in production sound to come to an understanding about how important a good relationship with the Costume Department is. The quality of our work depends on it. On White Noise, we had the honor of working with legendary Costumer Designer Ann Roth. Julian-Andres Arango, Lucy Cobbs and the rest of the on-set costume team were a joy to be on set with and worked tirelessly with us to get body mics into the best positions possible.

We worked long hours with considerable drive times back-and-forth to many of our locations. The show was plagued by COVID flare-ups in the crew, complications with locations, etc., which kept us working in Ohio into November. Wiring the large cast counts, along with a frequent need for two working booms on set, gave us good reason to add another crew member to our sound team. Kelly Doran joined us as a fourth a few weeks into our schedule and was a huge help at both utility and additional boom. Jason Fyrberg came on soon after to handle Second Unit sound mixing duties. When we went well past our original wrap date, we lost Randy Johnson to prior commitments. Dave Roberts did us the favor of booming us through those last days on the freeway traffic jam and in the woods where his experience clearing the Appalachian Trail came in handy. After we wrapped principal photography in Ohio, Jason and Kelly went on to handle 2nd Unit sound duties with the stunt unit in Georgia.

While you’re watching White Noise, make sure to keep an eye out for a cameo by our very own Randy Johnson.

By Richard Lightstone CAS AMPS

Drew Kunin is a Production Sound Mixer with a wide range of international locations and projects. To name a few; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Adaptation (2002), Lost in Translation (2003), Brokeback Mountain (2005), Life of Pi (2012), Bridge of Spies (2015), Mank (2020), for which he received his third Oscar nomination, plus In the Heights (2021), and The Whale (2022).

I caught up with Drew while he and his wife were on vacation in Portugal where we discussed his work on Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, his second feature for Director Rian Johnson, and the sequel to Knives Out (2019). Drew had wrapped The Killer for David Fincher and was getting some needed away time before starting May December for Todd Haynes.

Drew describes Rian Johnson, the Director of Glass Onion, this way, “He’s really smart and really cinema-savvy, with an encyclopedic knowledge of modern movies. He’s a cinephile in a way that’s truly fun. He’s enjoyable to be around, he does a lot of homework, and comes ready, every day. He knows what each shot’s for and how the scene’s cutting together.”

Drew continues, “The Producer, Tom Karnowski, was the Producer on The Post, a Steven Spielberg film that I had also been the mixer on. That was a show that involved some huge scenes with lots of characters talking. There were scenes with sixteen people, eighteen people speaking. There were long, very busy, very talky scenes that went from room to room to room without cutting. It was very complex to record. Steven was really pleased with how we were able to get all that stuff, and his post team was, too, as I believe they had the shortest post schedule of any film Steven has made since the 1970’s. The original Knives Out was similarly talky, with complicated, dialog-driven scenes and lots of characters speaking. I don’t think we ever got to eighteen, but there were like fourteen, ten, or twelve people all talking at once and it just was very busy. When Rian and Tom were discussing the potential recording difficulties in early pre-production, I think my name came up.”

Knives Out shot in and around Boston during a particularly chilly autumn, with a bitter cold snap in November and December, but the sequel ventured to southern Greece and the city of Porto Cheli, plus the island of Spetses. The main set was a large villa made up of twelve pavilions that cascade down a hillside with a huge central staircase and six pools. Some of the interior sets in the main villa were then built on an enormous stage in Belgrade, Serbia.

“As I heard it, when the idea of a sequel was mooted, Daniel Craig was like, “Yeah, I’d love to do the character again. I’d love to be involved, but I want it to be some place really nice. I want it to be like a holiday in a great location … somewhere that’s warm.” When they first began talking to me, I believe they thought it might be Tahiti or Bora Bora or something like that. But we ended up in a part of Greece that’s gorgeous and in an amazing villa that’s just phenomenal. Once they found that house in Greece, they were like, “Oh yeah, this will be it,” and then they were able to build the production around this one, outrageous villa.”

Glass Onion is a crime whodunnit where Detective Benoit Blanc, played by Daniel Craig, solves another murder mystery. The cast included Kate Hudson, Ethan Hawke, Edward Norton, Dave Bautista, Janelle Monae, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr., Madelyne Cline, and Jessica Henwick, with some intriguing cameos, including Hugh Grant, Yo-Yo Ma, and the late Angela Lansbury and Stephen Sondheim, to name some of the large cast.

Drew explains, “The location was very exposed to the sun and the wind in the afternoons, the wind comes up as the land heats from the sun, causing thermals to rise, and this wind comes in off the ocean. We had to deal with that almost every day. There was a lot of wind, a lot of exposure, and difficult booming, because there were hard shadows visible from the bright sunlight, plus we had multiple cameras. And there was another thing that was an issue with the villa, there were cicadas. It was a year with a particularly big hatch of them, and we were shooting at the peak of their cacophony. I did a lot of wild tracks of them to try to build up an archive of variations that would give the post team some ammo to help find a way to blend it all. I’ve spent my career working my butt off to try and create quality production tracks, and we try to get pristine tracks as much as we can, but that’s not always possible, sometimes for factors beyond our control. In this case, Matthew Wood and Josh Gold and their post team were diligent in trying to preserve and massage the production tracks as much as possible, to see if they could find a way to utilize what we had delivered. Thankfully, they managed to stitch it all together seamlessly, between clever processing and pulling occasional words from other takes when necessary. Amazingly, they were able to work with and augment most everything we gave them, and ultimately, everyone was extremely happy with results (and the cicadas are still in there; not as a problem, but as part of the soundscape).”

On the original Knives Out, Mike Primmer was the Boom Operator, with Boston local Utility Ryan Baker. Mike was not available for the sequel, so Patrick Martens got the call. Drew had met Patrick on Mank, as he had come in when Drew needed three Boom Operators for the big party and banquet scenes (more scenes with eighteen different characters speaking!). Drew was eventually able to convince the producers that it would be worth it to bring Ryan onto Glass Onion as well, because he had done such great work on the first film overseeing and organizing the wiring of that sizable cast, and more of the same expertise would be required.

Drew’s microphone of choice for interiors is usually the Sennheiser MKH 50, and sometimes the Schoeps CMIT 5U for wider shots, with the CMIT taking the primary role on exteriors, as well as the Neumann KMR 82 and sometimes the Sennheiser 8070. The big change from the first film was his switch to the Shure Axient wireless system after he first used them on In the Heights. Mank was actually the first film released that used the Axient Digital system on set. Despite being shot after In the Heights (and West Side Story), it was released many months earlier. “The Axient Digital system, from my end of it, has been very stable and user-friendly. It has handled lots of transmitters running simultaneously in difficult RF environments, generally without a fuss. It will manage the frequencies of all the transmitters with Show Link, which is really nice, as I already have enough to worry about.” Drew explained why he continues to invest in his equipment package. “One of the big issues is that we are independent contractors. You’ve invested a lot of your money over the decades to build an ecosystem that you keep populating with more equipment that is still reverse compatible to what you already had. The thought of changing it all over is a huge investment that no one is gonna pay you for. You’re not going to get a penny more from a producer because you’ve got this system or another system. But it’s part of your cost of doing business. Because you know the twist that you’re feeling in your bowels when it’s all going haywire … what would it be worth to have that go away?

“I use the Cantar X3 as a recorder, with a Cantaress mixing surface for tracks one through twelve, and a Cantarem 2, alongside for those scenes when I need to expand to tracks thirteen through twenty-four. In the end, I was able to get my cart to most places where we shot, however, I also wanted to have a bag rig setup, and have the ability to leave the transmitters on the actors for times when I’d be in a more mobile mode. If we have to shoot on the docks or the boat or a car, I could just grab a bag rig that had the receivers matching the existing transmitters and go over the shoulder.

“I used six Shure ADX5D’s (actually these were some of the very first ADX5D released) in two PSC 6-Packs (as they’re double receivers that would give me twelve wireless) with the Aaton Hydra card, and I had what I needed, all with the onboard mixer or the Cantarem 2. I made a cart built around the bag where I could unplug the cart from the bag and go over the shoulder. This tiny cart is quite vertical, and folds up to fit inside a rifle case that I can check on an airplane.”

The main villa location being on six levels meant a lot of moving of the gear. The crew spent a great deal of time lugging equipment like Sherpas up and down the massive hillside staircase to the various pavilions and gardens on different levels. There was a lot of dark humor based on speculation about which level the next setup would be on. Drew found that the villa had an underground and hidden funicular car system that stops at each level. It allowed all the various pavilions and rooms to be serviced with laundry and food and such like, without seeing the mechanics of how things were transported. Unfortunately, it was a bit small, dimensionally, for much of the film equipment. “It happens that my main cart is an unusual size and shape, and it actually managed to fit into the funicular, which allowed me to zoom up and down to all the different levels. I work standing up. I don’t sit and I’ve always done that, so I’ve built my cart very upright, in a vertical orientation, and it has a quite small footprint, although it’s really tall. Then I have fold-out shelves, two wings that are for a second mixer or computers and peripheral stuff, but the shelves tuck away to allow me to get through tight spots … like the funicular.

“On Glass Onion, it’s summer, it’s in Greece. The actors were wearing light gossamer clothes and other skimpy costumes and it was tricky to get mics on them. There was a lot of work with the Costume Department that was very helpful and amenable. We did things like sewing mics on a strap of a bikini, or pre-rigging mics sewed into the seams of relatively see-through clothes, for example.” For lavaliers, Drew generally uses the DPA 4061, although he will also use the 6061 when he needs something smaller. Occasionally, he’ll also use a Countryman when he needs a super tiny mic, and also Sanken COS-11 in certain particular situations.”

Steve Yedlin was the DP, working with the Sony Venice camera. Steve has actually worked together with Rian Johnson on all of his films. Drew says, “Steve is a very unique Director of Photography, in that he is the DP, and he is the DIT and he is also the Dimmer Board Operator, controlling all the lights on the set. He is extremely tech-savvy, but he does it with artistry, which is quite impressive. He has a workstation setup of his own design with all these keyboards and screens, usually very close to the cameras, and he’s like, the man behind the curtain.”

Rian likes to use multiple cameras in scenes, and he’s diagrammed them out. He knows what’s on his shot list, and sometimes they will end up doing wide and tight shots simultaneously; so occasionally you have to advocate for the sound. Sometimes, I would ask, “Hey, can we do just one camera? Can we have we have one take, once you’re happy with that wide camera and you feel you got it?”

Rian would answer, “Sure, sure. Sure. Absolutely.” You got to remind him, and he will do it. I don’t want to be in an adversarial position with anybody, because we’re all making the same movie. I think that asking to have at least a take or two with the closer cameras and not the wide, once they feel like they got what they wanted out of the wide camera, is possible with a director who understands what it can mean for the performance. If you make the case, then you can have it sound really fat and sweet.

“Ultimately, as a Production Sound Mixer, what I’m hoping to do is capture the magic of a great performance, as it happens in real time, with presence and clarity such that an audience can experience that same magic, wherever and whenever they see the film. With Glass Onion, hopefully the viewers will be pulled in by the very clever story and entertained by all the snappy dialog and enthralled with the fun performances, without ever giving a thought to all the crazy work it took to make it.”

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery was released in cinemas on November 23 and will then stream on Netflix on December 23, 2022.

Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Comedy or Drama Series (Half-Hour) and Animation

Only Murders in the Building
“The Boy From 6B”
Lindsey Alvarez, Re-recording Mixer
Mathew Waters CAS, Re-recording Mixer
Joseph White Jr., Production Mixer
Production Sound Team: Jason Benjamin, Timothy R. Boyce Jr.

Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Comedy or Drama Series (One Hour)

Stranger Things
“Chapter Seven: The Massacre at Hawkins Lab”
Will Files CAS, Re-recording Mixer
Mark Paterson, Re-recording Mixer
Craig Henighan CAS, Re-recording Mixer
Michael P. Clark CAS, Production Mixer
Production Sound Team: Brenton Stumpf, Stokes Turner

Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie

The White Lotus
“Departures”
Christian Minkler, Re-recording Mixer
Ryan Collins, Re-recording Mixer
Walter Anderson, Production Mixer
Jeffrey Roy, ADR Mixer
Production Sound Team: Sabi Tulok, Nohealani NihipaliDay

Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Nonfiction or Reality Program (Single or Multi-Camera)

The Beatles: Get Back
“Part 3: Days 17-22”
Michael Hedges, Re-recording Mixer Brent Burge, Re-recording Mixer
Alexis Feodoroff, Re-recording Mixer Giles Martin, Music Mixer

Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Variety Series or Special

Adele: One Night Only
Paul Wittman, Production Mixer,
Tom Elmhirst, Music Mixer
Eric Schilling, Music Mixer
Josh Morton, Re-recording Mixer
Kristian Pedregon, Re-recording Mixer
Shane O’Connor, Re-recording Mixer Christian Schrader, Supplemental
Audio Mixer

Names in bold are Local 695 members

by Ric Teller

Today the ramble becomes an interview.

In 1979, when I began working at KTLA, twenty-five engineers had worked there for twenty-five years or more, some since the ’40s when television was new in Los Angeles. Working with those experienced pioneers was a terrific beginning. It was interesting and educational. A few years later, I met and worked with Ed Greene, Val Valentin, Doug Nelson, Ron Estes, and other mixers who led the way in entertainment television. At first, I was just trying not to be a spuddler. As time passed, I was fortunate to work with the core group of freelance entertainment A2’s.

So, I’m going to take some questions … from myself. Most of these things are true.

When are you going to retire?

I’m often asked that question. If the phone don’t ring, you’ll know it’s me.

In your career, what has been the most important technology change?

Nearly everything has changed except the XLR (L for latching and R for a version surrounding the female contacts with a synthetic rubber polychloroprene (neoprene) insulation, and the Shure SM 58 which dates back to 1966. When I began, we recorded on tape, and audio connections were made with analog cables. Now it’s nearly all digital. Without a doubt, the one thing that has most directly affected my career is the switch to fiber-optic cable. The old copper 27-pair and 56-pair mult cables were very heavy. I’m glad those long runs between the stage and the production truck are now done with fiber.

What is the most unusual experience you’ve had while putting a lav mic on someone?

In the ’80s, Merv Griffin produced a show called Dance Fever. It was an amateur dance contest with a host, contestants, and celebrity guest judges wearing Vega VHF lavs. One day, I went to mic the three celebs and in the number one position was Zsa Zsa Gabor who told me, “No, dahlink, I don’t wear those.” I offered several possibilities, none were acceptable. She was dressed in a chic outfit with a smart fur-trimmed jacket, mind you, she must have been seventy at the time. I asked if she was going to carry her small, lovely purse onto the set, “Of course, dahlink.” Then I made a most unexpected inquiry, “May I put the transmitter inside your purse and run the microphone wire up the sleeve of your jacket? I’ll hide the mic in a good spot, and no one will be the wiser. “Except you and me, dahlink.” And so, it was. RGR, you would have liked that one.

Do you have a favorite bit of television audio folklore?

If I didn’t, I probably wouldn’t have asked that question. For years, Gene Weed was the director of The Academy of Country Music Awards broadcast. Mark King was, and still is, the A1. Gene liked to give audio notes, even during a live show. He frequently asked for more audience response in the mix. One year, Mark set up a speaker with a volume pot at the director’s position in the truck, giving Gene the ability to raise the level of the audience mics to his taste. It was a success and continued every year thereafter. Of course, he was only controlling that speaker, but I truly believe Gene was convinced for the rest of his life that he was mixing the level of audience response on the broadcast.

Do you have gig envy?

No. I’ve had way more than my share. Unless you count gigs that predated my career. It would have been fun to work on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964. That’s about it.

How about a favorite location?

Anywhere I am working with friends. Especially Telluride.

You must have had many opportunities to ask for autographs.

I’ve asked for three. Jerry Lewis signed his book, Dean and Me, while we were at the telethon. Questlove signed Something to Food About at the train station Oscars (I have a small collection of autographed food and cookbooks). The third autograph was collected while we were in Chicago shooting a special at Ravinia Festival, featuring Disney’s Young Musicians Symphony Orchestra. Ernie Banks joined the festivities to conduct “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” I went backstage to put a lav on him. We chatted for a few minutes, then he pulled out a Sharpie and signed my credential.

Do you have a favorite quote?

Two come to mind.

When asked by a frustrated teacher, “Don’t you know anything?”
Yogi Berra answered, “I don’t even suspect anything.”

In the heat of a live TV show. Ed Greene: “I can’t talk, I can’t talk, I can’t even listen.”

Name someone who influenced your career.

OK, but I can’t name anyone from television, that list is way too long.

I stood next to Ray Grabner in the Hastings High School Choir. Ray was a senior and anchored the bass section. As a junior, I did my best. Our school put on a musical every other year alternating with a variety show. 1969 was a variety show year. One day, I guess it must have been an early spring day, while we were standing next to each other at the choir rehearsal, Ray asked me if I would like to play in a group that he and Randy Sharp, a tenor, were forming for the show. They already played together in a very popular local band, but this would be a larger group made up of players from a few different bands and at least one with no experience at all. Of course, I said yes and became a member of The Baker’s Dozen. Rehearsals began for the thirteen-piece, brass-heavy band at the Firebird Inn, a second-floor nightclub on Burlington Avenue. Ray sang and played the tenor sax; my instrument was the trombone. We covered The Impressions’ “This Is My Country,” Lou Rawls’ “Dead End Street,” and “Somewhere” from West Side Story, an arrangement that was like the one performed by The Fabulous Flippers, easily the most famous and influential regional horn band in the Midwest. From that beginning, I began to play regularly. A few years later, I joined Ray in the horn section of a popular group called The Elastic Band, hitting the road in a seven-state area. A couple of years after that, I moved to California with another band. By then, the need for trombone players had diminished by two-thirds. Both minor. In 1979, a decade after the Hastings High Variety Show, I began working in television. Ray and I haven’t seen each other for a long time although we still correspond and share a love for bands with horns. There is no doubt in my mind that by inviting me to play in that variety show, Ray opened the door leading to a more than forty-year career.

What is your longest workday (actual time, not the one that felt like it would never end)?

The longest workday I’ve ever had was in Las Vegas at the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon. I began work at 10 a.m. Sunday with Jerry’s orchestra rehearsal. He sang songs and had great fun with the musicians. The show went on the air at around 6 p.m. on Sunday and ended more than twenty hours later, on Monday afternoon. After the show, we wrapped for about four hours. We worked for thirty-seven hours. After a nap, a bite to eat, and a shower, we drove to an early call at Sony Studios in Culver City and worked the next day. Oh, to be that young again.

A show that lengthy must come with stories.

It was exciting to work on something I watched while growing up. In my early years on the show, I worked the overnight shift where we would see the Bubble Guy, the Plate Spinner, Bobby Berosini’s chimps, and the Tall Cedars who inspired an audio group we named the Tall Faders.

I also have fond memories of some of the regular performers like Jack Jones who was so supportive and so talented, and Maureen McGovern who stopped the show one year with her version of “Cloudburst,” backed by the show’s terrific orchestra. Lou Brown was the music director in my first years, Chiz Harris was the drummer, and Don Menza held the tenor sax chair. Toward the end, Lee Muziker wielded the baton, Bernie Dresel played drums and through all the years, the incomparable Rick Baptist anchored the trumpet section. I loved seeing iconic comedians like Don Rickles, Red Buttons (who never got a dinner), Norm Crosby, and Shecky Greene. Henny Youngman performed not long before he died. He was a very old man who needed help getting on stage, then proceeded to machine gun one-liners for about five minutes until we were laughing so hard, we couldn’t catch our breath. In 2000, the electronic tote board failed. We became the human version.

So, you were on television. Was that the only time?

Award shows often use a pop-up mic that can disappear into the stage floor when not in use. One of the many years that the Emmy Awards show took place at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, a newly designed pop-up was installed for the first time. Unlike the common models that are straight and vertically pop up and down, this one had an obtuse angle sort of mimicking a boom arm at the top. One problem. Only the vertical section could disappear leaving the angle exposed above the stage. At some point in the show, Peter Jennings, the personification of news gravitas, was introduced and made an entrance, walking to the pop-up. The operator was a bit late bringing up the mic and Mr. Jennings stepped on the exposed angle, the part where the mic element lived. Flattened the sucker. Done. Kaput. I ran from stage left with an RF hand mic and held it out for Mr. Jennings, thinking he would take it and I could scoot off stage. Nope. He just started talking while I was standing two feet away holding the mic at the proper angle. It was a long speech, it seemed to last forever. In hindsight, I wish the viewers could have seen my thought bubble, channeling Big B. “You’re a grown-ass man, take the damn mic!” When I got home after the show, my phone message machine was blinking. It was my mother, “I saw your hand on TV!”

Have you worked at a live event where something unforgettable happened?

The Jim Valvano speech. We were working the first Espy Awards on March 4, 1993, at The Theater at Madison Square Garden. Coach Valvano had a very aggressive form of cancer. He was slated to receive the inaugural Arthur Ashe Courage and Humanitarian Award. Most thought he would not be able to make the trip to New York from North Carolina, much less give a speech. Many of you know the outcome. He made the trip and gave a speech that no one present will ever forget. He didn’t talk about basketball, he talked about life.

To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day.

Near the end, Valvano announced the formation of the V Foundation for Cancer Research, an organization that, to date, has awarded nearly $300 million in grants. Less than two months after the speech, on April 28, Jim Valvano died. As a cancer survivor, I’ll never forget being there and hearing him speak.