Empowering the Next Generation of Women in Audio

Join Us

How to Push your Sound Design to the Max

While Not Stepping on your Mixer’s Toes

We get a lot of questions about how much you should do in your sound design pass versus how much to leave to your mixer. So, although I’ve written a few posts on this topic (such as Whose Job Is It: When Plugin Effects Sound Design vs Mix Choices and Five Things I’ve Learned about Editing from Mixing), I thought it was time for another brush-up.

As some of you may know, I’m a long-time sound designer and supervising sound editor, but I just started mixing a few years ago. While attending mixes as a supervisor definitely gave me a window into best practices for sound design success (aka how to make sure your work actually gets played…audibly), I got a whole new vantage point for what to do (and not do) once I started having to dig through sound design sessions myself! So, while I am a fledgling mixer and you should always speak directly to the mixer working on your project before making decisions or altering your workflow, I feel that I am qualified to share my personal preferences and experiences. Take this as the starting point for a conversation—a window into one mixer’s mind, and hopefully, it will spark great communication with your own mixer.

Below, I’m sharing a few key concepts that there seems to be confusion surrounding in the “who does what” debate. I’ve personally come across these questions or situations, and I’m hoping to spare you the headache of doing any work over due to a lack of communication. Here they are!


EQ

What Not to Do

I was recently the supervisor and mixer on an episode that was almost entirely underwater. My sound effects editor EQ’ed every single water movement, splash, drip, etc. that occurred underwater with a very aggressive low-pass filter. While this made total sense from a realistic sound point of view, it completely demolished any clarity that we might have had and muddied up the entire episode. It was very hard to locate the sound effects in the space and even harder to get them to cut through the dialogue, more or less the music! Unfortunately, this was done destructively with audio-suite on every single file (and there were thousands of them probably). Every single one had to be recut by hand from the library, which was an insanely arduous task.

What to Do Instead

I’m going to say this once, and then please just assume that this is step one for everything below (I’ll spare you the boredom of reading it over and over): STEP ONE IS ALWAYS ASK YOUR MIXER BEFORE YOU START APPLYING ANY EQ.

I think you can safely assume that there’s, at best, an 80% chance that your mixer does not want you to EQ anything. Ever. So always ask before you destructively alter your work. With EQ’ing it’s especially important that the right amount is added given what else is happening in the scene, and clients often have opinions about how much is too much for their sense of clarity in the mix.

The better way to approach EQ is to ask your mixer (again, asking because this may require a change to their mix template which requires their approval) if it would work to place any FX that you think should be EQ’ed on a separate food group with no other FX mixed in. Having all underwater movements on one set of tracks clearly labeled UNDERWATER FX gives your mixer the ability to quickly EQ all of them with just a few keystrokes and knob turns. And then he or she can also very easily change that EQ to mesh well with the music and dialogue or to satisfy a client note. It also means that he or she can put all of those lovely water effects on one VCA and ride that if the clients ask for any global changes to the volume of water FX. Win-win!

The same is true for any batch EQ’ing of FX. I like the “split onto a separate food group of clearly labeled tracks” method for other things, too, like: action happening on the other side of a door or wall, sound effects coming from a TV or radio, or any other time that you would imagine EQ should be applied to a large selection of files. So yes, split it out to make it easy and obvious for your mixer, but no, don’t do it yourself.


Reverb

What Not to Do

Don’t add any environmental reverb. Just don’t do it. Keep in mind that your sound design doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s layered on top of dialogue, music, BGs, ambiances, and probably more! What sounds right as a reverb setting to you while working only on your FX definitely won’t be the right choice once everything else has been placed in the mix.

What to Do Instead

Let your mixer decide. If you do it as an effect for one singular moment (I’m thinking something like a hawk screech to establish distance), only process individual files and also provide a clearly marked clean version in the track below. That way, your mixer has the option to use your version, or take it as an indication of what the clients like and redo it with the clean one. But before you go ahead and use reverb as an effect in your sound design, always check in with your supervisor first. He or she will be able to draw on all of their experience on the mix stage, and will be able to let you know if it’s a good idea or not. From my experience, the answer is that it’s almost always NOT a good idea.


Trippy FX

What Not to Do

Say you’re designing the sound for a super trippy sequence like the POV shot for a drugged up character. You may be tempted to add a phaser, some crazy modulation, or any other trippy overall effect to the whole sequence. Don’t do it! That takes all of the fun out of your mixer’s job, and furthermore really ties his or her hands. They need the ability to adjust any effects to also achieve mix clarity when the music and dialogue are added. So it’s always best to let them choose any overall effects!

What to Do Instead

Go for it with weird ambiences, off-the-wall sound choices, and totally different BGs to make it feel like you’re really inside the character’s head. Feel free to process individual files if you think it really adds something—just be sure to also supply the original muted below and named something obvious like “unprocessed.”


Panning

What Not to Do

Don’t spend hours panning all of your work without first speaking to your mixer. Your understanding of panning may be wildly different from what he or she can actually use in the mix. I’ve seen a lot of editors pan things 100% off-screen to the right or left, and I just have to redo all of it. Panning isn’t too difficult or complicated, but it’s really best to be on the same page as your mixer before you start.

What to Do Instead

Some mixers love it if you help out with panning, especially if they’re really under the gun time-wise. Others prefer you leave it to them—so always ask first. If you want to be sure that your spaceship chase sequence zooms in and around your clients during your FX preview, just make sure to ask your mixer first about his/her panning preferences. How far to the L/R do they prefer that you pan things? What about how much into the rears? Do they mind if you do it with the panning bars, or will they only keep it if you use the 5.1 panner/stereo pot?


LFE Tracks

What Not to Do

Don’t cut your LFE tracks while listening on headphones. You may not realize that what you’re putting in the LFE should actually go in our SFX track because it is low in pitch, but not in that rumble-only range. It’s nearly impossible to cut your LFE track without a subwoofer, since true LFE sweeteners in your library will look like they have a standard-sized waveform, but will sound like almost nothing in headphones!

What to Do Instead

Keep in mind that any files that live on the LFE tracks are going to be bused directly to the low-frequency effects generator which can output approximately 3- 120 Hz. That is super low!  So only cut sound effects that have only that frequency information in them, or that you only care to hear that part. Any other mid-range “meat” to the sound will be lost in the mix.

 

An Underwater Recording Adventure

I recently began work on a new show, and luckily it has already presented tons of new challenges.  At Boom Box Post, we like to consider sound design challenges as creative opportunities. So, when I spotted an episode in which the characters travel via microscopic submarine through a human body, I was excited.  Each exterior shot of the submarine illustrated it moving through a viscous plasma-like liquid. I wanted to call upon the tried and true sounds of a submarine for the vehicle itself, but I wanted to do something unique for the sound of it moving through the plasma.  This was the perfect opportunity to get creative with some recording!

This presented an immediate challenge:  we do not own a hydrophone. I looked into buying one, but they are somewhat expensive, and our underwater recording needs are pretty slim.  It didn’t seem worth the investment. I considered using one of my current mics and wrapping it in a water-proof casing, but that struck me as pretty risky.  So, I settled on buying a couple of inexpensive contact mics, a pack of condoms to act as waterproofing, and some heavy duty duct tape to put it together.

About Contact Mics

If you’ve never used a contact microphone before, they are wonderful things.  Sometimes called piezo (pronounced pee-EH-zo) mics, they are what is used for the pickups on electric guitars.  You can buy them as a standalone version, and either tape them to the object you are recording or use the adhesive on the mic itself, thus turning any everyday object into an electric whatever (i.e., electric cello, electric rainstick–the possibilities are endless!)  But, keep in mind that they work differently than all of the other microphones in your mic locker. Normal microphones pick up subtle changes in air pressure as an audio wave passes the microphone. Conversely, contact mics pick up the vibrations of physical matter and transduce those vibrations into an electric signal which can be transduced again into audio.

Thus, contact microphones have no sensitivity to the audio waves passing through the air. This makes them very unique as recording devices (and sound designer tools!) because you don’t need to worry about ambient noise that must be removed later.  A great example of this is that if you were to, say, turn on an electric beard trimmer and skim it across the surface of a cymbal, a traditional microphone you would pick up not only the awesome sound of metal on metal but also the whir of the trimmer’s electric motor.  If you, instead placed a contact mic on the surface of the cymbal, you would only pick up the sound of the trimmer skimming the metal cymbal, because it does not transduce sound waves traveling through air, only those through the physical object itself.

Now, would this particular technology lend itself to recording underwater?  That was a tough call. Would the pressure differences in the water as the mic moved through it be extreme enough for the contact mic to pick up the physical change?  I acquired all of the necessary parts: contact mic, tape, condom (for waterproofing), recorder, and headphones, and then filled a small metal tub with water to find out.

The Trial Run

I learned a lot from this initial experiment.  Dragging the submerged contact mic through the water did not result in any audio.  However, turning on the faucet and letting the water hit the contact mic did. Unfortunately, that audio did not have the sound that I was looking for.  It was crackly (think: rain drops landing with hard splats on a plastic surface), not watery. From there, I tried submerging the microphone near the point of entry of the running water and found that I got a great bubbly sound.  The water pressure was changing constantly as the faucet poured into the basin, but I wasn’t getting the hard hits of the water slamming against the mic itself. I brought those sounds into Pro Tools, and while they were definitely in the vein of what I wanted, the size just wasn’t there.  They sounded too small.

The Final Record Session

So, I took the recorder home and did my final session in my home bathtub.  I submerged the mic and recorded steadies at the point of entry of the water, and then ran the mic back and forth over that area for the submarine bys.  The contact mic, being that it records physical vibrations, picked up fabulously unique splatty sounds for these–just what I was looking for!

Editing the Material

I brought everything into ProTools again and then was faced with an additional technical issue inherent to almost all contact mics.  Because they consist of small capacitors in series, they function at a much higher impedance than a regular microphone. When connected to a typical line input, this creates a high pass filter, thus cutting out any low end from your recordings.  I was aware of this issue and had set up my session with this in mind. I separated the files I wanted to work with, then ran them through a low-pass filter EQ, pitched them down an octave, and also applied both tactics to each file to see which approach brought the sounds closest to what I was looking for.  In the end, I bounced some of each. Here are a few samples:

The Sounds

You can hear the final product here

Kate’s Gear Recommendations

Sony PCM-M10 Portable Linear PCM Voice Recorder with Electret Condenser Stereo Microphones, 96 kHz/24-bit, 4GB Memory & USB High-Speed Port

Neewer Piezo Contact Microphone Pickup for Guitar Violin Banjo OUD Ukulele Mandolin and More

Gorilla Tape, Black Tough & Wide Duct Tape, 2.88″ x 30 yd, Black

Trojan Non-Lub Latex Condoms, Enz 12 ct – 4pk

This Blog originally appeared in Boom Box Post Blogs


 

SoundGirls at Mix Sound for Film

Every year in the fall Mix Magazine presents a Sound For Film and TV conference.  Hosted at Sony Pictures Studios lot in Culver City, California, it is a congruence of the many different facets of film and television sound.  This year SoundGirls had a good showing, there was an energetic group of volunteers that braved the morning rain to register and greet the attendees. SoundGirls were attendees and even presenters.

New member Kristina Morss was excited about the wide variety of panels.  She lamented that the Animation and First Man panels were at the same time, which meant she could not go to both.  Coming from a video editing background, Kristina wanted to learn more about the sound side of post-production.  She had heard of the event from the Soundworks Collection, which also records some of the panels and hosts them on their website.

I too struggled to narrow my itinerary. Beginning with the keynote Scott Gershin, who focused on the possibilities of immersive sound, I made sure to see a sampler of different sound niches.  The Parade of Carts presented by Cinema Audio Society is always a must-see for me because each Mixer’s cart is a master class in problem-solving on set.

Parade of Carts

At the Animation Panel presented by Motion Picture Sound Editors panelist Eileen Horta promoted being bold, while she and the other panelists warned the differences between animation and live action.

Karol Urban moderated the Mixing Dialog: Audio Pipeline Panel, which followed the dialog process from location recording to final mix. You can listen to the panel Karol moderated here

To round off my day I attended the Future is Female Panel. This was the only panel with only women presenters, but that was not the focus of the talk. Each panelist is a respected composer in the industry, and each one presented a sample of their work and an explanation of their creative process.  Other panels that I missed included Composing for Video-games, The Sound of A Star is Born, Ambisonic Recording, and hands-on Dolby Atmos demonstrations.

Future is Female Panel

At the cocktail hour, there was finally time for networking.  Breakfast and lunch held similar opportunities but within a shorter time frame.  It was in these brief moments that I connected with another new SoundGirl Julie Keller, a former choreographer who is pursuing her new love of sound editing.  She told me about the panel on The Sound and Music of Black Panther, and how the design balanced between the cultural (African drums) and the futuristic. Afterward, I went to the local SoundGirls meeting and met even more amazing people in the industry.

This was my third time attending the Sound For Film and TV conference, and it keeps getting better.  The panels and talks are always insightful, and they cover many aspects of sound for film. I feel that there is almost not enough time to see all of the panels I was interested in, and there’s a lack of networking time.  I would also like to see more booths and vendors. Overall, however, I just want to see this event continue and grow. Let’s get more SoundGirls there next year!

Editors’ note: Althought SoundGirls was not involved with Mix for Film & TV Sound, we hosted an event at Sony Studios in September. You can view our panel discussion here. Moderated by Anne Marie Slack – Panelists: Karol Urban, Kate Finan, Onnalee Blank, and April Tucker


 

Kirsty Gillmore – A Diverse and Rewarding Career

kirsty3Kirsty Gillmore is a London-based sound designer, sound engineer, voice demo producer, and voice actor. She started working as a sound engineer in 2000 in her home country of New Zealand. She has had a diverse career since that start, working across a variety of fields including music, post-production, broadcasting, theatre, opera, and live sound.

Musical since the age of five Kirsty was always part of the choir and orchestras at school. As she grew up, she played around with recording technology using cassette players and her mum’s record player. One of her favourite toys was a Casio PT-1 Synth and Kirsty credit’s this with an endearing love of vintage synths! After secondary school, she applied to study for two degrees in music and arts at the University of Auckland in New Zealand because it seemed like the logical choice. At this time. Kirsty wasn’t aware that studying sound engineering was an option until the second year of her degrees.

While playing viola in an outdoor production of Macbeth she struck up a conversation with the composer about a gig they had both been to and how it could have been improved by changing the mix. It was the first time she had thought about what went into making that music and sound happen, and it grabbed her. It was around this time that Kirsty decided that she didn’t have the talent to make it as a solo musician and the only other career option that seemed to have a clear path for music graduates was teaching. Kirsty was already teaching and didn’t consider this to be a lifelong career at this stage of her life. Being a sound engineer gave her an entirely different career path and a way of using her musical training without being a musician.

After that conversation in the mid-1990s, Kirsty spoke to a lot of sound techs and sound engineers, all had learned on the job by attaching themselves to particular bands. At the time, it was a pretty closed shop, exclusively male, and Kirsty couldn’t see a way in. She started looking into courses when her composer friend suggested a course that a friend of his had done. In the ’90s in New Zealand, there were only two institutions that offered sound engineering courses, so Kirsty applied to the one with the best reputation, the Music and Audio Institution of New Zealand. She almost had to decide on studying stage management and technical theatre, as she had been involved with theatre all the way through university, but the only technical theatre course in the country was brand new and didn’t cover sound. She spent two years training as a sound engineer, mostly in music production and also synthesis, live sound, post-production, radio sound, electronics, and sequencing. In her second year, Kirsty did a placement at a post-production studio and was offered a trainee role, which then led to a freelance position.

Her first job after graduating from the Music and Audio Institution of New Zealand was as a freelance ADR & Dubbing Engineer at Native Audio in Auckland, New Zealand. One of Kirsty’s jobs as a dubbing engineer was for a series of English-speaking children’s programmes that were dubbed into Maori. At the time in New Zealand, there weren’t many opportunities to work in sound and in 2002 Kirsty made the decision to move to London, UK. She threw herself into the local scene and applied for any audio job she could find and surprised herself by getting a job within the first month as an audio archivist at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).

For the next eight years, Kirsty built her experience working in various roles at the BBC where she learned about sound for speech-based radio, TV and online.  By 2010 her job had somehow become entirely administrative, and she was pretty unhappy, so when the opportunity for a redundancy came along, Kirsty took it and went back into freelance work.

By the end of 2010, Kirsty had set up her company, Sounds Wilde and spent the next year doing various freelance sound jobs in post-production, live sound and theatre before deciding to focus on theatre, voice acting, and voice production. Currently, Kirsty is looking to expand into sound design for games, which works well alongside voice acting work and directing for voice acting. She is also interested in more composition work.

Kirsty is a big believer and advocate of educating yourself both formally and with ongoing training. Her initial formal training gave her a solid understanding of the basic concepts and a common language for sound, but she finds that since she has been working in sound, she has consolidated these concepts, and it’s allowed her to build and expand her knowledge. Kirsty says there are topics she covered in her formal training which she only now really understands. In the past few years, Kirsty has done short courses on mixing for musicals, radio production and various aspects of theatre sound.

Through the early years of Kirsty’s career, she didn’t have much support, in fact, asking for support was actively discouraged in the jobs she held in the first five or so years of her career. Kirsty found that everyone was just expected to get on with their jobs and learn through mistakes. While Kirsty never had a mentor, (though she would have really loved one) there were people whose work she admired like Nigel Godrich, an English record producer, recording engineer and musician best known for his work with Radiohead, Butch Vig, an American musician and record producer, who is the drummer and co-producer of Garbage and also Sylvia Massy who, at the time was the only female producer, mixer and engineer Kirsty knew of. Massy is recognized for her work on Los Angeles’s alternative metal band Tool. When Kirsty started to specialise in post-production, she found she definitely admired the work and career of Leslie Ann Jones.

In her studio, Kirsty has Focal CMS50s as monitors, (which she loves). Kirsty does all her mixing in the box and in doing it this way – she doesn’t need a console.  Her main go-to mic for voice-overs currently is an AKGC414 and for software, she uses ProTools for most of the recording and mixing she does, Ableton is used for looping and Qlab and Ableton are used for the theatre sound design work. For theatre sound, Kirsty prefers DiGiCo desks (with the theatre sound “T” software) and definitely DPA mics!

kirsty2Kirsty has had her share of discrimination and is a prime example of self-belief and determination to come out the other side. Discussing how she has been accepted in a male-dominated field, Kirsty will tell you she has been discriminated against too many times to count.

Thankfully, the more experienced Kirsty became, the discrimination issues seem to be fewer. She is not sure if the climate is changing or if her body of work speaks for itself but says it’s nice not to have to deal with it as frequently.

Looking at what’s ahead for Kirsty seems pretty exciting. In her studio, Kirsty is looking to invest in more mics. She is interested in what Advanced Audio can offer as alternatives to the Neumann U47 and U87. She is also looking at replacing her soundcard soon and is hoping to trial a Focusrite Claret with Thunderbolt, and the equivalent from Apogee as well.

Hopefully, there will be more international opportunities. After years of working in London Kirsty is looking forward to working at least a few months next year in her home country of New Zealand both as a sound designer and sound design tutor. She would also like to expand into game sound design and develop a composition portfolio, as well as taking on more voice-over directing opportunities.

Kirsty’s message is about being consistent, persistent, and open to opportunities.  She says “It’s great to have your heart set on a particular career in sound but don’t be put off if that doesn’t pan out at first. Once you know the fundamentals of sound, you can apply them to lots of different career paths as long as you’re willing to learn and take the time to meet people and build relationships. Technical skills are obviously imperative, but it’s your people skills that will get you the job. You’ve got to be prepared to hustle and find the opportunities; the jobs won’t come to you. Don’t be afraid to sell yourself, be proud of your achievements and confident in your skills while being open to learning from others”.

By Toni Venditti

 

Kira Roessler – Bass Player, Roadie, Fan, Academy Award Winner

protools selfieKira Roessler might not view herself as a groundbreaker and even downplays the fact that she has been paving the way for women in male-dominated fields for most of her adult life. She is a bass player, singer, and songwriter and is best known for her work with Black Flag and Dos. During the period that she was the bass player for Black Flag, she was also attending UCLA and majoring in Economics and Engineering. She has since gone on to become an Emmy Award-winning dialogue editor and part of an Oscar-winning team.

Kira was born in Connecticut and started taking classical piano lessons at six years old. Her older brother Paul also took lessons, and being three years older than Kira was better. Kira, who is competitive, became frustrated and quit.

When Kira was 14, her brother’s progressive rock band lost their bass player, and Kira was determined to replace him. She was able to borrow a bass and practiced 6-10 hours a day (six on school days and ten on weekends). She even kept a log. She was never good enough, but when she was 15, Paul discovered punk rock through friends of his who were in a band called The Germs. So she followed Paul into the vortex.

Kira and her brother moved into a house with a garage converted into a rehearsal space. They jammed with people and started their own punk rock band. They went to gigs and met other people who played. Kira’s first gig was at age 16 at the Whisky A Go-Go.  By the time Kira joined Black Flag in 1983 (replacing founding member Chuck Dukowski), she had played in several bands in Los Angeles.  a838454c16c89845b6b1870c65cfba9c

When Kira joined Black Flag, she had already completed three years of her BS degree at UCLA. She informed the band that she needed to finish, but that she would take quarters off school to tour. It took her two years to complete her last year at UCLA because Black Flag did four US tours and one European tour in ’84 and ’85. It was madness. Kira would literally get dropped off from the tour at UCLA for classes. It seemed like every time the band was recording; she was studying for midterms or finals. So when she would drop to the floor exhausted from playing, she would get the books out.

As with many musicians on the road, Kira faced some difficulties. The hardest part about the touring for her was her right hand. She suffered an injury a week into joining Black Flag that never really healed. When the gigs were over, you could find her backstage with her hand in an ice bucket. She never let the injury stop her, but it certainly made her grumpy at times. The second hardest part of touring for Kira was the feeling that life is going on without you back home and the lack of stability. Relationships of any sort were affected, and there was no ‘home’ when she got back. She concludes this is why she’s a relative “homebody” now.

13f14519ef432f736a9dbf7769fe1638Kira’s tenure and life on the road with Black Flag ended with the 1985 tour. With only two gigs left on the tour, she called home and found out that a tour had been scheduled in the fall concurrently when she was to be attending UCLA to complete her degree. She knew at that point that she was going to be asked to leave. When the band returned home, she was indeed asked to leave.

Kira was featured on five of Black Flag’s studio albums. She left the band at the conclusion of In My Head Tour and graduated from UCLA in 1986. After Black Flag, she went on to form the two-bass duo Dos with Mike Watt, whom she was married to from ‘87 – ‘92. She contributed songs to the Minutemen’s final album and now works as a dialog editor, recently being part of an Oscar-winning sound editing team for work on Mad Max: Fury Road.Dos (1)

Kira credits include several films and projects: Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002), Under the Tuscan Sun (2003), and The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009). She won an Emmy for her work on John Adams episode “Don’t Tread on Me” as well as one for an episode of Game of Thrones during Season Two. She has been featured in the documentaries We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen and American Hardcore.

 


 

The following Q&A was conducted by Greg Cameron. He is the former drummer of a few bands on Black Flag’s label SST Records – SWA, October Faction, and Chemical People. He is a former tour-mate of Kira’s during her time with Black Flag.  Currently, he is the house sound engineer for Miner’s Foundry Cultural Center in Nevada City, California as well as a QA engineer for video technology company AJA Video Systems, Inc. in Grass Valley, California. Greg is also a SoundGirls.Org Member and Supporter.

What field of engineering were you studying at UCLA? Did it have any bearing on your current field?

My major was called Economics/System Science. Basically, half economics and half computer studies. After college and being booted from Black Flag I needed to get a job, and I went into a computer job at Yale. After 11 years of computers, I met someone who was in post-production sound. It seemed the perfect marriage of my music and my computer background. In retrospect, the confidence I have in computer software is probably the only asset from my education and computer career.

Can you discuss what led you to post-production and dialog editing? Was it something you had aspired to do or was it something that you “fell into?”

Oh – I guess I kind of answered that. It was a fluke that my brother was writing music for this student film that this sound guy was doing post sound on. They asked me to come in and lay down a bass guitar track. He was using ProTools (very early days for digital sound editing by the way), and I was interested in the process for sure. I stayed in touch with him and eventually, ended up working for him.

What type of training did you receive as far as post-production audio? Were you self-taught or did you have formal training?

It was definitely trial by fire. The company was a four-person team when I joined it, and the guys seemed to lean towards the sound effects arena. That left an opening on the dialogue/ADR side of things. So I began trying to fill the void as best I could, sometimes taking a beating when I turned in reels to nasty mixers, but learning each time.

Did you have a mentor?

At first, this young man who ran the company, Bryan Franklin showed me the ropes. Eventually, I met a guy who had been doing it for years and years (he had been the dialogue/ADR supervisor on ET), and he became my mentor. His name is Curt Schulkey. I did about eight films working under him and then began getting offers (often with his recommendation) to do other projects.

What would you find to be the most satisfying aspects of your job?

Hmmm. Dialogue editing is kind of like how many problems you can solve before the mix. And there is generally a lot to be solved. ADR and group (where we go into the studio to record) are more about honing my limited people skills. Both are positive – but both can also be frustrating. When I am editing in a room, it is just me, and the sounds and my anti-social nature is soothed. But one cannot be truly successful in my field without also tackling the people stuff.  

What would be some of the most challenging parts of your job?

As mentioned above, I find some people’s interactions difficult. Clients can be very demanding. Schedules can be extremely challenging. One can feel very squeezed in terms of delivering quality, and also in terms of keeping that smile on your face. Often the tightest schedule demands the highest quality somehow. ADR involves a significant amount of paperwork and phone calls which make it difficult to actually do the editing. ADR and group involve being pretty organized, and that is not necessarily natural to me.

As a woman in this field, did you encounter any issues regarding getting jobs or issues being on the job?

Of course, it’s hard to compare my experience to what it might have been like if I was not a woman. I do sometimes get the feeling that someone is reacting to me for no reason, and that may be related to my gender or the combination of my gender with my assertive personality. Learning to keep one’s mouth shut is probably useful for everyone. I do think a man may be able to get away with more.

If so, how did or do you deal with them?

In my opinion, the only way to battle any people issue is to contain reactions and propose solutions. “How can I help?” “Ok, let me try to find another way to tackle this” Phrases like that diffuse tension quickly because I am no longer pushing back. Showing emotion (of course) is the worst thing because any preconceived notion about women will be confirmed.

What advice would have for young women trying to break into your field?

It is a tough time for this industry. Budgets are tighter, and teams are smaller. Being multi-faceted is a must. I believe you will have to present yourself well, learn a great deal on your own, and then get lucky or have an “in.” I would not recommend it as a career because people are being squeezed out all the time. Mostly because they aren’t learning the new technologies and demands fast enough or are resisting working as hard as we are expected to. There have to be industries that are growing right?

Let’s talk a bit about the technology you work with. What are your preferred tools or platforms in audio post?

Well – it isn’t like I had that much of a choice. I worked at that first company on ProTools 3 when it was just starting to become a tool being used in film. And what I do is work in a continuum. I am handed material from the picture department and have to deliver to the mixing room. This puts me in an agreed-upon context, not in a vacuum.

I could do my music in whatever tool I wanted, but since Pro Tools can be used for my work (pretty much the industry standard), I may as well use it for music. If the industry shifted, so would I. The tools are the hammer – we are just trying to get the nail in the wood.

What’s your general or even specific workflow?

The picture department – where the director and editor create a version of the film selecting takes within scenes and building scenes within reels – will then generate material to send to the sound department (and the composer, and the visual effects department). For the dialogue, there is a track-by-track layout which is the little bits they selected and cobbled together for me to then work with. My job is to make that cobbled-together reel, scene by scene, line by line sound smooth and clean with as few audio issues as possible. If there are lines that are utterly unintelligible, I will recommend we re-record them in the studio. I also have to record what we call “group” or “loop group” which includes background voices and additive material for non-principal characters on the screen.

During this process (right while this is going on) we usually have to generate material for quick temp mixes so the filmmakers can preview the movie to a test audience. They will then change things (new takes, pulling out or adding in material) and send us a new version which we then have to adjust to.

At some point, the final mixing dates arrive, and we jump off the hamster wheel. That is where the final music and tracks are mixed into what you will hear in the theater.

Do you have experience with other platforms than your preferred one?

I do not. But I am confident that I can pick up whatever alternate tool I need to when the time arises.

Do you have any inclination to venture into other fields of audio production or post-production?

I am not particularly ambitious really. I find this level of insanity plenty challenging. The money is decent. If anything I would like more time to spend on my musical ventures, my dogs, or whatever which often get shoved to the side.

What advice do you have as far as dealing with technology in your field?

Do not be rattled by the tool. Concentrate on what you are trying to do. You will have to continue to adapt and adjust as you go, so don’t get attached to things working in one way. Use forums ask people who are good at it for help.

Can you share any anecdotes about your time working in post?

It can be disconcerting how much schedules change and how much we are at the bottom of the totem pole and the end of the process. Everyone wants to feel valued, and do good work, but sometimes you just gotta be fast and figure out what has to be done rather than what should be done. Your schedule is really not your own while you are on a project. And while you are off, you tend to want to be available to get on one. So it is hard to plan anything.

Oh yeah – anecdotes – “we are giving you a new version of the movie Wednesday or Thursday for a Saturday temp mix.”

“We have decided to create two versions of the movie and mix them both, then play them for two audiences and see what people like.”

“well yes we are doing the final mix, but let’s do a temp mix of this new material and also re-record all of that character’s lines” (or how to be in three places at once)

How about your time in music & Black Flag?

Being in Black Flag taught me about endurance. At the time I didn’t realize much about people politics and because of that, I wasn’t necessarily very good at that end of the business. Being in a band is like a marriage of several people and demands work, just as a marriage does. It demands acceptance of each other, supporting each other even in disagreement, and all sorts of things I did not get then. I thought it was about playing well and surviving. I guess that is important too, but not nearly enough.

Specifics are tricky. It is a blur at this point of gigs, practices, recordings, pain, exhaustion, sadness, regret, and fond memory. I gave it all I had, as I had promised myself I would. At times it did not seem enough. I was physically and emotionally ragged from it. And I behaved badly more than once. But I learned and grew musically and in other ways. I met people who would go farther at music than I knew anyone could.

I have been asked many times what it was like being a girl doing this. How would I know? Stupid stuff happened. Wake up in the night in the van with someone looking at you, whatever. But aside from that stuff, my experience was just one of fighting off the doubts within me, not from the outside. Is that because I am female or are we all like that?

Did your time in Black Flag have any influence at all on what you do now?

I don’t think so. I am not the starving artist type. I always intended to work, if not touring then at a job. I had some hard times early in terms of being broke and was pretty determined to do what I could to avoid going hungry at least.

Are you still performing?

Interesting question. I have not in a little while. I play my bass often and still record, both my own stuff and sometimes for other people.  I do not know if the occasion will arise or not. I am not actively seeking it out.

And please throw in anything else you might what to impart or just share.

Greg – I remember you as one of those who fought so hard at music. You have also grown and expanded sound into a career right? There are lots of ways to skin that cat if one is in a band and wonders what is next. I find I have to be willing to let the answer be something totally unexpected (as post sound was for me).

Me n sweet KoalaMore on Kira

Find More Profiles on The Five Percent

Profiles of Women in Audio

X