The April 2005 issue of Mix Magazine has a great interview with Production Sound Mixer Jeff Wexler. Great wisdom on managing people and their expectations in the sound business. Some enlightening thoughts:
If you very specifically define people's tasks, things will, hopefully, go more smoothly. But the way that hurts is that people often have more to offer.
On Director Hal Ashby:
He was one of the most collaborative people of anyone I've worked with, open to suggestions and ideas from anyone and very unthreatened about it... it helped me to do sound because it made me feel involved in the whole project.
...grandstanding never accomplishes anything productive. It just causes animosity toward the sound department. Flamboyance went out of my repertoire years ago. Now I deal with things quietly, usually with a conversation early on, where we set rules and protocol and whether if a director is getting into trouble and I have a solution I should bring it to him or her.
Boom is absolutely the key position in the production sound department... They have to be listening with an experienced ear and have the ability to put the microphone in a place where it picks up the voice in a beautiful way and gets rid of the things you don't want to record.
...a lot of people are doing their job for the first time without an understanding of the discipline and with the protective arrogance that can sometimes accompany that.
We've gained the ability to shoot a lot of film and record a lot of tracks, but we've lost the sort of focus that needs to happen before you film.
On the Schoeps MK 41 supercardioid capsule with the CMC amplifier he uses:
We did tests with a shotgun mic and with the Schoeps and the Schoeps sounded like the real world. You heard the background, but in a coherent way that made sense. The extremely directional mics cut down the level of the background, but also negatively affected the sound of the voices.
Equipment comes and goes... If you haven't established the necessary skills, personal relationships and clarity of thought in your approach to your work, all the latest equipment won't amount to anything.
If you very specifically define people's tasks, things will, hopefully, go more smoothly. But the way that hurts is that people often have more to offer.
On Director Hal Ashby:
He was one of the most collaborative people of anyone I've worked with, open to suggestions and ideas from anyone and very unthreatened about it... it helped me to do sound because it made me feel involved in the whole project.
...grandstanding never accomplishes anything productive. It just causes animosity toward the sound department. Flamboyance went out of my repertoire years ago. Now I deal with things quietly, usually with a conversation early on, where we set rules and protocol and whether if a director is getting into trouble and I have a solution I should bring it to him or her.
Boom is absolutely the key position in the production sound department... They have to be listening with an experienced ear and have the ability to put the microphone in a place where it picks up the voice in a beautiful way and gets rid of the things you don't want to record.
...a lot of people are doing their job for the first time without an understanding of the discipline and with the protective arrogance that can sometimes accompany that.
We've gained the ability to shoot a lot of film and record a lot of tracks, but we've lost the sort of focus that needs to happen before you film.
On the Schoeps MK 41 supercardioid capsule with the CMC amplifier he uses:
We did tests with a shotgun mic and with the Schoeps and the Schoeps sounded like the real world. You heard the background, but in a coherent way that made sense. The extremely directional mics cut down the level of the background, but also negatively affected the sound of the voices.
Equipment comes and goes... If you haven't established the necessary skills, personal relationships and clarity of thought in your approach to your work, all the latest equipment won't amount to anything.
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