When you can't even work for free

A couple weeks ago, I had a conversation with a friend of mine who mixes features. She said something that, at the time, I found hilarious, "It's a great time to work if you're willing to work for free." I had just passed up a couple days on a freebee, credit only, contact only shoot, for a couple less exciting but more profitable days working on a demo project. The way we left the conversation was that passing up the job was nothing to worry about, that there would be plenty of opportunity to do jobs like that in the weeks and months to come.

But the facts coming to light now are not so funny: a lot of supremely qualified operators out there can't even get the free jobs. The competition for low/no budget production is fierce.

It makes me wonder if any of this low budget material, presumably being crewed by highly skilled individuals, will ever be seen by anyone. Or whether most of these "short films" are just reel builders that will remain ignored and unseen like the resumes of hundreds of qualified crew members. 

To me that sounds like a lot of wasted talent.

SoundIndividual.com Coming Soon!

After a couple afternoon banging my head against the wall with FTP clients, file managers, DNS resolution and an assortment of HTML files, I finally have the website near publication.

I am excited to use both SoundIndividual.com and this blog to document experiences and to make my services as a sound mixer more available.

Special thanks go out to Reza Mousavi for being a major advocate in my web presence and for getting me fired up to see this through. 2009 will rock.

Brilliance by osmosis

This blog was originally going to be subtitled, "or, a few more thoughts on last night's DGA awards," but I couldn't wrap my head around what I wanted to say about how inspiring it was to be in a room full of captains who are in it for more than just seeing their pretty faces on screen, who have to stick with the dream of bringing the vision to life through many painful stages, and how I suddenly wanted to join their club. As it happens, yesterday's news becomes two days ago's news. 

In the meantime you have spent the day at the pool at the Beverly Hilton waiting for Oscar nominees to finish an expensive lunch and take a group picture (they actually call it a "class picture") so that your modest entertainment news outlet can interview them.

The day passes by without much to note. Just jokes on how the only way things could go worse than last week is if Danny Boyle actually falls in the pool (our set up was close enough so that this was a possibility).

When in fact, nothing so drastic actually happens. But your crew does interview Robert Downey, Jr. right off the bat. And as he gratuitously gives an example of an actor shifting personalities on camera, he questions the sound mixer about what animal could be in the bush next to him/her that fascinates him/her so much and then calls him/her a bitch. The display takes everyone by surprise. Then he does it again. This time it's more brutal. You can't tell if he's trying to be funny, if it's the sardonic asshole come out to play, or if he just doesn't care. I guess that's why we love him so much.(?)

Could this life be what I dreamed was out there in that near decade sitting behind desks after college?

Not quite a Gatorade bucket

Danny Boyle deserves all the accolades he has been receiving. Tonight he received another: the top medallion from the Director's Guild. What a statement, being from his esteemed peer group. But I have to say I feel for David Fincher, whose Ben Button is becoming to Slumdog what E.T. was to Gandhi. Nevertheless, it could have gone either way, and the way it went was nothing if not just.

Still, it's only the end of the third quarter, with the biggest of the big shows to go. It's amazing that the director who made his name making gritty (yet beautifully helmed), counter-culture films is poised to take home the biggest prize and manages to keep both feet grounded. Earlier this week, as my crew set up to interview him at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills, he poked his head in to see if we were ready. We weren't. So he said, cool, I'll just go chill out for a while. No more drama. Ha, that's funny.

It stood to be a poignant, timely interview for my modest outlet, this director who still seems to be flying under the radar, even though he can in no way be considered an underdog. Unfortunately, one of the production lights stood a little too close to the fire sprinkler for a little too long, and right as the reporter was asking his first question, the sprinkler spewed twenty years of accumulated grime on the second crew and began to shower the director and his stars, lights, cameras and publicists. Brrr. Congratulations, Coach! High five!

Yet, in true D.B. fashion, this first thing he said to us after the snafu was, "Did you get that on film?" We did. It's pretty funny.

Welcoming an era of transparency

Like many of citizens of this great planet, the only one we know of with 'intelligent' life (please note that I needed spell check for intelligent), I have been greatly inspired by the strides taken by the Obama administration to communicate clearly it's diplomatic moves from here on out.

The latest result of this spirit is this blog, which I signed up for no more than five minutes ago. In scope, I plan to document my experiences in the entertainment industry as a professional in the sound department. I want to do this in part because my mother has been a huge advocate of me journaling my experiences, and in as great a part because I want to journal those experiences in a medium that she can access and hopefully enjoy. If others catch on, all the better. Welcome.

So, that said, I guess I ought to get to work. A two and a half year stint with the cabler Reelz Channel is coming to an end. Several stories arose from that experience, several of which I will impart in flashback inspired blogs, but I cannot help but think that more gold nuggets are waiting to be lived, and ultimately, blogged.

Thanks for reading. We should all read more.