Read this article from Trew Audio.

Amala Popuri is one of a number of women working successfully in Bollywood film production. She shares with us the challenges and blessings of her chosen career. “I have always been an avid film enthusiast since I was a young schoolgirl. I gave in to the parental pressure of taking up physics and math and studying for the engineering entrance exams. Little did I realize that studying physics would be a necessary prerequisite for studying sound recording at the Film and Television Institute of India,” FTII-the government sponsored film school young Amala dreamed of attending, “and that it would really help me in my vocation.”

This article is from Mix Online.

“They are the workhorses of the film sound world, enduring endless days toiling in often hostile environments, arriving on the set before shooting begins and staying after it ends, there for every take and retake. They are the production sound mixers: location recordists charged with the responsibility of capturing crisp dialog and evocative ambiences; the pure performances. And though their work is often overshadowed by the more glamorous contributions of the post community, production sound mixers are the first critical link in the film sound chain. At best, their work is utterly transparent, not calling attention to itself. At worst, well, if you have to struggle and strain to understand what the characters in a film are saying, or noisy backgrounds overwhelm the dialog, or the finished film is overloaded with badly done ADR, chances are that the production sound mixer had a rough outing. And it probably wasn’t his or her fault. Read rest of article.

This article is from StudioDaily.com

“When F&V caught up with Mark Ulano, he was sitting in the back of a stake-bed truck, waiting for the crew on Terminator 4 (working title: Terminator Salvation) to blow up a car in the middle of the New Mexico desert. “It’ll be a brief moment,” Ulano said into the telephone. “But if we get interrupted, don’t take it personally.”

As a Hollywood production sound mixer, Ulano has a lot of experience at recording loud noises. He’s so good at it that he won an Oscar for his work on Titanic. He’s been doing movie sound since the early 1980s, and his recent resume remains vital, with titles like Iron Man, Disturbia, and the Kill Bill movies to his credit. F&V asked him about the latest in audio gear — like Aviom’s Pro64 line-up, which networks location audio via CAT-5 — and got his thoughts on the potential of the coming digital broadcast transition to wreak havoc on diversity wireless-mic systems.” Read rest of article.

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This article is from TrewAudio.com

“Many young people working in the movies start off with a certain disdain for business. For them it’s about the work, about the film. Money is necessary but it’s not why you do it. Young filmmakers routinely beg, borrow, and steal to get a movie made. Sort of like drugs. They do it even if it means they have to eat mac and cheese for a year. That’s OK when you’re in your 20’s and no one is depending on you. I did that myself. There were certainly times starting out when I would have paid someone to let me work on a movie. Unfortunately, that is not a career. It may be an obsession, a creative high, and a lot of fun, but it’s not a career. This section is about that time in your life when you want to get paid for what you do, even if you really enjoy doing it.” Read rest of article.

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Sign up for your own FREE subscription to “The Director’s Chair” filmmaking ezine, packed with hundreds of film making articles, tips, tools and techniques. This FREE monthly Film Directing ezine is read by over 3100 filmmakers in 100 countries around the world. http://www.actioncutprint.com/ezine.html

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This article is from Trew Audio.

“You have a responsibility to deliver good sound. It doesn’t matter whether you are the Production Mixer or the EPK guy. There will be times when you need something from the people around you, like quiet. It may be that the people around you will not give you what you need, even after you ask them nicely. EPK crews don’t usually get “quiet on the set.” They are expected to work around everyone else, including the guy with the power saw. You don’t have the authority to tell them to be quiet, but someone probably does. Talk to your director, your director can talk to the ADs and maybe figure out a better set-up or one of the ADs might help you get some quiet.” Read rest of article here.

This article is from Trew Audio.

What are the basic rules for how to behave on a movie set? What are the basic rules for how to behave on a movie set? Don’t draw attention to yourself. Wear dark colors and be quiet. Turn off your cell phone. Don’t make eye contact with the actors and don’t stand in their eyeline. Don’t talk to above-the-line people unless they talk to you first. Don’t block doorways. Smile, be polite, and acknowledge the pecking order. Resist the urge to help out unless someone specifically asks for your help. Those are the basic ground rules for anybody walking onto a set for the first time.” Read rest of article here.

This article is from MovieMaker.

“Sound is one aspect of the film craft which, because of the medium’s overwhelming visual bias, is often undernourished—even by experienced moviemakers. Master provocateur Alfred Hitchcock was fond of saying that we should be able to turn the sound down on a good movie and still be able to follow the plot. Yet a motion picture sound mixer, like the director of photography, is the head of a department whose efforts are often inseparable from the overall success or failure of the final release. You only need to turn the volume back up on any of Hitch’s movies to know that the implacable director had his ear finely tuned to the power of sound.” Continue reading here.

If I could stress one thing to a director it would be this: You have looked at the resumes, hired the best crew possible so why not utilize their experience and skills during shooting.

Any suggestions from your team are made only to give you a better film. Don’t reject their ideas because you didn’t think of it first. You have enough to do, leave the sound to the sound mixer.

My personal theory is not to bother the director with trivial things; most of these can be worked out between departments. I only approach the director when the problem is serious and it is something only he can solve.

Rob Young
robaudio@shaw.ca