Hey, look, a new post in this blog (couldn’t let a WHOLE year go by could I?) Just got back from my third trip this year to Las Vegas. Before you start thinking I’ve turned into a complete degenerate gambler these three trips were all for work and only one of these trips was on my dime, the other two were paid for by clients.
I had visions of cruising the Strip with Sammy, Dino and Frankie. The reality was a bit more eye opening.
The first trip in April was to attend NAB the National Association of Broadcasters annual convention and trade show. To say it was enormous would be insulting to enormous things everywhere. There was every conceivable toy and gadget for our profession. It was a true, geeks paradise. The audio hall alone took up one wing of the Las Vegas Convention Centre and had every mic, transmitter, accessory and mixer known to man. I was in gear overload and used that time to actually play with the toys I’d only ever heard about or seen on the web. It was great to actually talk with the manufacturers of equipment that you are about to make a purchasing decision on. Discussing pros and cons and future design ideas with the guys who actually make the stuff rather than dealers who have a vested interest in selling you the stuff, warts and all, was intellectually refreshing.
My second and third trips were for the TV show Guinea Pig, produced by Frantic Films out of Winnipeg. How shall I describe Guinea Pig? The host, Ryan Stock (a circus performer by profession) explores the extremes that a body can endure in the name of science. Let me tell you, this guy has put his body through a lot for this show. We were in Vegas standing in a parking lot for 10 hours in 91 degree heat while he attempted to set a World Record pulling a car with a sword down his throat (I won’t tell you if he does it or if he gets hurt, it’s up to you to watch the show) Some of the things he’s done in the past however are getting hit with a taser, 36 hours in the desert without food or water, immersing himself in an ice chest for extended periods of time, parachuting and the list goes on (the show is in it’s third season on Discovery) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztUhRpBAU3g&feature=related
My trips to Vegas aren’t done though. I am in the process of producing a ringette tournament there http://ringettedestination.com and so I’ll be back next April (making a fourth trip in just over a year) and I may have to go for a quick planning trip down there in March just to tie up some items. Perhaps I should just rent an apartment there…
As a quick vacation destination it can’t be beat. There are more shows and attractions per square mile than in Disneyworld (my personal favourite vacation spot). Las Vegas has slowly grown southward from the old downtown (Four Queens, Binions, Golden Nugget and others which is now commonly called the ‘Fremont Strip’ or the ‘Fremont Experience’ as it is now closed off to car traffic and completely covered by a large LED display that plays shows every half hour; to the area around the old Dunes and Frontier (now both gone) Circus, Riviera, Sands etc to further south and the major resorts now of Treasure Island, Wynns, Venetian, Mirage, New York, Paris, Mandalay Bay, Flamingo, Bellagio, Luxor and others. The strip is even beginning to spur off sideways at Flamingo Boulevard with the Rio and the Palms. For non-gamblers a walking tour of Vegas at night provides ample amusement.
The thing about Vegas though is that I can only seem to take it for about three or four days at a time before my mental circuit breakers trip over and I just gotta get out of there! Its not the gambling, I can handle that in moderation and never gamble beyond my means ($50 at the penny slots does me fine although I am learning the finer points of blackjack) but it goes beyond that. Vegas is a pretty woman that you don’t want to meet without her makeup on. In the daytime the city looks decidedly seedy. This is definitely a nighttime city. I definitely would not want to live there. The first time I went I stayed at the Imperial Palace and what a dump that was! If you do stay there and are offered an upgrade to a strip-view room do NOT take them up on it! You don’t see much and outside your window is a nightclub that blasts music until 4 am! I had to sleep with earplugs in. The next two times we stayed in Circus Circus. People had warned me about this hotel as well (the word ‘dump’ being thrown around again) but I found it quite pleasant, although a bit off the ‘Strip’
One of the best stories of Vegas for me is what my friends started calling the $20 story. I got grifted. I was playing the penny slots waiting for my friends to show up when this disheveled guy reels up to me and sits down. He starts in on how he was at the tables and won big but was so drunk he just had to get out of there and go home. Unfortunately he didn’t have cash for a cab. He handed me a $100 chip and asked if I’d trade it for $20 for a cab (telling it here doesn’t do this guy’s act any justice, I’d award an Oscar to him any day, he was convincing in his ‘too drunk to know what I’m doing’ act.) Ironically, I fell for it and bought his magic beans for $20, discovering later on that the chip was a worthless souvenir sold in the shops of Vegas for $1 or $2. Far from being all that upset about it though I just chalked it up to the old maxim of “When a man with experience meets a man with money the man with experience will get the money and the man with money will get the experience.” I still have that chip and kept it in my pocket the rest of the trip. I’d touch it every time I made a bet as if to say, “Make sure you’re not being foolish.” I may have it made into a necklace or something. Someone once said, “When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.”
Loud and clear.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Friday, January 11, 2008
My Confession (Bless me Father, for I have made a career)
OK, I have a confession to make. I bullshitted my way into this business. I didn’t mean to. Like most things it (a) just happened and (b) seemed like a good idea at the time.
I’ve told this story so many times that I’m no longer at risk of being taken for a poseur (that and 22 years experience) so here goes:
I had done some sound mixing along he way in high school, mostly for friends who had garage bands.
Typical conversation,
“Do you know how to operate a sound mixer?”
“No.”
“Do you want to?”
“Well…”
“I’ll buy you a beer.”
“Sure!”
After I went away to University I didn’t think about sound again until May of 1986. I was home from school and taking a shower at my parents’ home when the phone rang. As we all do, I jumped out of the shower naked and dripping (sorry for that mental image) and grabbed the phone. On the other end was a voice that seemed to belong to a man in a great hurry because the conversation went something like this:
“Hello”
“Hi, it’s me. Say, that gig is yours if you want it.”
“Huh?”
“It’s Blair. The gig recording sound on that film we talked about is yours if you want it.”
“Uh, I think you have the wrong number.”
“Oh, really? Sorry…”
“No problem but hey I’ve done some sound too so if that guy doesn’t work out give me a call.” (why I said that I still don’t know. It just popped out of my mouth…)
“You do sound too? Hmmm… why don’t you drop by the studio and we’ll chat.”
Not having a summer job yet, nor anything else better to do that day I dropped in. We chatted a bit about films in general and his in particular. To be honest, I was just stringing this guy along because I was interested to see what the inside of a real, live film studio looked like. For the uninitiated, they’re dark, smell slightly gamey and have weird creatures huddled in corners mumbling to themselves and smoking funny, twisted cigarettes. I would later come to find out that these poor souls are called ‘Grips’ (they could have been Morlocks as far as I knew)
The guy (who I later found out was Blair MacIntyre – the producer of the film) gave me a tour around. When we got to the equipment room he pointed to a piece of gear that looked to me like something out of a Soviet Russian Gulag and said, “That’s our Nagra recorder. It’s not a 4 or 4.2 it’s just a version 3 so I’m sure you’re familiar with how it works.” I stared at it for a second and then realization struck me. Somehow he thought that I was a film sound recordist and he was thinking of hiring me for his film!
An ethical person would have stopped right there and said he wasn’t the guy and had no experience. Fortunately, while I generally feel I’m an ethical person, I was also a person without a summer job at the time so the prospect of having someone pay me to hang around a film set all summer kind of appealed to me.
Turns out, in conversation much later, I find out that Blair didn’t much like the other guy but he was the only sound recordist available at the time. Luckily, I was Johnny-on-the-spot and got the job. I think he was so happy not to work with this other guy that he would have taken anybody at that point. (flashback to high school… “Do you know how to operate a sound board?” “No.” “Do you want to?”) I don’t know who the other guy was that I stole a job from and I don’t want to know. I’ve asked Blair never to tell me and he hasn’t. And if you think it was you just keep your comments to yourself because it was 20 years ago for crying out loud and apparently you were an insufferable pr!ck back then…
Where was I? Oh yeah…
Thinking fast and inferring from his previous statement that this Nagra thingy was (a) a recording device of some kind and (b) kinda old, I took a chance and said, “Yeah, it looks pretty old. Mind if I take it home for the weekend to clean and calibrate it?”
Looking at the possibility of free servicing for his equipment he did what any producer of small (mini, micro) budget films would do. He said “Sure” and I took it (and the Sennheiser boom mic) home with me.
Once home it took me at least 5 minutes to figure out how to turn it on and a further hour(!) to make my best guesses as to what the various switches and knobs did. It took me at least that long if not longer to figure out how to thread the tape on through all the wheels and rollers and capstans and heads etc. I spent the better part of the day just trying to dope out this beast and figure out which end of the shaggy thing I should point at the thing that makes noise. This was in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth, there was no internet and to figure out how something worked (when you had no manual but are a cocky S.O.B.) you just had to fiddle with it and pray you didn’t break it too badly while you did.
Finally I was able to get sound recorded onto the tape reel that he gave me and (armed with a head full of knowledge gleaned from a one-time speed read of a book I found in the library called something like “Elements of Sound Recording”, I arrived Monday on location. The story of the filming of “The Vacationers” (don’t bother looking for it, small budget doesn’t even begin to describe it) is for another blog but the point I was trying to make was I came in with absolutely no experience. For those not in the know, film is NOT a learn as you go type of job. You are expected to get it right the first time, every time (and when you don’t, you’d better have some pretty good reason right on the tip of your tongue).
Fortunately, I didn’t make too many gross blunders that summer and I did meet my wife (she was a bag lady and I was impersonating a woman. Story upon request).
Showing just how incestuous this business really is though, one of the actors on “The Vacationers” was in pre-production to direct his first documentary for the NFB called “Groundwater Pollution – The Underlying Threat” and the camera operator was scheduled to work on it too. They seemed to like me and asked me if I wanted to record sound on it. Wow, no experience one month and the next month already elevated to NFB status!
One thing led to another, one project led to another, one contact led to another and I have been working in this business for 22 years and my entire career can be traced back to one wrong number!
I’ve always took pains to stress to others that I’ve felt incredibly blessed and lucky to have been given the chance to start at the top. Lately, a friend told me that I shouldn’t look at it that way. He felt that I should be proud of the fact. He said (and he’s right) this business is so competitive and (let’s face it) cut-throat, that producers would not hesitate to fire someone showing incompetence and once that was done (because of the abovementioned incestuousness) word spreads quickly and I wouldn’t get hired again. He says I must have been doing something right to make an entire career. Maybe we’re both right; I should feel both proud and blessed that I have a job I love, doing loads of interesting things, meeting cool people and feeding my family in the bargain.
I’m lucky, in more ways than one.
I’ve told this story so many times that I’m no longer at risk of being taken for a poseur (that and 22 years experience) so here goes:
I had done some sound mixing along he way in high school, mostly for friends who had garage bands.
Typical conversation,
“Do you know how to operate a sound mixer?”
“No.”
“Do you want to?”
“Well…”
“I’ll buy you a beer.”
“Sure!”
After I went away to University I didn’t think about sound again until May of 1986. I was home from school and taking a shower at my parents’ home when the phone rang. As we all do, I jumped out of the shower naked and dripping (sorry for that mental image) and grabbed the phone. On the other end was a voice that seemed to belong to a man in a great hurry because the conversation went something like this:
“Hello”
“Hi, it’s me. Say, that gig is yours if you want it.”
“Huh?”
“It’s Blair. The gig recording sound on that film we talked about is yours if you want it.”
“Uh, I think you have the wrong number.”
“Oh, really? Sorry…”
“No problem but hey I’ve done some sound too so if that guy doesn’t work out give me a call.” (why I said that I still don’t know. It just popped out of my mouth…)
“You do sound too? Hmmm… why don’t you drop by the studio and we’ll chat.”
Not having a summer job yet, nor anything else better to do that day I dropped in. We chatted a bit about films in general and his in particular. To be honest, I was just stringing this guy along because I was interested to see what the inside of a real, live film studio looked like. For the uninitiated, they’re dark, smell slightly gamey and have weird creatures huddled in corners mumbling to themselves and smoking funny, twisted cigarettes. I would later come to find out that these poor souls are called ‘Grips’ (they could have been Morlocks as far as I knew)
The guy (who I later found out was Blair MacIntyre – the producer of the film) gave me a tour around. When we got to the equipment room he pointed to a piece of gear that looked to me like something out of a Soviet Russian Gulag and said, “That’s our Nagra recorder. It’s not a 4 or 4.2 it’s just a version 3 so I’m sure you’re familiar with how it works.” I stared at it for a second and then realization struck me. Somehow he thought that I was a film sound recordist and he was thinking of hiring me for his film!
An ethical person would have stopped right there and said he wasn’t the guy and had no experience. Fortunately, while I generally feel I’m an ethical person, I was also a person without a summer job at the time so the prospect of having someone pay me to hang around a film set all summer kind of appealed to me.
Turns out, in conversation much later, I find out that Blair didn’t much like the other guy but he was the only sound recordist available at the time. Luckily, I was Johnny-on-the-spot and got the job. I think he was so happy not to work with this other guy that he would have taken anybody at that point. (flashback to high school… “Do you know how to operate a sound board?” “No.” “Do you want to?”) I don’t know who the other guy was that I stole a job from and I don’t want to know. I’ve asked Blair never to tell me and he hasn’t. And if you think it was you just keep your comments to yourself because it was 20 years ago for crying out loud and apparently you were an insufferable pr!ck back then…
Where was I? Oh yeah…
Thinking fast and inferring from his previous statement that this Nagra thingy was (a) a recording device of some kind and (b) kinda old, I took a chance and said, “Yeah, it looks pretty old. Mind if I take it home for the weekend to clean and calibrate it?”
Looking at the possibility of free servicing for his equipment he did what any producer of small (mini, micro) budget films would do. He said “Sure” and I took it (and the Sennheiser boom mic) home with me.
Once home it took me at least 5 minutes to figure out how to turn it on and a further hour(!) to make my best guesses as to what the various switches and knobs did. It took me at least that long if not longer to figure out how to thread the tape on through all the wheels and rollers and capstans and heads etc. I spent the better part of the day just trying to dope out this beast and figure out which end of the shaggy thing I should point at the thing that makes noise. This was in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth, there was no internet and to figure out how something worked (when you had no manual but are a cocky S.O.B.) you just had to fiddle with it and pray you didn’t break it too badly while you did.
Finally I was able to get sound recorded onto the tape reel that he gave me and (armed with a head full of knowledge gleaned from a one-time speed read of a book I found in the library called something like “Elements of Sound Recording”, I arrived Monday on location. The story of the filming of “The Vacationers” (don’t bother looking for it, small budget doesn’t even begin to describe it) is for another blog but the point I was trying to make was I came in with absolutely no experience. For those not in the know, film is NOT a learn as you go type of job. You are expected to get it right the first time, every time (and when you don’t, you’d better have some pretty good reason right on the tip of your tongue).
Fortunately, I didn’t make too many gross blunders that summer and I did meet my wife (she was a bag lady and I was impersonating a woman. Story upon request).
Showing just how incestuous this business really is though, one of the actors on “The Vacationers” was in pre-production to direct his first documentary for the NFB called “Groundwater Pollution – The Underlying Threat” and the camera operator was scheduled to work on it too. They seemed to like me and asked me if I wanted to record sound on it. Wow, no experience one month and the next month already elevated to NFB status!
One thing led to another, one project led to another, one contact led to another and I have been working in this business for 22 years and my entire career can be traced back to one wrong number!
I’ve always took pains to stress to others that I’ve felt incredibly blessed and lucky to have been given the chance to start at the top. Lately, a friend told me that I shouldn’t look at it that way. He felt that I should be proud of the fact. He said (and he’s right) this business is so competitive and (let’s face it) cut-throat, that producers would not hesitate to fire someone showing incompetence and once that was done (because of the abovementioned incestuousness) word spreads quickly and I wouldn’t get hired again. He says I must have been doing something right to make an entire career. Maybe we’re both right; I should feel both proud and blessed that I have a job I love, doing loads of interesting things, meeting cool people and feeding my family in the bargain.
I’m lucky, in more ways than one.
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