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.