If you weren't a sound mixer, then what would you be?

[Eric Toline]

Seems like an interesting question. What would you have done if you didn't go into this business? Since I started this I'll go first. I would have loved to open a bait & tackle shop on Nantucket or in the Bahamas. Don't laugh, I was a partner in one 30 years ago in N.Y.

Eric

[André Boisvert]

Electrical/mechanical engineer. At the time, I just couldn't imagine 4 more years of school...

Today, I'd be a contractor, meticulously renovating old houses and making no money at it.

Turns out I'm doing this to my 110 year old house and having a blast... and many frustrations.

[Philip Perkins]

Seems like an interesting question. What would you have done if you didn't go into this business? Since I started this I'll go first. I would have loved to open a bait & tackle shop on Nantucket or in the Bahamas. Don't laugh, I was a partner in one 30 years ago in N.Y.

Eric

I WAS a cinematographer and director, back in the day.  I guess I could also have tried harder to stay a musician.  I got a degree that qualified me to be a librarian, esp. of non-book media (as we called it then), tried it for a few months and quit.  TV news camera was another possibility, did that for awhile too.  Same w/ commercial still photography.  Edited a few small magazines, wrote for papers etc..  In production, I spent several years as a PA, then a grip, and even gaffed a low-budg feature and gripped a TV movie.  Production (and later post production) sound seem to provide a steadier income, and people seemed to leave me alone more on jobs, and I liked that I guess.  A film sound location mixer has a level of responsibility, respect and income that I admired in the mixers I met early on (esp. David Macmillan and Nigel Noble), and I thought I'd give that a try.  Still here.

Philip Perkins

[Richard Lightstone, CAS]

Good topic.

I'm sure most of us had other plans, or dreams early in life.

I had planned to be an Animal Behavioral Psychologist. but heard the University radio station first day of student orientation. Dropped into the station - that was it - audio became all I did.

RL

[RPSharman]

Fun thread!

There were several times, both right after college and at several points since, that I thought about law school.  My father was an up and coming young lawyer out of Cambridge University in the 60's, but then left the law to run his father's business since none of his siblings were as qualified.  Both grandparents on my mother's side were attorneys in New York.  They married after law school and practiced for 10 years before having their first child (this was in the 1930's! - unheard of).  My grandmother retired to be a mom, but continued to assist charitable organizations.  My grandfather managed wills and estates and smoked cigars at his firm well into his 80's, much to the dismay of all the younger partners!  Toward the end, he didn't even have an office, but went in once a week and sat in the lobby and illegally smoked his cigar while going over paperwork for his few remaining living clients.  They all loved the law, and I remember great conversations, debates, and stories from my childhood and young adulthood.

The law has always been very interesting to me, whether it be criminal law or business law or any other type of law.  I imagine that if the creative side of the entertainment business hadn't called me, I expect I would be in the mix somewhere as a lawyer.

Robert

[old school]

Hey Eric, good question as the others have said. In this Biz, I started out to become an editor and then maybe way back in my mind a writer or director. Somehow I was lucky and became a Soundman as it was called when I started. But that is not a answer to your original question. At one time I thought about Architecture. I would also admit having fantasy's of being a musician or artist. Most likely I would of ended up at Standard Oil (Chevron these days) where many generations of my family worked. I was a summer hire working derrick on a drilling rig every year I went to USC Film School. Hard to believe, but I enjoyed the work and people, so that has the highest percentage of what I might of done. Who knows, I still may make it music. Look for my bands debut album this year. We are "Pappy n the Pacemakers" and hopefully we will be playing on a Ipod near you.

CrewC

[Sergio Sanmiguel]

Well, My first option was Test pilot, and my second was Astronaut... So maybe why I ended up as a Sound Engineer/mixer...

[Jeff Wexler]

Please, don't laugh, but when I was really young I wanted to be a dancer. My mother used to take me to all the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movies and I learned all the music and the dance routines --- never really managed to perform any of it properly but the idea of being able to dance down a flight of stairs and then jump up on a table...  that would have been the life. I was also quite artistic and used to draw pictures of fantastical mechanical creations and I always used to make sure I would draw the INSIDES, revealing how the whole thing worked. I wanted to be an architect (Crew mentioned this also) but my older sister, hell bent on making sure I would fail at whatever I attempted, convinced me that the MATH would kill me. She was right, in a way, since I had terrible problems with arithmetic (later it was determined that I was dyslexic --- and this was before they even really had a name for it), but the fallacy is that arithmetic is NOT math and to this day I still have problems with numbers but no problem with higher math.

Close to 6 years in college, behavioral sciences, Masters in Sociology and going on for a teaching credential, no intention of getting into "the industry", I got a summer job as a P.A. on "Harold & Maude" --- that's all it took --- seduced by the movies, had to make it my life. Worked in the art department on "Harold & Maude" --- wanted to do something more technical (maybe the machines I had been drawing at age 4) so it was going to be CAMERA or SOUND. It was NOT going to be camera, that's my FATHER, so I chose sound. Now, 38 years later, that's what I still do.

-  Jeff Wexler

[Eric Toline]

Please, don't laugh, but when I was really young I wanted to be a dancer. My mother used to take me to all the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movies and I learned all the music and the dance routines --- never really managed to perform any of it properly but the idea of being able to dance down a flight of stairs and then jump up on a table...  that would have been the life. <<<<<<<<<<<<<

How about you go thru your dance routine at the next RAMPS party at NAB this April?

I was also quite artistic and used to draw pictures of fantastical mechanical creations and I always used to make sure I would draw the INSIDES, revealing how the whole thing worked. <<<<<<

Does the name "Rube Goldberg" strike a familiar chord?

Eric

[Eric Toline]

To paraphrase Hunter Thompson

"The film/video sound business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long dark plastic hallway where ad's, thieves, producers, pimps, upm's and whores run free and good men die like dogs! Then of course there's the negative side"

Eric

[joecrabb]

Man, what a great thread.

The escape fantasy for me has always revolved around cooking. I love to be in the kitchen. Having worked in a couple of kitchens in my younger years, I can attest to the brutal amount of work a cook does. It would appear that I am a glutton for punishment even in my fantasy.

Joe

[Bondelev]

Trumpet in a jazz band.

[soundtrane]

PhD in physics.

-vin

[Mick]

I used to write jingles for TV and radio commercials and would have loved to parlay that into film scoring but didn't quite have the degree of talent necessary to reach that lofty goal. Failing that, astill being old guy still playing rock n roll would be just fine with me.

[greg sextro]

I almost went to school to study physics and follow in my fathers footsteps.  I was also a well trained french horn player and would have somewhat followed in my mothers footsteps (she was a professional opera singer) if I kept that up. 

I really enjoy working in sound but if I had to choose a second career it'd be playing drums in a kick ass band - something I used to do, although I don't think the band was completely kick ass.  Maybe that or photography - something I also considered as a career option:

[stacysound]

Great thread. Interesting to see that not many would be in the biz.

My folks had a small film company in Dallas back in the early 70’s. As a young kid, I grew up getting in the way around the studio. The 2 places I’d gravitate to, were the Sound Studio and the Oxberry Animation Room.

With a 4-5 year detour to the 24 track music world, I went the route of production sound, but I’d probably gone to animation other wise. Of course I’d be unemployed because no one knows what an Oxberry is now...

OT : My brush with greatness in the animation world... In the late 80’s a guy name Mike Judge starting coming over to my folks studio in the evenings to rent the Oxberry for cheap. He was working on some of his first animation - Beavis & Butthead “Frog Baseball”. I remember my folks commenting on how they would come in the next morning and Mike had left animation cels laying around. They thought it was fairly stupid, but none the less they would call Mike and ask what to do with the cels. Typically Mike’s response was “Oh, just pitch ‘em”... I wish I had a few of those now... Mike and I hooked up later when he did "Office Space".

Fun,

[Roger Slater]

Ahh, the forks you come to on life's road........I only ever wanted to work either in Motor Racing or Film/TV/Rock and Roll. In 1969 I had the choice of doing a degree in Automobile Engineering at Chelsea College on London's Kings Road, with the aim of becoming a race engineer, or a job with the BBC in Sound. I took the latter, worked there for 24 years and have been freelance for the last 16. I  have had a wonderful life, met some great people in this business and travelled around the world.I still love the job we do and the worldwide community evinced by this message board.I also had a 12 year parallel career as a Flight Instructor, until Commander Coronary took my medical away.  Still dream about being in that Rock and Roll band though..

Roger

[Bash]

Ski bum!!

Though I did get to do sound on a few ski movies about 20 years ago - I got to ski, and I got paid to do it!!

Good thread,

Simon B

[Glen Trew]

Ice Road Trucker.

[Eric Toline]

Great thread. Interesting to see that not many would be in the biz.

My folks had a small film company in Dallas back in the early 70’s. As a young kid, I grew up getting in the way around the studio. The 2 places I’d gravitate to, were the Sound Studio and the Oxberry Animation Room.

With a 4-5 year detour to the 24 track music world, I went the route of production sound, but I’d probably gone to animation other wise. Of course I’d be unemployed because no one knows what an Oxberry is now...

Fun,

The Oxberry rostrum camera was the predecessor of the Forox camera. Forox was started by former Oxberry employees hence the name Forox. Years ago a production company I was with had one of each.

Eric

[ProSound]

Early on in high school when I started experimenting with sound equipment and doing alot of live sound (Which everyone told me was not a good career choice) I considered going to Flagler College in Saint Augustine FL to get a history degree so I could teach history but once I picked up a boom pole I never looked back

[chris_bollard]

Thanks for your comment, Jeff... would loved to have been a dancer too (except for performance anxiety)

Way back when I left school I was enroled to study law --- best decision in my life to drop out and into a Communications degree. Had a hell of a time and still enjoy what I'm doing.

If I hadn't thought science (and maths) was nerdy when I was at school AND I knew what I have seen from the people I  have had the pleasure of meeting in the course of my work I think that medicine would have been way cool. The ultimate DIY. If you're not squeemish surgery is one of the most amazing things you can ever see.... and it sometimes saves lives and often makes them better

[Phil Rosati]

Very entertaining thread!

My father is a carpenter with his own small business and workshop. Him and I discussed taking over his business from him, but at that point I had graduated college and was already getting regular sound work. It wasn't an easy choice though. I started to remember all the fun I had as a kid working with him in his shop, learning how to use the machines, and how to mix ingenuity with creativity. I think the work he does is amazing, but I love the career I've found and wouldn't go back.

I also studied Sports Medicine in high school, and almost went to college for it. It seemed like a great way to get into medicine...but on the fun side..

Phil

[Izen Ears]

  Man I'd STILL like to be a scientist trying to figure out how to allow deaf people to hear, or even expand the natural hearing range of normal humans.  (I might just save my money for the next 15 - 20 years and do it.)

  Electronics as it relates to sound technology, plus the study of the psychological effects of sound.  Do deaf people have the same emotional range when they can't comprehend melody or harmony?  (Rhythm can be a tactile experience so that's not as incomprehensible I would guess.)

  Dan Izen

[David Waelder]

Dan, that is a wonderful picture.

David Waelder