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Old guys still rockin'


Mick

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I have you beat by one year (I'm 69)...  but it could be debated that I'm not a "working production mixer" anymore. I took my formal retirement from Motion Picture Plan 2 years ago, still a full active member in our Union and have gone back to work since my retirement (did two episodes of "Roadies" with Cameron Crowe, then turned it over to Donavan Dear). Not working production at the moment.

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9 hours ago, John Blankenship said:

Or more challenging, how many still have all their marbles?

I don't normally LOL, but that was funny...

CrewC

64 and a 1/2, with 1.5 kidneys....   I want to go till the phone stops ringing, (it's all emails n messages these days) or I hit 70. Then it will be full time doing my hobbies, music, (playing & recording & seeing it played), painting, photos, docs, eating well, drinking well, smoking good reefer, loving my family and living La Dolche Vita.....  As a commercial mixer I do 140 - 150 days a year so really I'm getting a good jump on the next phase.  Keep rocking Mick and that goes to all my elders too.

CrewC

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  • 2 weeks later...
18 minutes ago, Tom Maloney said:

I am going to have a t shirt printed up to read

"how come it seems the

     SOUND GUY

 is always the old guy ?"

65 here 

Tom in Chicago

THIS is one of the most interesting questions posted here. Why is this?

Is it because it takes a seasoned sage to fully understand the intricate aspects of recording sound in less than suitable locations?

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It could be an experience thing R C or it could be that when I and the senile mixers here started, no one wanted to be a "Sound Man". Now it seems as if everyone wants to mix and sadly forgo the boom op and 3rd person positions altogether....  Maybe it's because we have been networking longer, way before it was called networking.   When I started booming in commercials in the late 70's 10 guys did 90% of the work in that field. Now there are more mixers than I can count, but sadly not enough good boom ops.... Good question though.

CrewC

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Hey, Crew, I think one of the factors was the dramatic increase in O-M-B (One Man Band) jobs that were never present when we were getting started. Every job with the exception of news and documentaries had 2 people, sound mixer and boom operator, and bigger jobs (and most all union jobs) had a 3 person sound crew. A lot of the ultra-low budget non-union jobs seemed to get away with having just 1 sound person (who may or may not have ever boomed or mixed for that matter). The normally occurring on the job training, where a utility person could learn to boom, boom operators could get an even better insight into mixing, all of this has been seriously disrupted.

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All true Jeff. Back when we were young there was 3 major markets in the US and we all worked the same crew wise. Many more major markets these days and in the smaller markets OMB is the only way most of the time. I do wish more would do the 3rd then boom route to mixing here in L A.  Some good folks in L A commercial world booming but not enough IMO. Must be hard for them to see the value of that kind of a craftman education. Of course nothing is the same as it was so what I think has value has changed with the tools & rules of the road. Just glad to have made it this far down the road....

CrewC

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Very true about most people not wanting to be soundies back in the day--I was kind of "assigned" sound as the low person on the totem pole in at least two prod co staff job situations, everyone else wanted to be a DP or video tech or etc., but that's how I got started.  I could hardly blame them--terrible tools, like for video an M67 hardcabled to a horrible UMatic video deck or a portable Type C 1" machine with no monitoring, for film maybe a rented Nagra (and prob a III) since very few people could afford to own them or that infernal MA11 cabled to a single-system sound-on-film camera; old-fashioned, heavy "boilermaker" booms and so on.  I was lucky in this way, since I got interested once I got over being banished from the camera dept!  Doing movie sound led me into electronic music, into music recording, into audio post, into sound design for live performance, so no complaints from me.  Nowadays sound is a lot easier to get started in (forums like this, other web info sources, much cheaper good gear) if you are motivated, but we do end up with a situation of a lot of newbs knowing a lot, but having little or no hard experience....

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