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Posted

What a great learning experience it was, teaching at the Media Workshops this last week. Smart, lively and attentive students, great facility and wonderful faculty and staff.

My gratitude goes out to Glen and Colleen at Zaxcom, Karl at Lectrosonics, John Belgique at Comtek, Ron Meyer at PSC and of course the inimitable John Coffey. Thanks so much guys I couldn't have done half of what I did without your help and generosity.

Thanks to Jeff for allowing me to impart his experience and philosophy to the students via DVD, and thanks to Mark Ulano and Larry Long for their help and support with the class material, (it's usually Mark's gig)

You learn so much by teaching and I had so much fun I should have paid them!

Good times

Mick

Posted

Hey Mick,

I do mostly Reality ENG sound work(3-4 lavs, boom. 442, 744T set ups), and I was thinking of taking the sound class up in Main. I was wondering how involved or advanced does the class get? Do you think it would be worth my time going up there?

Thanks,

Nejc P

Posted

The class and the location were both very rewarding and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. The location is about as beautiful as it gets on the east coast although it did rain every day. I guess being from England you would think that I'd be right at home but I've been a California boy for too long!

I've since talked with Mark Ulano and reported on my residency there so I'm hoping that he calls me again to do this next year.

The class was an intriguing mix of people, some of whom had no interest whatever in being a production sound mixer. There were seven in all, one ENG guy from New York, a budding film director from Boca Raton Florida, two teachers, one from Maine and one from Maryland, a documentarian from Honolulu, and two guys who actually wanted to be mixers, one from Puerto Rico and one from Calgary Canada.

I re-assessed my curriculum to accommodate all of their expectations and it led to some lively discussions and all of us learning from each other.

I would recommend this course for all levels of audio experience and all different departments. The ENG guy we had from New York had just started to work for ABC and wanted to expand his overall knowledge of equipment and technique. Thanks to my many years with "Hard Copy" and "ET" I was able to relate to him through practical experience and not just theoretical opinion.

The documentary maker was interested in improving the audio quality of her work, so I drew on my "Unsolved Mysteries" tenure and steered my approach to suit her expectations where necessary.

We covered everything in which I've had practical hands on experience, from music mixing to "CSI" and from the unsolicited comments I received after the week long course I think the students obtained everything that they expected and then some. I was the beneficiary of more than I bargained for too, both from the  students and the faculty. On Friday night all the different departments show off their work from that week in a DVD presentation attended by everyone at the facility. This was traditionally a visual representation of their work, so not wanting to be excluded on the basis of our class being an aural experience, we shot a "spoof" commercial on SD video about the closet industry of people firing up weed wackers around productions and then expecting to be paid to shut them off, and it was quite a hit at the show.

It doesn't matter what branch of audio you are in, or want to be in, the workshops is a great place to not only learn about the sound end of the business, but also about the collaborative, complex and symbiotic way in which TV series, documentaries and feature films are made. I recommend it heartily. Check it out at theworkshops.com

Regards

Mick

  • 1 year later...

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