Day 7: Secondhand Smoke

I. Can't. Breathe.

Not just a brilliant hip hop stage name that no aspiring rapper has capitalized on, Secondhand Smoke is the official on set kryptonite of a Sound Guy Called Ryan. I seriously had trouble sleeping last night because of the residual effects of the cigarette smoke that I inhaled on set. Tonight will be no different. Of the 15 or so people on the cast and crew of the film I helped out on the past couple days, I counted no fewer than 11 smokers. Not lying.

Imagine 11 smokers doing their thing on a small interior set for 14 hours. My lungs hate me right now.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not judging. I am a firm believer in the "to each his or her own" school of thought. Where some people smoke, I compulsively watch baseball and basketball, and spend a lot time sitting quietly and thinking, all potentially contemptible habits in their own right. I'm just saying, as an asthmatic, I never thought sound recording would be this hazardous to my health.

Perhaps I've been spoiled by the clean air of New York City bars and am too out of touch with the rich smoky texture of those in Michigan where the smell of cigarette smoke inevitably permeates one's clothes after a night out. Would I be making a deal if I had spent the last year and change in Michigan and not in cushy non-smoker friendly NYC? Probably not. I just have to point out the irony that my secondhand smoke exposure is coming at work.

I love my classmates and they'd have to do a lot more than blow cigarette smoke in my face to change that. My lungs however are demanding that I declare an immediate vendetta against their foes and take out said classmates before it's too late. To my lungs I say, never. As I always say when questioned about the mental and physical challenges that one endures while making a film: It's for the art. Sorry lungs.

Ryan the Sound Guy

p.s. does that picture creep anybody else out or is it just me?

Day 6: Thanksgiving

Why am I listening to Peter and the Wolf right now? Seriously. Of all things to be listening to while writing my end of day blog, why this? For some reason I can't seem to muster up the energy or presence of mind to go into my itunes to change it. While on a good day I'd try to creatively tie our good man Peter's quest to capture the wolf into my subject for the day, today I feel especially tired and worn out and will make no such audacious attempt. And, my left eye is really itchy. (Does this ever happen to anybody else when they're really tired?) So I'm afraid today's is going to be another one of those half-assed posts that you may see more and more of as the Notes from a Sound Guy chronicles wear on.

Had Thanksgiving on set today. I guess there has to be a first time for everything. Today lunch consisted of: Turkey. Dressing. Gravy. Sweet Potatoes. Rolls. Salad. Good eating. Not as solid as my family's cooking but good nonetheless. Despite how dreadful spending 15 hours working on Thanksgiving may sound, it actually wasn't that bad of a day. Good atmosphere and a good people can make even the most exhausting situation seem good. (Note: using "good" three times in one sentence would normally count as laziness and/or bad writing, but you'll forgive me?) This week's shoot wasn't part of the original six that I had scheduled. I volunteered to help out last week when I heard they still needed a sound mixer. So here I am on Thanksgiving night, not in the food coma I would like to be in, but writing half asleep. Tomorrow instead of battling crowds at Toys R Us for an early Christmas gift to myself, I'll be doing the sound thing again.

And, if you wanted to know, Peter just caught the wolf.

Good Night.

Ryan the Sound Guy

Day 5: Wrapped V.1 (The Sound Guy's Paradox)

Wrapped my second shoot tonight (the first in my 6.5 as a sound guy). As I was on set today, our longest day, thinking of an ambitious way in which to wrap up my series of my writings regarding this period I entertained a number of possible topics ranging from negative to positive. This was a tough shoot to begin my sound guy mission on. The long days, overnight shoots, and residual stress of my own production took me away from my goal of maintaining a continuous zen-like sound guy state. Yes, there were times when I wasn't always the persistently happy-to-help Ryan the sound guy and could think of little else beyond escaping to my room and sleeping for 24 continuous hours.

That's what I think I'm here in film school to learn though. As much as it is about my finding my own filmmaking voice, it's also about building and developing the work ethic and will to put in the hours necessary to make it in this business. I definitely feel a great sense of accomplishment after finishing this shoot and can only imagine how I'll feel after this production period is over and I can start re-focusing on my own film.

Alright, now I have to address Day 5 of this shoot specifically before my post-wrap champagne buzz wears off. Something really struck me today. I just wrapped production on my film last week and I still remember the amount of singular focus I had during that week. During that time little else entered my mind that wasn't directly related to bringing my script to life (the lone exception being thoughts of a certain girl). While being on set this week I saw the same focus in the director that I was working for and was amazed at how much it contrasted with my own state of mind as the sound guy. As the sound recordist you are allowed an inordinate amount of time to tend to your own thoughts. The only time you really have to work hard is during a take. It's kind of like football, where the players go hard for ten or so seconds and then stop. (Two sports metaphors in one week, tell me if I'm out of control). While directing, I was always on and never felt like I had down time to think about anything else but my vision (until lunch at least). As a sound guy the thoughts of a certain girl pervade 95% of my on set experience. The experience is night and day.

While I wouldn't say I'm experiecing an existential crisis (a la Sartre's protagonist in Nausea), I definitely feel the need to channel these opportunities to think too much into a creative endeavor of my own. I guess you could call this blog that, but in my mind I have an idea of a story about a guy who has a tremendous crush on a girl and must overcome a myriad of obstacles to keep his cool (unoriginal, yea, so, OK, I'll stop). It's a thought at least and there are apparently more where that came from.

It's rough because I feel like I'm there, on set, and not there, off floating in la la land at the same time. As a result the days pass slowly as I try to reconcile my thoughts with reality. Very rough. Unless I find a way to properly mediate these two extremes these next 5.5 shoots could be very trying and I might be forced to escape to Burma and become a Buddist monk to escape it all. I feel exhausted already....

...Maybe it's just because I need sleep though. Sorry if I've overshared, I'm sleep deprived. Sleep beckons in any case...

Ryan the Sound Guy

Day 4: Long Night's Journey Into Day

Samuel Beckett was a good man. The title of this blog is an allusion to a play by Eugene O'Neill, but I have to mention that Samuel Beckett was a good man. Why? The Malloy trilogy and Stream of consciousness writing. For him it was nobel prize worthy, for me it seems a little lazy but I'm working on little sleep and trying to form coherent thoughts and actually...you know...make a point today seems a bit futile. So I'm just going to type as thoughts come to me and hopefully this won't suck. (I've resigned myself to the fact that it will.)

I'm coming off of two consecutive overnight shoots. The last one began at 11 pm Friday night and ended at 11 am Saturday morning. While in the midst of it I felt as though it would never end. I was fading fast and wondering if the whole experience was karmic retribution for some horrible act that I had perpetrated at some point in my life. Sleep is a good thing. Don't underestimate it. Making films is decidedly less good, but some would argue just as essential. I don't know where I stand on that. I should be a film devotee, but I would really love to sleep right now. I may revisit this topic when my judgment is less cloudy.

Michigan lost today for the six time in as many years to Ohio State. This has nothing to do with sound, but it's on my mind and I'm just typing what pops in there. Like the Stay-Puft marshmallow man. Stream of consciousness homies.

I wish this was as clever or intellectual as Beckett. It's not. Sorry Sammy. I would write more but I have disgraced your good name enough with these few words. I'll do better tomorrow.

Done.

Ryan the Sound Guy

Day 3: The Sound Guy and the French Fry

As I sit here at 5 pm typing and eating my breakfast of two donuts and a medium coffee ("breakfast at 5?" you ask, I'll explain in my next post), my mind again reverts to how hazardous filmmaking is for one's health. Aside from the exhausting long days, sleep deprivation, scalding hot lights, and annoyingly cumbersome sandbags there lies another menacing threat deep in throes of film production: the craft services table. Essential to the happiness of the cast and crew, the craft services table also introduces the hidden danger of compulsive snacking to the list of filmmaking's perils. As the sound mixer, with copious amounts of free time on set, I've found myself most susceptible to the danger of craft services.

To briefly explain, the craft services table is a fancy name for the snack table on film set. For every apple, orange, and carrot stick you'll find on the table there are two times as many cookies, bags of chips, cans of soda, and pieces of candy. You can understand how in the midst of a 12 hour day one's health concerns fly out of the window for the instant contentment that a delicious bag of BBQ chips is capable of bringing. Despite the level of technical skill that executing a production entails, it's amazing how quickly we regress to elementary schoolers in love with greasy food and sugary snacks. I discovered this about myself when the producer and the AD set up the pre-lucnch snack of chicken fingers and french fries last night.

With the DP, director, and grip and electric crew hard at work lighting a complicated night time exterior scene, I was lured over to craft services by the intoxicating aroma of french fries. I then proceeded to stand there watching the rest of the crew work while taking out the perfectly crispy wedge cut fries one by delicious one. I can't say how many I took down, but I can say that when I was finished I realized what I'd done. Eating your weight in french fries is never a good idea, kids, I don't care how delicious they smell. I'm lucky to have learned the err of my ways this early in the production period for if I had continued down this path, picking up my marathon training again in March would have been significantly more difficult.

Now back to my donuts.

Ryan the Sound Guy

Day 2: Relief Pitching

There should be something inherently poetic in the physical exhaustion that making films causes. Especially from the point of view of the sound guy. Allow me to compare the process to one of my favorite sports, baseball, a game that writers have for some reason always attempted philosophize upon the metaphorical qualities of and poetize into some grand representation of the human condition. I will now attempt to do the same.

Looking at baseball one notices that the game plays out over the course of three or more hours during which only 20 minutes or so of action actually takes place. The rest of the time is spent waiting for something to happen. Of course there's more to baseball than this but, to put it simply, this is what it ultimately boils down to. The position that most epitomizes this is that of the relief pitcher. These guys sit around waiting for a majority of the game to get the signal from the manager to warm up and come in only to actually pitch for one or two innings and sometimes to only one batter. Working out the math on that, they can conceivably sit around for three or more hours to play for less than 30 seconds. Wow.

I've found that the same thing kind of applies to the sound mixer on a film set. It seems that most of the mixer's time is spent sitting and waiting for the DP, gaffer, and the grip and electric crew to set the lighting for each shot. Once the lighting is set, the actors rehearsed, and the shot ready to go, the Assistant director calls for the sound mixer and we go for a take. The director then calls cut and if he or she is happy they tell the AD that they're ready to move on and a new lighting set up is begun. Back to the bench for the sound mixer.

The difference between baseball and this is that while a baseball game lasts three hours, a film shoot can last 12-15. My mind isn't capable of calculating the amount of idle time that this works out to be for the sound mixer, but from my experience I can tell you that it's a lot.

My next stop in life is to try out to be a relief pitcher for the Tigers. I think I'm well qualified for most of what the job entails, I just have to work on the whole throwing thing. The waiting I have down.

Ryan the Sound Guy

Day 1: "You Couldn't Just Do It MOS?"

This was the question posed by the gaffer when I reported to the equipment truck this morning to grab my sound gear for the day. Just to clarify, MOS is film jargon used to describe a shot that doesn't require sound to be recorded and synced. It is an acronym for the German phrase "mit out sound" which directly translates to without sound. Now when the gaffer posed this question (his name is Shandi, by the way and here he is on set tonight holding a light in an evergreen. That's my boom mic pole in the upper left corner), I responded "Well we can always just get sound." Little did I know that on this day the gaffer would be dead right.

So I sat and sat and sat today waiting to be called upon to get involved and record sound. It was like reliving my high school basketball days, sitting at the end of the bench with full knowledge that I wasn't getting into the game unless we were up or down by 30 points with 20 seconds to go. I didn't get the call until around 9:30 tonight. Now you're wondering what time I was called onto set this morning. 8:30 am is your answer. I didn't record a slated take until 9:30 pm. What did I do for 13 hours? I'll tell you what. I drove. Yes, I manned the steering wheel of the minivan and took to the Manhattan streets to grab what might be some of the most beautiful shots to appear in an NYU film this year. I won't describe the shots. You have to see the film ;)

So I traded in my sound guy card for my driver card and feel lucky that I didn't hit anything. No major existential crises just exhaustion after a long day. The moral of the story: the next time you're recording sound on a shoot and you notice that the script pages that you're doing that day have no dialogue, tell the entire crew that your driver's license has expired.

Ryan the Driver

Speed!

When kids these days sit around fantasizing about becoming great filmmakers someday my guess is that they're aspiring not to so-called glamorous positions such as screenwriter, director of photography, producer, or (overrated) director. No, my prediction is that the next generation of budding filmmakers are (or should be) all shooting to become the next great sound mixers.

I mean think about it, we can all name at least five "great" individuals in the professions listed above, but I triple dog dare you to try to name a truly legendary sound mixer. Go ahead and try. Can't do it, right? This, my friends, is why the time is ripe for one to finally emerge.

Now I'm not here to deliver a soapbox lecture. Nor am I here to steer any potential competition that I may have in the future away from pursuing careers in writing and directing films (though I hear computers are pretty lucrative and exciting these days, kids). I'm simply here to pose the question of why there has never been a notable counterpart for D.W. Griffith or Robert Elswit in the sound mixing department? Answer me this.

So what's my point? Over the next two months I will be crewing as a sound mixer on six of my classmates shoots. 1,2,3,4,5,6. This isn't some Ahab-esque monomaniacal mission of mine to become the LeBron James of the 702t sound recorder (pictured above). Not trying to prove anything. As magnificent as I try to make it seem, sound mixing is simply one of those jobs that no film student really wants to do. I really don't mind doing it however, and was thus given the chance to do it as many times as my little heart desired this production period. Which apparently is six. If the six directors I work for do 111 takes a piece, I will have yelled "speed" a the number of time required for me to be recruited into the cult from Rosemary's Baby. This is serious.

What about sound mixing appealed to me? Well, primarily the fact that nobody really bothers you. As evidence, here's a picture of the sound recordist on the film I just wrote and directed "No Hitter":

Notice how there's not a soul in sight bothering him. Not even the annoying director who feels the need to impose himself on every aspect of everything. Nope, it's just Greg, his sound rig, and whatever it is he's snacking on there. Happiness. And, as a Meyers-Briggs confirmed introvert what better job could there be for me on a film set than this? None. (But I will continue to try at being a director, despite my awkwardness.)

So, here I go. Over the next few weeks I will transform into a persistent sound guy. This blog will serve to provide you a glimpse of my experience. Let's hope I don't start hearing things after this is all over.

Ryan the Sound Guy