Day 26: Hiding in the Back Seat

My phone is pretty much only good for only a few things. Ironically, as an actual phone it's an absolute POS as it struggles to make calls and send and receive text messages. BUT, It functions as pretty solid music player. It prevents my ever getting lost in this ridiculous city (when the network decides that it wants to work). And, it provides me with a passable camera when I need to capture moments in my life that...well...are notable. Why then did I fail to use it to capture the one situation that I've always wanted to mix sound in? Perhaps it was the rushed pace that the AD was keeping us on as we were racing against the sun to finish all of the shots before it set. Perhaps it was my dedication to good levels. Whatever it was, I seriously dropped the ball, as today I mixed my very first car scene and have nothing to show for it.

The car scene embodies everything that a sound mixer dreams of. A quiet interior location where good levels are pretty much a given (as long as the actors don't scream). And a chance for the mixer to show how invisible he or she can make himself. You start to get a complex when you get asked to move 500,000 times each day, whether the boom is in the shot or you're in the way of an all important grip or AC. No complex today though, folks. Today I was like Buster from Arrested Development (a.k.a. the greatest sitcom ever). A proud graduate of the Milford Academy where children are expected to be neither seen nor heard. And I'll be darned if there was any trace of my scrunched up self hiding in the back seat of the Jeep Cherokee in the scene that we shot today. I was in nobody's way.

The sound guy answered the call today, and got some sweet sound. Unfortunately, you'll never see evidence of the amazing work that I did...

...But that, my friends, is how it should be.

Ryan the Sound Guy