Welcome to Alumni Live: The Podcast.

These are conversations with Grand Valley State University film and video

graduates about the industry, the film/video major and alumni profiles.

Welcome to another episode of Alumni Live: The Podcast.

I'm Mary Graff Ashley.

I graduated in 1997.

I work as a film editor in Los Angeles.

Today I am talking with Mike Piotrowski, a Production Sound Mixer

for feature films and television.

A member of the Cinema Audio Society as well.

He's worked with filmmakers like Michael Bay, JJ Abrams, Ron

Howard, many more since starting in the industry in the mid 1990s.

Some of the productions you've been on are Star Trek (2009), Straight Outta

Compton, Guardians of the Galaxy, Jack Reacher, Wandavision, Westworld,

Arrested Development, Transformers, just such an impressive resume.

Can you talk about your career path?

What got you started and what you're doing now, what you love about your work?

Yeah, absolutely.

Thanks for having me.

Great to see you again, Mary.

You and I were in film school together back in the mid nineties at Grand

Valley, and our paths kind of mirrored each other as we came out here to LA

and started working in the business.

I wasn't really a sound person at Grand Valley.

As far as the film department goes, I was mainly directing and editing

and that kind of stuff there.

I got my Bachelor's in 94 from Grand Valley and then came out here to

LA, worked a little bit in post at a trailer house as a Production Assistant.

And then missed Grand Valley and missed my girlfriend back there.

Worked on my master's for a couple years and got that in '97, Master's

Communications from Grand Valley.

And that summer of 97, there was a film shooting in Grand Rapids, called

A Postmark Paradise that were hiring people, and they already had a director,

they already had an editor, so when I interviewed, they were like, "Well,

what else are you interested in?" And I did do a lot of sound reinforcement

and recording of bands and playback for bands, that kind of stuff while I was in

college as well, so I said, I'll do sound.

I ended up, as the sound guy for the movie, brought on my friend

Matt Molder from Grand Valley as well, because he had the equipment.

So he was the sound mixer and I was the boom operator and we liked doing it.

So I moved down to North Carolina after that movie and quickly was hired on a

movie down there to do the same thing.

I brought Matt down with me and that started a few years of living

in Wilmington, North Carolina, doing sound booming on movies

down and TV shows down there.

It was back when Dawson's Creek first started out.

Did a lot of work for Dawson's Creek in those days.

and then movies like, Summer Catch, and then the movie Radio,

which we shot in South Carolina.

That's the movie I met my wife on, who was the Director's Assistant.

Nice.

After that movie she talked me into moving back out here to Los Angeles.

And so in 2002, I guess it was, I ended up moving back out

here to Los Angeles with her.

And, uh, got married about a year later and I kind of got lucky.

Seriously, this business is relationships that you build and you work with and

just build upon throughout your career.

Glen Trew, who runs Trew Audio, which is like the premier audio shop in the

world nowadays for film production sound.

He's really well known and has a lot of, friends in the business.

He, uh, mixed a a TV series in Wilmington and I was his boom operator on it.

He liked my work ethic and my attitude.

And when I moved out here to LA he hooked me up with Peter Devlin.

He'd done Bad Boys one and two and Pearl Harbor and, a bunch of Michael Bay movies.

And he was a very good sound mixer and he hooked me up with him that

kind of got me doing those movies that you were just talking about,

you know, the Transformers and the National Treasures and the big movies.

So I kind of owe a lot, of that to, you know, the networking I put in

when I first got down to Wilmington.

That's kind of what this business is all about, networking and,

doing a good job and, getting your next gig making sure that you,

keep up those good relationships.

Yeah.

And those, big blockbuster movies are really huge, on the sound design.

Did you find that those projects were like a different beast

than some movies you've been on?

Yeah, somewhat.

The smaller movies like that first one, Postmark Paradise, you know,

there was a two man sound team on set.

Me and Matt, matter of fact, we only had one, one boom mic and one wireless

microphone for a small movie like that.

But we made it work, you know, we made it work and it's much more forgiving

on a smaller budget movie to be able to say, well, we can't really do

a big wide shot with eight people.

We can't really hear everybody, but if we do it in coverage or whatever, and we

only have these amount of mics, they're a lot more open to letting you do that.

Whereas on the bigger production movies, If you have 10 people talking in a scene,

you gotta have 10 wireless mics on all of them and make sure you have plant

mics to plant around and a couple booms.

Sometimes I've had up to three boom operators working on, on sets with

me just to cover the whole scene and all the different people talking.

A lot more prep work goes into the larger movies for sure.

But in all of 'em you have to collaborate with every department, you know, whether

it be camera, wardrobe, grip and electric, making sure that the ballast

for the lights is not too close to set, if you're shooting in a small room, you

wanna make sure that ballast, which has a little buzz to it is outside the room.

You can put the light fixture in the room, but the, the actual ballast for

it that powers the light has to be outside the room because it's gonna

have a little buzz that would be on the microphone if it was in the room with it.

And that, that goes for any size movie.

Do you have a checklist things you think about before each production?

Absolutely.

When I interview for a job, I'll read the script think about how I'm gonna

approach each scene and how many people I think I'm gonna need for

my department, you know, budget wise how much money they have for our, our

department for a particular, movie.

or whatever.

I'll uh, say, well, I'm gonna need a Pro Tools guy for the playback, or I'm gonna

need an extra boom operator for these big scenes where we have, a dozen people

like that uh, movie Jazz Man's Blues.

There were scenes where we had like a dozen people doing

dialogue in some of those scenes.

That's why I had the two boom operators, and luckily they gave

me, for the whole run of the show, I had two Boom Ops and two Utilities.

And, and then I think for maybe half the show, I probably had

the Pro Tools operator as well.

So that was the largest crew I had for a show.

But yeah, you just kind of read the script.

You come up with what you need and you put together your crew and how many mics.

For that Jazz Man's Blues movie, I knew I was gonna need to buy a bigger recorder.

'Cause we were doing all the music recording and, all the

actors talking and everything.

At the time I only had an eight channel recorder, so I went out

and I had to buy a new recorder and, and sound mixer for that.

A 16 channel recorder.

Actually it was 32 channel, but I only used 16.

And I used every, every bit of it for quite a bit of that movie.

Wow.

In terms of gear and what you've talked about already, can you talk about, each

of the roles in the sound department, like the names and the hierarchy?

I know you just mentioned a few, but are there other props you need

on set, other utilities in addition to what you were just discussing?

Um, And then I also wanna, you probably wanna add, doing the

boom operator position, you need a lot of arm strength for that.

So just wondered if you could talk about all those different areas

you guys have to take part in.

Yeah, of course.

Sound Department is usually a three person sound team these days.

You know, can be larger, if need be, like I said before, but the main positions

are the Sound Mixer, Production Sound Mixer, who is responsible for recording

all of the dialogue and anything on set.

And you do a mixed track of that.

And then you do ISO tracks of each microphone you have out there,

whether it be one or two booms, some plant mics and lavalier body mics,

transmitters that you have on the actors.

And then the other job on set would be the Sound Utility, which is kind

of like the glue of the department.

They, uh, take care of both the Boom Operator and the Production Sound Mixer.

They make sure that, everything's set up for 'em to do their jobs.

A lot of sound mixers will show up and, and expect the utility to have

the cart taken off the sound trailer and put onto set and not necessarily

set up as far as getting ready to roll, but at least in the right position and

getting the wires ready to wire the actors, getting the comms out for the

Director and all the Producers to listen.

And then they have to deal with sound dampening, making sure that

the carpets are laid down on highly reflective floors, turning off

refrigerators, that kind of stuff.

And then you have the Boom Operator who is responsible for getting the

boom in position over the actors, under the actors, wherever the best spot for

the mic might be for that, that scene.

That that's kind of where I started in the business as a Boom Operator.

I did that for maybe a good 10 years or so, before I really started mixing.

And it's a great place to start, for me it was, anyway, it got me

understanding, all the different parts of the filmmaking experience,

from the camera and the lenses.

You have to know what lens every camera's on and what the frame lines are.

And then you also have to know about the lighting, where the lights

are coming from, the hard lights.

You wanna stay out of those so you don't get shadows.

And like you say, yeah, it is a kind of a physical job where you're holding

your hands up over your head with a boom with sometimes a heavy mic out on

the end um, for hours on end every day.

But, back when I first started booming, I was much younger.

I was in my twenties and I did a lot of kayaking back in those

days to, to keep in shape.

It was just fun and I loved doing it, but it was also great for keeping

my shoulders built up and giving me the right stamina for being able to

stand like this for 12 hours a day.

Like I said, that biggest sound department I've had on a movie was

a movie called The Jazz Man's Blues.

It was a movie about um, jazz singer in the south, back in the 1930s or so.

And it was a music heavy production and I was a sound mixer on it.

We'd record them actually singing the stuff on set.

And then after we do a take or two of that that they liked, we would

play it back with the Pro Tools guy.

And then we had two booms, and then we had two utilities because one of 'em had to

deal with wiring up all the actors for us.

And then the other one dealt with helping me set up everything else

with the Pro Tools op and comms to the director and all that kind of stuff.

It can get busy pretty busy for just a two, three man sound

team on something like that.

So you kind of negotiate early on to get yourself the right people

that you need for each production.

That's amazing.

Why else is sound important for a movie?

Like how does it help tell the story in other ways?

Or if you have other, projects where it was a period piece, are

there other old materials you would use, to capture sound for those?

Yeah, I think what makes sound so interesting for movies is that it

gives you the natural performance.

And why I like production sound versus, you know, throwing a bunch

of ADR in a movie or whatever.

It's one of the reasons I like doing Michael Bay movies is

99% of it is production sound.

He hates the sound of ADR and he wants the actual performance from the

actors on set while they're recording.

And I know some actors will say, "Oh, I love doing ADR and I can get that same

performance," but it's not the same.

You know, it's a different microphone, like, this mic right here is the same

mic I use on all my movies and the one you got right there, and it's in the

atmosphere, the room, the settings of where you're actually filming the scene.

And it gives it that authenticity that you really don't get in ADR.

You know, ADR is gonna be in a booth, six months down the line.

The actor's been in one or two other productions since then, and it's

totally, you know, you can watch it and say, "Oh yeah, I remember,

and I, I, I can do it like this."

But to capture that performance, the initial time and be able to give it

the authenticity that, the director was looking for, I think is key to making, the

viewer seem like they're, they're actually watching the authentic version of it.

You know what I mean?

Makes perfect sense.

It doesn't seem it a performance, it seems like reality, you know, like

you're capturing the essence of what, the director and the actor were going for.

On the movie Ambulance, which I mixed a few years back.

A Michael Bay movie where, he'll give out lines.

When I was a boom op on a lot of his movies in the day, I would follow

him around on set because he will hand out dialogue to people without

telling anybody, just extras even.

You know, he'll go up to somebody and he's like a real air traffic controller or

something and when we're shooting in like a booth or something and he'll be like,

"Oh, what would you say here?" And he'll say, you know, "I would say this usually."

And he goes, "Alright, that's great.

Yeah, say that."

And he won't tell anybody.

So you gotta make sure that you're close enough to hear him, to put

a mic on somebody that will say something just out of the blue.

I remember on Ambulance.

I was mixing and my Boom Op missed one of those.

And it was like a cop coming up to the back of an ambulance and

saying something to the, people in the back of the ambulance.

And , it wasn't even an actor.

He was a day player that was there and was a real cop.

And he ended up, he said it and we ended up getting a wild track of it.

'cause we didn't have it micd at the time.

And I'm like, oh, we gotta get that.

And we did a wild track of it and everything.

And I made notes in my, in my sound report.

Unfortunately in the final edit of the movie, they, they didn't add

that wild track, so you kind of hear the line delivered off camera.

Um, I wish they would've added that, but,

Frustrating.

Yeah, I mean, I, I do.

I get it.

I mean, they were under pressure too, and I'm sure they had a limited

amount of time to do it all, and maybe they just couldn't find it, but...

So then when you watch films now for enjoyment, do you find yourself

hyper aware of the sound or , are you able to get absorbed in the story?

That's a good question.

Um, when I was younger, I probably was more critical, you know,

and like, how'd they do that?

Or nowadays I can probably get away with just enjoying a story in

a movie and unless it's something that brings me out of it, you

know, and like there's some issue.

I don't remember what, it was something I was watching last week.

I, I just noticed I'm like, there's something off.

You know, it took me a second to realize, oh, I, I know what it is,

they didn't quite do this the way that, I think that would've made it sound

better or made, made it more real.

but I, I try not to be critical of stuff I watch because I wasn't there.

I don't know what challenges any sound department was up against, or whatever

department I, I might be critical of.

I just try and appreciate the movie for what it is.

I would say for the most part, most people do a pretty, pretty great job.

Hey, it's Randy.

We're taking a short break to tell you about the Morse-Cuppy

Film, Video, and Animation Study Abroad Endowed Scholarship.

The scholarship was established by Bill Cuppy with support from Deanna Morse to

help film, video, and animation students with the cost of studying abroad.

Alumnus Bill Cuppy talks about why he started the scholarship.

We created this scholarship because experiencing the world and other

cultures has been life-changing for us and we wanted students to

have a similar experience during this pivotal time in their lives.

Caroline Hamilton, the 2024 recipient of that scholarship, describes the

benefits of the support she received.

I'm a film video major and I have a German minor.

I've been studying German for about eight years now, and so I decided to

study abroad this past summer in Germany.

It definitely challenged me as a person.

I had to figure out how to do things and communicate and just

put me outta my comfort zone.

It introduces you to new things that you'd be afraid to experience because

you don't wanna embarrass yourself, but you have to just go for it.

The scholarship itself, just the almost permission to be

like, yes, go experience this.

Go learn, go see what happens, how this changes, how you see the world

and how you approach your work.

It took the pressure off of me a little bit to just be like, I can

experience this and not have to worry about everything else going on.

I can just go enjoy my time there and see what I can learn and grow from.

For more information, and to donate to the scholarship, visit

the link in the description.

Now back to the show.

You've filmed in so many different locations, Los Angeles, right?

Atlanta, North Carolina, Traverse City.

Did any of the different locations in, certain ways or the differences

in the crew, change your work style?

I mean, not my style necessarily.

But definitely the thing, it does change when you go to different locations.

Like on Haunted Mansion, I did the reshoots for about a month on that.

We were in Atlanta for three weeks and then New Orleans for

a week, and Atlanta was great.

It was actually a Utility I've worked with a bunch that I worked with there.

My boom operator was a friend of mine from here, Rene, that he went out

there and, boomed both New Orleans and Atlanta for me, but they wanted me to

hire a local Utility in both places.

So I used a local Utility in Atlanta who was awesome.

I worked with him a bunch, but then in New Orleans, everybody,

they were so busy at that time.

Everybody was busy and I had to hire a new kid and we tried to

train him and everything and it wasn't his, his work that was bad.

His work was, it was fine, you know, it was what we expected,

but there was an issue with a, a microphone being really noisy.

And I'm like, "Hey, we gotta get in there. We gotta fix that."

And his attitude coming back to me, it was just so aggressive.

I'm like, "Woah, I'm not criticizing you.

I'm just letting you know that you have to make adjustments from take, to take.

Makeup goes in there and adjusts the makeup in between, takes, camera

will adjust, things, sound, we have to adjust things between takes too.

You know, sometimes the mic will get pulled or whatever." And I'm trying

to explain that to him and he was just giving me a bit of an attitude

about it and my advice I guess for younger people would be just have the

attitude of always wanting to learn.

That's, I think what has helped me in my career.

I go into into every situation trying to learn something from every situation

and, from every everybody on set.

I've learned stuff from people that have a fraction of the experience that

I do on a film set, and they come up with a creative way to do something

that I'm like, that is perfect.

I think that is awesome.

I'm gonna adopt that in my wiring of a tie from now on.

There are different ways to capture great audio and I'm not, poo-pooing

everybody's idea that's not mine.

You know, If it's a good idea and it works, I'll try that too.

I mean, granted, I have a, a way that I do things that has seemed to have

worked for me in my career, but I don't object to learning new, tricks.

Definitely.

And having a great attitude is the key.

You have to have a good attitude and you have to, be able to work with

different people, especially in your department, but every department on

set, you have to work as a community together in order to, make the vision

of the director come to fruition.

Yeah, I love real positive collaboration when it's not about ego.

It's about, let's do the best project here, remove ourselves and do the

best work we can we can do here.

Absolutely.

That's the best experiences.

And the worst experiences on a set are usually because of an ego, whether it be

an Actor, a Director or Producer, other crew members, Camera, not to throw anybody

under the bus, but, the biggest movies that I, I've done, like the Transformers

and the National Treasures and Guardians of the Galaxy, those kind of things.

The key aspect of almost all of those movies is everybody in creative,

and positions of operator and DP and Directors, even, minus a couple,

maybe I won't name names but, it's a collaborative effort and all

just positive people, you know?

I mean, happy to work with you, the kind of people that are willing to help other

departments because they all know that we're all there for the same reason.

There shouldn't be an argument between Camera and Sound, which is kind of like a

joke on set always, you know, "Oh, Camera and Sound, they're always fighting each

other," but, for the most part, we always get along great and we work together to

make it as good for them as it is for us.

That's a collaborative effort.

And it makes the day shorter if you get what you need.

Well, shorter and, and just a better product.

I mean, when a movie looks good and sounds good, you don't notice it.

You don't notice it's a movie.

But if something's out of focus or camera's just off, or the sound

is off and you can't really hear what people are saying, it takes

you out of that experience of, of the director telling a story.

When you work together and everything is seamless, it just

takes you straight to that story.

And you don't even think about it being a movie.

You just think about it being a story.

Yes.

I wanna go back to the beginning when you talked about us knowing

each other in the nineties.

'Cause we met, I think through the group of friends working on the Grand Valley

radio station then, WCKS, at the time.

Now I think they're called The Whale.

And I hadn't really thought about that when we talked about doing this

discussion, but I mean, that's all sound that we're putting on the airwaves.

So do you think that experience enhanced any of your work, or anything else at

Grand Valley that shaped your career?

Absolutely.

I, I think working at the radio station station and being one of the key people

getting it going early on with Dano and Pax and you and everybody else there.

I, I also worked with Dano at Special Events.

We did all the sound reinforcement for the concerts and things

that would come to school.

So that was where my sound experience lied.

It was, it was doing all that, sound reinforcement stuff.

So it gave me an understanding of mic placements and recording good audio and,

making, sure everything sounded good.

But then, I was also taking film classes and learning about film and

theory and production and all of that.

I think for me it helped bring it all together once I got outta school

and I was able to merge all of it.

And that's how I kinda succeeded, I guess, at, doing sound, and it snowballed

into like a 30 year career now.

And I definitely think Grand Valley, whether it be the radio station and

friends like you and, and Dano and and my boss at Grand Valley Special

Events, Dan Sealey, he taught me a lot about sound back in those days,

which, I use those principles today and then from all my teachers and

professors there at Grand Valley,

Barbara Roos and Girbe Eefsting and, Scott, they taught me a lot

of how to apply stuff I would learn in class to productions,

and just building on all of that.

And what Dan taught me definitely, uh, got me to where I am today

and I'm grateful for that.

Yeah.

Dan Sealey, I remember them setting up for all the events.

Yeah.

That was us.

It was me and Brian and Dano, and Dan, and Pete, and even Paul.

Yep.

Do you have advice for current students in the things that they'll do at Grand Valley

and just what should they think about if they wanted to go into a career in sound?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, if, if sound is something that somebody is interested in and for

production sound, I do think sound is something that is gonna be, you know,

with technology changing so much, I think sound recording is still very important.

When you and I first started doing this, everything was shot on film and now

everything's shot on digital cameras.

And even the last, I did a documentary last month where I was the only crew

member, there was a Director, there was a Producer, and there were two

Actors, and there was me, the sound guy, and everybody was on camera but

me, I was the behind the camera person, but they shot it all on an iPhone.

They would sit there and record everything with an iPhone.

But I had everybody wired up and then I would boom as well.

And so as technology advances and people are using even just

an iPhone, it looks incredible.

It looks better than anything that we had 30 years ago.

And to be able to have that technology in your pocket and to be able to create and,

tell your stories that way, is amazing.

But to tie that back into sound, you can record sound on that and it'll be

fine, but they wanted professional sound.

So they had me there, I had to wire up everybody.

And that way for post, they have all the ISO tracks of everybody.

So sound is still very important with technology, the way it's changing.

Everything will will become easier, I think and, and more user friendly.

But you're always gonna have to have an understanding of the

technical aspects of, of sound.

Whether it be just the, technology that you're recording with or

how, how you're working with the new, iPhones and everything.

'Cause it'll say an iPhone will record at, they're like, "Yeah,

it's true 24, but it's not.

It there's 23.9.

You know, there are all these different frame rates and everything

that you have to deal with and you have to make sure that you're

recording everything correctly.

So just know your, technical abilities and what you can do

to make it easier for post.

I guess that's our main objective as a sound mixer, is to make things

easier for post to, to tell the story.

Amen.

That's, that's our job on set, I think as a sound department, is we answer to the

post people because if we didn't get it, then they have to try and recreate it.

And that is never, never easy.

V ery true.

In terms of gear and what you've talked about already, what do you need, in

general and how do you stay current with all the changes in technology?

Yeah, you have to stay up to date technology changes so much

year to year when it comes to audio equipment, even cameras.

When I first started doing this in the nineties, we were still recording on

reel to reel tape, you know, NAGRAS.

And the first few movies I did were NAGRAS and on tape.

And then we moved over to digital recorders, which would record on an

internal, but you would also send in a CD, like a burn DVD to production.

And now for the past probably 15 years or so, we've probably been

just doing, sending in CF SD cards.

You just burn everything to a little card and turn that into production.

It changes every year as to what is the new technology.

And wireless microphones have changed so much over the, course of my career.

When I first started in the mid nineties doing sound for movies,

the transmitter packs were probably a good, maybe four inches and maybe

like a three quarters of an inch wide.

Everything was bigger back then.

They had these huge antennas coming off 'em in the back in those days, and

they were only set to one frequency that you would be able to transmit to.

And, there are a lot of frequencies out there that don't work

everywhere, you know, so you would have to have a bunch of them.

One frequency might work in one part of town.

You go to another part of town and it's closer to a radio station or a TV station

over there, and it interferes with it.

So you need to have choices.

Whereas nowadays the transmitters can be as small as two, three inches long

at the longest and a half inch wide.

Every year there'll be trade shows that we'll go to and we'll check out the

new stuff that's coming for the next year, and... it, it's, it's impressive.

I mean, like I say, when I first started your wireless transmitters,

that you put on an actor to transmit the sound back to you wirelessly.

Back then, the transmitters were only for one frequency.

Nowadays you can have hundreds of frequencies on one transmitter.

The technology changes so quickly that, every year you have to go to

your trade shows and see what you need to have for the next production.

And then of course with AI and, sound cleaning, applications, like Cedar was

one of the first big AI tools that we would use to get rid of background noise.

And they would do that for on set.

Actually, you can buy a Cedar little mini computer that you would plug in,

run your, run your sound through and it would isolate the voice and cut

down all the, background noise for you.

You know, take out the frequencies that you don't want on there.

Nowadays that's not used as much anymore.

Nowadays it's more post, you just kind of record it.

They do have noise reduction on the newer recorders.

And we'll do a little bit of that.

But in post, they can fix so much nowadays, it's, actually incredible.

I know with post-production, I know you can search for things

with AI and just have the whole thing transcribed immediately and

all those kinds of things with AI.

So then with the industry now, there's been so many changes,

especially in the last few years.

Do you wanna comment on the strikes and post strikes and the work now and

how anybody you know, is navigating the changes in the industry?

Yeah, the last strikes for the actors was a lot about AI.

And I totally get it.

I'm on their side, you know, the actors.

Matter of fact, just before that, I was doing a movie called Haunted Mansion

and, all the background extras that were dressed up as all the ghosts and

everything for the, the big scenes, in between setups, they would take those

guys out and they would put 'em in the scanner and they would do a full body scan

of all these people so they could have their likeness to put into AI and use them

however they wanted in some of the scenes.

And then the SAG people during the contracts were like, well, that's the

kinda stuff we wanna be compensated.

If you're gonna do that, that's great.

At least compensate us for it.

Don't pay a background extra for one day and then use that likeness of

them forever in any way you want.

Right.

And having permission would be key.

Exactly.

I mean, it's one thing to be able to do it.

Yeah.

That's great technology.

You can, but you also want to be able to compensate people for using

their name, image, or likeness.

100%.

And that goes for voice as well as picture.

I mean, I heard that, uh, James Earl Jones did a whole bunch of voice recordings

before he passed away so they could use it for future Darth Vader stuff in Star Wars.

But I'm sure he got compensated for that.

Things have changed quite a bit.

From the time I got outta Grand Valley in the mid to late nineties till the

strikes of a couple years ago, the SAG and writer's strike, I turned down more

work than I would actually work on.

I never had to do anything other than sound for film.

And then when the strikes happened, studios kind of stepped back, changed

the way that they produce stuff.

So they started shooting things overseas and not taking us with them anymore,

you know.

I've been all over the world doing movies in the past, but now my friends

that are producers who are budgeting these movies are being told from

the studios, " Don't budget for Los Angeles crew anymore." They're only

budgeting for local crews when they go and shoot things in other countries.

Matter of fact, they're not even taking them, sometimes.

They'll make a Line Producer budget a movie they're gonna

shoot in Romania, budget it here in LA for shooting over there.

And they don't even take those producers with 'em anymore.

They just, "Alright, well you did your six weeks on the show, you're done.

We're gonna go shoot it over there with everybody over there.

" But that's not to say that the future still can't be bright because I still

think that storytelling, you know, people have told stories for forever.

Nowadays it's so much easier for people to tell stories.

With iPhones and with, digital cameras, the DGI's, all these

small cameras and GoPros and...

it's so much easier nowadays to do it than when we started out

and you needed film stock and film cameras and all the costs of that.

Nowadays you can do it much cheaper.

You can edit on your computers.

I think it's a bright future for anybody that has a story to tell.

Tell your story, learn your craft of how to capture it with whatever medium

you're using, whether it be, um, even an iPhone or a digital camera or whatever.

And of course, good sound.

And those of us that want to be technical, there's still a future there too.

I mean, I know a lot of camera people who have gotten into drone work and

are doing a lot of drone work now.

The movie Ambulance, I don't know if you guys have seen that, but the

drone work for that movie is amazing.

I mean.

we had these kids, I mean, they looked like kids.

They, they were our drone people for the movie.

They were professional drone racers.

They wear these goggles, and then the drones that they have

go super fast and they usually race through obstacle courses.

But now we had them racing through car chases through downtown and under bridges.

And matter of fact, there was a car jump in one of the scenes where this car jumps

up and the drone goes underneath the car.

There's so much new technology that can be incorporated into telling

stories, into making great movies.

Whether it be camera, sound, whatever department you might want to get into.

I do think the future is bright with all the new technology . Of

course the big worry is it's gonna take away everybody's jobs.

But I think if you find your niche and, find a way to help tell your, director

story or your story if it's yours, I think the future can be very bright.

I think they'll always humans too, to smooth all the rough

edges out somewhere other.

Absolutely.

Well, this was a great conversation, Mike.

Thanks for coming on the podcast and good luck with everything.

Thank you.

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