A Sound Arbitration

Walking out of supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer Larry Blake’s Virtual Post-Production Sound Paradigm presentation on Monday night I couldn’t help feel a little torn. Don’t get me wrong I love gatherings like those, especially when they are helmed by someone who seems to be as controversial as Blake is in his field. Expectantly strong feelings were thrown over both sides of the fence, I just always hope the friction in the room grinds out a jewel of some sort. A great primer on all this hubbub can be found here. Though dated, the meat of the conversation among these great mixers is very relevant, yet these opinions both valid and passionate, really do nothing to unify our small community. If anything they create animosity instead of helping the collective push toward creativity, style and innovation in mixing. Personally, I really see no way to gauge which approach is better if the end result pleases the client. Blake implied during his presentation Monday night that If Joel Silver walked on to any dub stage in town he wouldn’t care if there was a Neve DFC or a Digidesign ICON sitting in front of him if when the mixers hit play Silver loved what he heard. Many craftsmen and women in both camps have stated in unrelated discussions in the end, mixing consoles are just creative tools so when a film hits theaters and audiences emotionally invest in the story through the quality work on an interesting and creative soundtrack then it doesn’t matter what the film was mixed on. I guess I really can’t see how mixing in the box weight on this craft will ever crush traditional mixing desk re-recording(see exhibit A, artist’s rendering of an actual happening), it really just comes down to personal preference. Don’t get me wrong I love the competition between rival companies because it is a catalyst for innovation and admittedly I don’t like the idea of one company controlling all the sound editorial and mixing technologies anyway. So I guess I am not drawing a line in the sand, I see each technology when utilized correctly able to make me smile in a movie theater when something sounds cool. I would like to put a disclaimer at the end stating that I am fully aware that money fan these flames more then anything and as I also noted I didn’t address this editorial at all. I just like to believe behind every successful film there’s a great re-recording mixer and that its the skill and experience of these mixers that is what I love about film sound not that the branding on the console.