Gathering at Mid-Can's Studio

Hey all

It was a very rare event that happened on Tuesday, January 8th @ Mid-Can's production studio: An email was sent out to central Canada's small elite crew of unionized audio engineers for a free pizza and beer gathering to sample some new audio products entering the market for the first time—let me just say, if your looking to get a crew of sound guys together, that's how to do it!

We all made our way into this world class facility and into the production studio that was suited up with chairs, 50 inch plasma screen T.V's playing a Led Zeppelin concert for their rock'n roll hall of fame induction, and a couple of cold ones on ice. Since the Sound Department Caucus of Manitoba is a relatively small collection of specialists (roughly 20 members) one would make the assumption that we all would have known each-other quite well. This is true for some of us (especially the veterans) but for many of us we have heard many mentions of each-other but never actually met face to face—this shocked and amazed all of us, especially Mid-Can's rentals manager Kelly Dodds!

So we enjoyed a couple "wobbly pops" as the old timers there call ice cold beer and we began to watch an operation video for Sound Devices new 664 record unit.

I have been a big fan of Sound Devices portable recorders for a long time now, they are my go-to most reliable field recorder for working on documentary or drama films. The 664, however, is optimized for many channels of un-scripted dialog, which is perfect for reality T.V!

We all got a chance to fiddle around with the settings while the video was playing tricks and tips in the background but Kelly was sure to tell us "greasy scum-bags" to wash our hands before pushing any buttons!

The evening was really fantastic, I got to catch up with some of the veteran sound mixers that mentored me and really taught me everything I know when I was fresh out of college many years ago when I was a young entry level audio engineer. I am really grateful for all of the experiences I have had working with them, they have all been really positive and constructive.

The thing with the Sound Department, is that we are relatively small crews usually 2 or 3 of us on a team for many films, so most of us just know the small sound teams we continually work with. This was a great meet up of long time collaborators pushing out serious quality out of Manitoba ensuring great sounds make it to the worlds stage. I am really glad that we all posed in the picket line for a photo opportunity at the end of the night, I really quite like the caption: "Central Canada's audio engineers, I'm sure you've heard us!"