PGA’s 13th annual Produced By Conference
By David Bondelevitch CAS MPSE
The PGA (Producers Guild of America) held their 13th annual Produced By conference on June 11th & 12th on the Fox lot. This event is aimed to serve producers looking to hone their craft and keep current on contemporary producing skills. The CAS (Cinema Audio Society) and the MPSE (Motion Picture Sound Editors) participated in an important panel entitled Sounds Like Success, featuring Production Mixer Amanda Beggs CAS (Ladybird, Skyfall), Supervising Sound Editor Brent Findley MPSE (Ted Lasso), Music Editor Curt Sobel MPSE (Ray, Ghostbusters: Afterlife), and Re-recording Mixer Michael Minkler CAS (Black Hawk Down, Chicago).
Amanda Beggs CAS brought up the case for a fourth person on the production sound team. “We need a fourth person. I’ve been fighting this fight for years now. The workload has increased. We need a person whose full-time job is wiring cast members. You would work more efficiently and creatively. The third person might have to wire 14 actors and then hold a second boom during a 30 minute take.”
Mike Minkler CAS spoke about budgets. “There is so much you can do with digital editing. There are so many decisions, it takes five times longer. It’s not faster, because you can do so much more. Budgets are down. Crews are smaller. We can do a single task faster, but the overall picture takes longer.” He continued, “Speaking to a room of producers, the question I get is, ‘Give me a post sound budget for this movie,’ when all we have is a script. We don’t know the scope; we don’t know where you are going to shoot, how much footage they are shooting… things get bigger and crazier. Give us parameters. Giving a budget before the film is shot is pretty ridiculous.”
Photo Credit: AP Images for the Producers Guild of America
Last modified: September 30, 2022
