Everything is changing
EVERYTHING IS CHANGING
I remember first writing that headline for an article I wrote in a recording industry trade journal about 30 years ago. To be truthful, I continued to use that same headline a lot, because as I worked in and chronicled the audio industry those many years, the only constant was change.
When I opened the doors of my first recording studio, Steve Lawson Productions, I got the opportunity to work on some very big national radio advertising campaigns. Though we had great voice talent in Seattle, our big agency clients more often then not, preferred to use the vast talent pools in Los Angeles and New York; especially when the commercials would run nationally.
We would book a studio in Los Angeles, or New York and the voice actor would go to that studio to record. Tape would roll across the glass from the voice actor and the Seattle ad agency producer and I would listen in and direct the actor’s performance over the telephone. As soon as we were done recording, the “other” studio would make a copy of the master recording and would ship it to us via either the post office, or UPS. When the tape arrived, usually a week later, we would edit the recording, add music and sound effects and finish the production. In those days we didn’t use Fed Ex because it didn’t yet exist. If we absolutely, positively had to have the master tape the next day, we could have a courier deliver it to an airline and it would be put on their next scheduled flight; an expensive proposition. When Fed Ex did arrive on the scene it provided a very welcome change because from then on, in most cases we could record one day and edit the next.
Fast forward to 1987, when Bob Landers, one of the most talented and busiest voice actors in America (and a talented inventor), gave us the opportunity to take part in an experiment to “beam” those out of town voices into our studio via digital satellite. All we had to do was put a huge satellite dish on the roof of our building and buy a digital audio satellite receiver. Total cost was a out $15,000 installed. The satellite was a great improvement over phone patch recording because for the first time we could really hear the talent while we directed them and we could record live and not have to wait for the master tape to arrive. As in any new technology there were a few drawbacks and setbacks. For instance, how could we have possibly known that our studio was situated right between AT&T’s microwave transmission and receiving towers and that their microwave signals would interfere with our satellite signal. And, damn it, not only was AT&T here first – they actually had the authority to broadcast on those frequencies. So, we needed to filter their signal out of our dish which was accomplished by placing a big fence made out of chicken wire around the back of our dish.
Since we hadn’t gotten any permits from the city of Seattle, we lived in fear that city inspectors would barge into our studio in the middle of a session to demand that we dismantle our ugly rooftop contraption. Besides the aesthetic and legal issues with our dish, there were a few other drawbacks as well. For instance, only one satellite recording could originate from each coast at a time, so we had to be sure that our session ended on time, because just like a network – at the end of the scheduled time Lander’s crew pulled the plug and our time was up; whether we were done or not. And most important, satellite time was expensive. Really expensive.
But more change was coming. In October 1991 I attended the Audio Engineering Society Convention in New York City. The only reason I remember the year was because of the release of Ron Howard’s film Backdraft. I had absolutely nothing to do with that movie, but the movie had a large impact on our business. Backdraft was being edited at George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch in Marin County near San Francisco. Sound editing and mixing was also being done at the Ranch. But Ron Howard lived in Los Angeles so the Skywalker team headed by Tom Kobayashi installed a fiber-optic link between Skywalker Ranch and the new Skywalker South facility in Santa Monica. Using the fiber link, work being done at the ranch could be seen and heard live at Skywalker South; so instead of having to fly up to San Francisco to supervise post production on his film, Ron Howard had only to travel to Santa Monica.
On that sunny October day while Tom Kobayashi, Tom Scott (Skywalker’s chief engineer) and I walked from the Javitz Center in NYC to our hotels, we talked about digital satellites and the recording industry and the two Toms brought me up to speed on the Skywalker/Backdraft experiment. At that time they were incubating a new company called EdNet which would jump the curve and allow recording studios to connect easily to one another, anywhere in the world, first via fiber-optics and later via digital ISDN lines. My walk that day with those giants, ushered us into a whole new league as my company then known as Lawson Productions, joined Skywalker (North and South), LA Studios in Hollywood, and Howard Schwartz Recording in New York City became the only studios in the world with this fiber-optic connectivity.
While EdNet connected recording studios together worldwide, those digital pioneers along with the proliferation of inexpensive digital recording equipment paved the way for the world’s voice talent to set up their own studios, connected by ISDN to recording studios, TV Networks and production companies. ISDN technology, high speed internet and low cost digital recording equipment democratized voice-over recording. Talent no longer has to live in New York, LA or Chicago to make a living. And for producers, finding new talent has gotten easier with the proliferation of talent aggregation websites like voice123, and voices.com.
Since selling Bad Animals/Seattle I have been fortunate to take advantage of this ISDN technology to provide voice-over work for HBO and Cinemax in Asia, Playhouse Disney Channel throughout Asia, and great TV and Radio stations across the United States. But in this internet age, nothing stands still, and today it’s all changing again. Talent no longer needs ISDN hardware and special phone service to connect. New software allows studios to connect using the public internet. All that’s needed is a computer, high speed internet connection, and a little software. A microphone and some actual skills come in handy as well.
How is your business changing? Can you keep up with the change?
