Not only can The L.A. Studios Inc.’s clients choose the facility most convenient to them, they can also have their favorite mixer follow them. While generally the mixers are based at the facility appropriate to their discipline (commercials at Margarita Mix de Santa Monica, animation and feature film voiceovers at the L.A. Studios, DVD audio content, movie trailers and video game voiceovers at Margarita Mix Hollywood), it’s never too much trouble to send a mixer to another location for the convenience of the client or the talent.“We’ll even send our mixers out of state,” says president and CEO Jesse Meli, referring to a recent recording session of Demi Moore at her home in Idaho. “You can never predict a celebrity’s availability, so we roll the bed to them.”The company pioneered the use of ISDN technology in the post business over 15 years ago, to enable voices to be recorded in studios and locations throughout the world wherever the talent happened to be. “We were ahead of the curve on that,” says Meli. “People thought we were crazy. How could you be in the room without the mixer? But now everybody does it.” Meli points out that it’s a lot cheaper to record a voice and send it digitally, than to be flying people halfway round the world. “It made the lives of our clients much easier, and that’s one of our primary goals, along with providing our clients with the best sound possible.”The L.A. Studios’ three facilities are linked via an internal digital pipeline, so starting a project in Santa Monica for completion in Hollywood is never a problem. “Our rooms are identical at each division, so it makes the client know that if they’re working with an alternative mixer, it’ll sound identical,” says Meli. He points out that the majority of the time a client will request a specific mixer. “They bond with these guys , it’s an ultimate trust and a true collaboration.”
Written by Sam Molineaux
