NEW YORK-Mixer Rob Sayers has joined New York-based Sound Lounge, the audio postproduction facility which is part of the family of companies under the New York-headquartered IllusionFusion! umbrella. Sayers was formerly the in-house mixer at the New York operation of Red Car, bicoastal with offices in Chicago and Dallas.
Sayers joined Red Car in January ’97 and worked on jobs for Jell-O, Icehouse Ice Beer, Crest, Pampers, Lenscrafters, Victoria’s Secret, GMC, Staples, Sony, TCI Cable and BellSouth, among others. He was also responsible for designing and supervising the construction of Red Car’s sound room in New York. But after two years, Sayers began to feel what he perceived as being the inherent limits associated with working as a mixer at an editorial facility.
"As much as I liked working at Red Car, I only got to work with Red Car clients," explained Sayers, who was interested in the variety that comes with working at an audio post house like Sound Lounge. "I wanted to be at an audio studio and work with other engineers and share ideas," continued Sayers.
Sayers originally came to New York from Philadelphia to pursue a career mixing records. But without an established discography, Sayers soon realized that the best he could do was get a job as an assistant setting up microphones for musicians at a recording studio. Instead he opted for a technical career and landed himself a studio technician job at the New York Media Group in ’86.
For three-and-a-half years, Sayers worked under the New York Media banner at both Superdupe Recording and East Side Audio and Video (now East Side Audio) as a technician. There he learned studio maintenance, basic electronics and postproduction mixing. He also met and became friends with Tom Jucarone, who also worked at East Side as a technician at that time. Jucarone would later establish himself as a mixer and launch Sound Lounge with mixer/sound designer Peter Holcomb and sound designer Marshall Grupp (SHOOT, 8/21/98, p.7). Grupp works as a sound designer through Marshall Grupp Sound Design, New York.
Keeping his dream alive of mixing records, Sayers joined now defunct Videomix in ’91 as its chief engineer. "The idea was that I would work as their technician, but then on the nights and weekends I would have access to their facilities to work on my own music projects," explained Sayers. According to Sayers, his plan never quite panned out, but instead he became interested in working as a commercial post mixer through his connection with Jucarone. "Over the years I had become good friends with Tom and saw how mixing spots was just another form of mixing," said Sayers, who subsequently left Videomix in ’93 to pursue mixing in the spot realm.
After a brief stint as a freelance audio engineer for Sesame Street via the Children’s Television Network, New York, Sayers returned to the New York Media Group in ’94. Although he was hired as a floating audio mixer to work at any of the New York Media companies (including East Side Audio, Mixed Nuts Recording Studios and Superdupe), the idea never came to fruition. Sayers wound up working primarily through East Side Audio where he most notably mixed a package of Kodak spots via J. Walter Thompson, New York, to promote the ’96 Summer Olympics.
Keeping in line with his technical experience, Sayers has already built his own sound room at Sound Lounge where he joins mixers/sound designers Jucarone, Holcomb and Philip Loeb. Sound Lounge is represented nationally by New York-based April Jaffe.
