IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2017 - 50

In the Mix
Cabana is a
cinematographer
with an impressive
resume, including
director of
photography on
the second season
of the Netflix hit
Narcos.

largely male-dominated occupation.
Take action films, for example. She loves
action films and doesn't want to work on
romantic comedies and coming-of-age
films. She wants to shoot what she likes
to watch.
"I always tell women not to think of
themselves in terms of gender," Cabana
advises. "Just think of yourself as people. It's just a label. When you take the
labels off you see the true power that lies
within you, what you, and only you, can
bring to the table."
If you ask her what kinds of challenges she's faced, Cabana will provide
an interesting list: indigenous people
threatening to burn the set down and
chop the crew into little bits as well as
filming in neighborhoods with real-life
gangs. Then there are the technical
challenges. Take the weather, known for
its lack of cooperation. Like some broader
philosophy, Cabana knows to "just be
prepared and make it work." Those technical issues are easy to solve, she says,
because "if you remember the storytelling, you'll discover ways around
any challenge."
The biggest obstacles tend to come
in human form. Sometimes the crew
and cast just aren't invested in the
piece, and they can cause trouble. She
relays the following story: It's the last
day of shooting. They have 15 min to
get the last shot before wrap, but the
gaffer doesn't break the light like he's

IEEE WOMEN IN ENGINEERING MAGAZINE

been asked. For this, he should have a
cucoloris-a board held into the light
source that actually "breaks" the beam
into certain patterns or shadows. Time
is running out, and the truck is parked
far away. There's no time to send someone to get a cucoloris, so Cabana has to
act fast. She takes a C-Stand, turns its
arm horizontally, takes off her bra, and
then gets other women on set to take off
their bras, too. She hangs them all on
this stick that she dangles in front of the
light. "It looked beautiful," Carmen says.
"The pattern it created on the actor's
face was exactly what I needed."
The gaffer was fired after that. "I did
get a kick out of his face when he saw I
had overcome him with something as
simple as a pink bra," she jokes.
She brings a lot of herself to work,
and she has a nice, well rounded life.
Still, living in Los Angeles can be a bit
draining. It's all hustle and networking.
"Everyone has an agenda," she explains.
"You've got to find the human.... You've
got to feed the soul." George Spiro Dibie
of the American Society of Cinematographers told her something recently,
and she thinks it's something all women
need to hear: "Don't forget about the
rest of your life. Don't get tunnel vision.
Stay rounded. Family and personal life
come first, career second, and everything else is third."

Cox merges the creative
with the technical

In James Franco's film Actors Anonymous, there's a scene fraught with tension between Franco, lounging shirtless
on a chair, and Johnny, hunched forward beside him. It is so quiet, so still,
that the audience hears the shift of
Johnny's clothes. Then there's the clink
of his needle being set down on the
table, followed by the echo of his footsteps across a wood floor while Franco
calls after him.
Listen to the award-winning psychological drama Pale Blue, and you'll hear
the muted sound of rain
falling outside a car
during an intimate
c o n v er s a t io n , a
nurse's voice carrying through the
acoustics of a sterile
doctor's office, and a
haunting background
Ginge Cox
track that sounds
like the plucking of a
music box. Ginge Cox puts all of this
sound together. She's a re-recording
mixer for feature films, taking the postproduction film and mixing the sounds
within it. These sounds include dialog,
sound effects, and music, but also what
they call atmospheres, or ambient noise.
In other words, she's the "final set of
ears" before a film is released to the
public, and, in somewhat of a paradox,
the goal is that sound becomes such a
natural part of the experience that the
audience isn't aware of how hard she
has worked.
Cox is currently the owner of Auburn
Audio in the Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles, California. Many re-recording mixers
work freelance, and Cox started her company to provide these services. Auburn
Audio, which oversees production and
post-production audio services, has completed work for HGTV, 60 Minutes, Kendall
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MWIE.2017.2746368

-Katianne Williams

DECEMBER 2017

Date of publication: 8 November 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2017