We're sad to hear that the venerable Chris Newman passed away on Tuesday, February 3rd. In addition to being a master multi-Oscar and CAS award-winning sound mixer, he was always generous with his time and talents, both as a teacher at SVA and at many panel discussions and seminars. Chris was an outsized influence on many generations of sound mixers and will be missed.

Peter Schneider wrote up this remembrance of Chris:

I am blessed to have been mentored by Chris Newman. As a testament to how generous Chris was with his time, wisdom, and spirit, I bet -  no I know - that there are thousands of us that could make that claim.

Chris was an early supporter of Gotham, and I have  fond memories of working with him on the many Chris Newman events that we helped produce. 

But one of my favorite early Gotham memories working with Chris was when he purchased a Fostex PD-6 from us for use on the (remake) film Manchurian Candidate.  As I remember it, this was an editorial request - post felt pulling audio from  that file based recorder would be easier to deal with than transferring audio from Chris' beloved Nagra D.

The only problem: they had already started shooting. Naturally, Chris was fearless. "We're shooting near Gotham at Penn Station....bring the PD-6 and a roll of 2" blue painter's tape." he said.

Now, normally, I would question the need for a roll of blue painter's tape when delivering a sophisticated multi-track digital audio recorder. But I figured, since he's the one with the Academy Awards and credited with mixing almost all of the films that made me want to work in film in the first place, that if he said bring a roll of blue painter's tape, dammit, I am going to bring a roll of blue painter's tape!

The walk to Penn Station from Gotham (at that time) was 10 minutes. It's worth pausing to note that:

1.  I grew up near Penn Station
2. I grew up listening to Chris Newman's movies
3. I grew up admiring Jonathan Demme's movies.
4.  I don't often get star struck, but....c'mon....Denzel Washington.
5.  I knew instinctively what a big deal this was for Gotham

Despite feeling woozy from those five things, Chris' cart was easy enough to find in the center of all the action. Chris had cleared a space on his cart for the recorder and I helped him connect it up to his mixer. Weirdly, I can't recall if it was his Sela mixer, but I definitely remember seeing his custom made headphone selector box!

I asked Chris about the painter's tape purpose. "Now," he said, "I want you to cover all of the knobs and switches on this PD-6 that I don't ever need to look at."

For your reference, a stock PD-6:

Needless to say, we went through a lot of blue painter's tape.

Over the course of an hour, I went through the basics of the machine with Chris. No disrespect to Fostex, but putting a PD-6 on Chris's cart on top of the elegant Nagra D felt a little bit like showing up to a fancy opera wearing Crocs.

I wouldn't say Chris embraced that machine at the end of our hour together, but he definitely mastered it in spite of, or maybe because of, that blue painter's tape, I think that summed up Chris' approach to the technology of filmmmaking: Focus the sound only on what serves the story..

- Peter

Top picture: Chris Newman teaching at SVA in 2009. Courtesy Cory Allen.
Manchurian Candidate still courtesy Paramount Pictures.