Sound Mixer Hears Two New Tunes

Tina Turner segued into her hit “Proud Mary” with a warning: “We never ever do nothin’ nice and easy.”

She has a kindred soul in Hollywood sound mixer Pat Toma, who approaches career challenges the way a Humvee tackles dirt mounds.

Since the age of 13, when she became an emancipated minor and left school, Toma says, she has followed her heart’s urgings. While her peers dutifully completed their educations, Toma honed her musical skills, learning electric guitar and piano and studying sound mixing. While they sent out resumes for 9-to-5 desk jobs, Toma pounded the pavement, looking for film, television and commercial work.

She discovered that sound mixing was an overwhelmingly male-dominated profession, and steady work was something few achieved. But tough odds didn’t bother the now 37-year-old Burbank resident. She has remained in the business for years and has completed mixing jobs for scores of movies, TV features, commercials (Coca-Cola, Gap) and music videos (Janet Jackson and Red Hot Chili Peppers).

But all is not rosy. Despite Toma’s best efforts, she isn’t reaping the financial rewards she visualized. “I am still not anywhere near where I truly need to be,” she said. Toma would like to pull in $100,000 or more a year, but she is earning about half that. It doesn’t help that Hollywood production jobs are migrating north to Canada, she adds.

So although Toma isn’t ready to give up sound mixing, which she loves, she has been contemplating other possibilities. She has pictured herself as a movie producer, bringing her favorite stories to the big screen. She has also thought about opening a community-oriented bookstore--a large one--because she loves books and socializing.

Like sound mixing, both pursuits are about as easy to get into as the Backstreet Boys’ dressing rooms. They also require major bucks, which Toma doesn’t have. But Toma believes she has the will if she can just find a way. So she asked Chicago career counselor David Helfand for help.

Helfand encouraged Toma to seriously pursue both interests, as long as she feels she is up for the challenge. He directed her to https://www.sbaonline.sba.gov, where she can learn basics about starting and financing a business. He also suggested that she read “Start Your Own Business: The Only Start-Up Book You’ll Ever Need,” by Rieva Lesonsky (Entrepreneur Media Inc., 1998) and “Start Up: An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Launching and Managing a New Business” by William Stolze (Career Press, 1999).

Here are other tips from Helfand and experts:

* Opening an independent bookstore in today’s economic climate is a daunting task. Many long-established concerns are mired in clouds of debt and have cut back store hours, reduced inventory and fired staff. The numbers aren’t pretty: In 1995, the American Booksellers Assn. had more than 5,500 independent and small-chain members, with 7,000 stores. Five years later, it has only 3,100 members with 4,000 stores.

But if Toma is determined to launch a bookshop, she may want to do so in a suburban neighborhood, far from superstores (which are gobbling up independents’ profits and clientele), at a location with ample parking and sidewalk traffic, said Marc Labinger, book buyer for the Bodhi Tree in West Hollywood, and Tom Cushman, manager of Murder Ink in New York City.

Helfand suggested that Toma follow the lead of some bookstores that have diversified to stay in business. Owners are opening bistros and cafes and sponsoring book signings, workshops and musical performances. Many also are specializing in certain subjects and developing reputations for exceptional customer service, said Kathryn Welsh of Bluestockings, New York City’s only women’s bookstore.

Financing such a venture would be Toma’s biggest concern. Since she has no previous merchant or food-service operations experience, she’d need to do extensive research.

“My standard response would be, ‘Don’t do it,’ ” Cushman said. Cushman’s previous independent-bookstore employer recently closed its Los Angeles branch for good.

Larry Rappaport, owner of the Opera Shop in Los Angeles, concurred: “I’d try to talk her out of it. Bookstores are closing one after another. It’s just too competitive these days.”

* Producing is a rough racket too. “You really have to be obsessed by this, because there are a million better and saner ways to make a living,” said Larry Kasanoff, who was executive producer of “True Lies” and more than 25 other films.

To become a successful producer, Toma would face formidable hurdles. First, she must overcome a bias that industry professionals often have against “below-the-line” production workers such as sound mixers, several producers agreed.

“The values and lingo of the creative side [of producing] are very different from those of the production side,” explained Frank von Zernick, who has produced 103 television projects. “Production is about economics, while [creative] producing is about story and character--it’s like left brain versus right.”

Toma should consider enrolling in UCLA Extension entertainment studies classes to learn about story structure, characterization and the business of producing, suggested Michael Gallant, who teaches a master class in producing for the program.

She would also need to build a reputation as a creative professional so that her Hollywood colleagues would perceive her in a new way, said Los Angeles producer Gabrielle Kelly. To do so, Toma might try to land an entry-level job at an agency, become a jack-of-all-trades on a low-budget film project, do script reading at a studio or production company or work as assistant to a successful producer, said Terence Michael, who has been executive producer of 12 films, including “If Lucy Fell” and “Life in the Fast Lane.”

Toma may also want to consider “piggybacking,” once she has optioned the rights to great story material, Michael said. Piggybacking involves turning over one’s material to an established producer in exchange for an associate producer credit, “which will open more doors down the line,” Michael said.

Last, Toma can consider creating an attention-grabbing trailer or short film, transferring it to video and uploading it onto the Web. If she’s able to produce a riveting Web site a la “The Blair Witch Project” and generate “viral marketing”--Internet-based word-of-mouth--she might attract the interest of financiers, established production companies or studios.

“Shorts and trailers are one of the most exciting new opportunities for new producers,” said Denise Mann, co-chair of UCLA’s producers program. “It’s really democratizing the industry.”

But even armed with a brilliant story, a hot Internet site and fierce dedication, Toma would still find herself waging a brutal battle to wrangle financing and even attract talent (writers, directors, actors).

“My advice is to have another job that pays, so you can eat,” said producer Kelly, who is also an executive at Creative Planet, an L.A. Internet company. “I tend to cheerfully discourage people who ask me if they should become a producer.”

Nonetheless, Toma is exploring ways to finance her two new ventures.

“The bookstore will be a reality for me, but not immediately,” Toma said. “And I know I’ll eventually produce. . . . I’m going to research the heck out of it all.”

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Time for a Change

* Name: Pat Toma

* Occupation: Sound mixer

* Desired occupation: Composite career as a sound mixer, producer and bookstore owner

* Quote: “I am looking for a career boost or a change. Possibly a complete change. Not all of us in show business do so well as the media likes to [suggest].”

Meet the Coach

David Helfand is a licensed clinical professional counselor, national certified career counselor and a professor/counselor with Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago. He also is author of “Career Change: Everything You Need to Know to Meet New Challenges and Take Control of Your Career” (VGM Career Horizons, 1999).