Life & Work with Nick Bozzone of Las Vegas

Today we’d like to introduce you to Nick Bozzone.

Hi Nick, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
After I graduated college with a Communications degree in Television Production and Digital Media (the closest thing to audio courses they offered at the time), I went to Full Sail University in Winter Park, FL to specifically learn about all things professional audio… music, live shows, post production, video games, etc. Once I graduated from Full Sail, I moved back to California and spent 3 months traveling in Sacramento, San Francisco and LA looking for internships and jobs, with many “not hiring right now”‘s and ghostings.

Finally, I was offered an internship at a studio in downtown Sacramento which specialized in regional radio commercials. I was unpaid for the 30 days, then was offered the chance to show them what I could do… which showed ME I had much to learn haha. The engineers and studio owner took me under their wing and showed me many timeless radio commercial mixing techniques that I had never seen before, but have heard many times without even knowing it.

After 6 months of that, I was called by a studio in LA to work on the creation of TV and airline versions of feature films (removing and replacing curse words, fixing the audio when there was too much violence or nudity). They gave me the graveyard shift, but I was thrilled to be getting a paycheck in a place like LA working on audio and films. 5 months into that job, the studio went out of business, and I was back out on the streets looking for work again. I decided that I liked working on commercials more than films, and went to the #1 place in LA for commercials at the time, P.O.P. Sound in Santa Monica.

I drove there, and asked to talk to the studio manager and requested a tour of the facility, which he said yes to. I handed off my resume at the end of the tour, and as I was driving home, he called me and offered me a job in the transfer / duplication department. Up until then I had very little experience dealing with video, and learned the in’s and out’s of DBC’s, BetaSP’s, D1’s, D2’s, HD-CAM’s, building DVD’s, etc. After a year of training there, I was offered an assistant mixer position, and that is really how I began my audio career.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I feel like most people who undertake a path to work for themselves rarely have a smooth road. My path originally started with me wanting to be a music mixer… recording bands in the studio and mixing albums. I ended up loving the art of putting audio to picture way more than that, and decided to do a career change very early on in my life and education.

All told, I have worked in 7 separate audio post production studios so far in my career as a full time engineer. As it stands today, 3 of those studios have closed (while I was working in them). The entertainment industry is not an easy one by any means as you can imagine, and working ‘behind the camera’ is no different.

8 years ago, I decided that I no longer wanted to worry about my job suddenly evaporating away again, and began the next stage of my career: freelancing. During college, I took exactly zero business classes (although now I’m kicking myself for not). Freelancing, I have come to find out, is basically starting your very own small business. I don’t sell anything physical to anyone… I sell my skills I have learned and my time to my clients, and they come to me for my expertise and their trust in me and my abilities.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am an Audio Engineer. After I tell people that, the first question they have for me is, “Oh, so you do music?”… no, not exactly. I work in audio post production. For example, once a commercial is filmed on location say, at a car dealership… everything after the filming or ‘Production’, is sent off the video editors, visual effects artists, colorists and audio mixers / sound designers (that’s me). Once the commercial is assembled by the video editor into :60, :30, and/or :15 videos, the video and all sound that was recorded during the shoot, along with the chosen music track(s) and temporary sound design placed by the editor, all get’s sent to me. I am then in charge of recording voice over talent, doing on-set dialog noise cleanup, music editing, sound effects placement and sound design element creations. Then, I mix all of these elements together into what is called a “Final Mix” of the commercial. Obviously commercials are much shorter than TV shows, documentaries and films.. of which I have done all of the above throughout my career… but think about this: I’ve worked on 1 single :30 commercial for 3 straight 8 hour days before… however I have also worked on over 120 multi-timed commercials in a single day also! That is to say, my job is rarely ever the same from one day to the next based on the projects needs.

I think one of the things that sets me apart from other mixers out there is my ability to have fun during the session. I don’t like my clients feeling stressed out or nervous on any aspect of them working with me… voice over artists included. I joke around, make my clients feel at-ease and at the same time, evoke a sense of calm and trust that I have the projects best interests at heart and in mind the entire time. This, plus over 20 years of studio experience gives me an edge over my competition. The results of all this have brought home multiple Telly Awards, Clio Awards, Addy Awards, Film Festival Awards, a Radio Mercury Award, an Emmy Award, a Cannes Film Festival Award, an MPSE Award Nomination, a G.A.N.G. Award nomination, and many other awards and accolades for projects I have worked on through the years. Honestly, in my world, creative thinking AND collaboration with others (clients) are the keys to success. I enjoy what I do, and I believe it shows in my work.

Honestly, it’s tough to nail down just ‘a few’ of my favorite projects through the years! This could go on for awhile ha. I’ve worked on commercials for Super Bowl’s, the Olympics, hundreds of household name brands, important PSA’s… but I’ll tell you about a few of the atypical ones:

– I recorded the comedian Cheech Marin for a project that was using him for his voice to be used in a Las Vegas slot machine.
– I recorded Jim Caviezel for an audio book of him reading the Bible.
– I sound designed and mixed a commercial for Edelweiss beer using only sound design elements (no music, voice over, or dialog).
– I sound designed and mixed a short documentary that needed to be made in ambisonic. Ambisonic audio is a full-sphere, 3D surround sound technique that records an entire directional sound field as a single cohesive sphere, allowing it to be adapted to any speaker layout or rotated dynamically for virtual reality and 360-degree video (use headphones to listen). Ultimately, it’s a method of bringing an ATMOS stile mix into your headphones, but also give you the freedom to use your mouse and drag the video any direction you want, and the audio changes with the camera’s movements.
– I mixed every cutaway scene in the video game Concrete Genie (SONY) in 5.1 (most commercial mixers are never given this opportunity).
– I spent all night once with another engineer recording Usher tap dancing on the underside of a table in our recording booth for his performed tribute to Gene Kelly’s “Singin’ in the Rain” at the Movies Rock: A Celebration of Music in Film concert at the Kodak Theatre in LA.

So many projects to choose from… so many celebrities I’ve had the privilege of working with… so many studio ‘stories’ I have of both hahaha.

Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
My career is where it is today BECAUSE of the risks I have taken! I don’t necessarily consider myself a blind risk taker, but more of a calculated risk taker. Starting out in this business back in the early 2000’s, I took risks by driving all around the streets of LA with printed out Mapquest directions on my lap, taking me from one studio directly to the next with the intent of dropping off resumes, meeting studio managers, all with the overall hope that someone would give a kid from the rural woods of northern California a chance of a lifetime. It took time, effort, MANY disappointments, a few wins and a lot of perseverance to land my first job in LA. I didn’t sit behind a computer blindly sending my resume out to people who I’ve never said a single word to… I hit the streets and I knocked on doors and I asked for tours and morning coffee meetings… each decision and choice I made being its own risk. Had I not done that hard work and taken so many risks on my career, I can say with almost certainty that I wouldn’t be here talking about audio mixing with you today!

I graduated from College with a Communications degree, and from Full Sail University with a Recording Arts degree. I frequently think back to my beginnings and about those who have helped me along the way… and I try to give back some of my time to the new group heading out into the world who must take their own risks to succeed. One of the very first things I tell these kids, is to decide not to sit back and email blindly to any and all studios in the city. Take that risk and go drive there… actually meet the people who work there face to face… smile… ask questions… ultimately, show them that you are human! That little bit of a risk puts them ahead of the crowd by at LEAST 85% if not more. That is just one example of what I call a calculated risk, but one with a massive upside and very little downside.

At the time when I finally decided to leave the comfort of my full time employment and go freelance, that one risk was the absolute hardest one I have ever made in my life. I risked it all! In the studio world, work came through the door because of either the studios reputation, the clients relationship with either the producers or sales staff, or if a client asks for a mixer by name. In the freelance world, there is absolutely no one to lean on for help… you either make it, or you don’t… there really is no in-between. I’ve told people before that I’ve never gone skydiving, but I think that feeling of telling my boss I was leaving to ‘go it alone’ is the closest thing to it. All I could hope for, was to pull my chute and… fingers crossed… float down safely into my new roll. The first year was the hardest. I second guessed myself almost every day, but EVERY DAY I made myself move forward toward the goal of self sufficiency. I understood all things audio, but that is only a portion of how I could be successful. Figuring out how to bill my clients, how to find new clients, teaching myself how to build my own website, how to create invoices and stay organized on all the business paperwork, becoming incorporated, coming up with a logo, coming up with a business name, creating a DBA (Doing Business As), and a host of other things that I had never done before, nor had I thought about during my days working in corporate owned studios. Every issue with my computer using plugins and sound effects libraries, hard drives and backups, even the internet speeds, equipment upkeep and troubleshooting… all of that was/is my job to stay up to speed with. THEN and only then, can I focus on my actual job of working in audio.

Again, it has always been about taking risks in my career… but once I decided to take the big one, I wouldn’t allow myself to go back! I feel like that is one of the main reasons I am a success today.

Pricing:

• Contact me for project details / pricing.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://bozz1sound.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bozz1sound
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickbozzone/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@nickbozzone3300
• Other: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2779313/?ref_=fn_t_1