Born and still based in LA, Jason LaRocca has always been close to Hollywood. And by the age of 18, he has taken part in the audio side of the magic world of movie making. And he has been busy, working on movies like Paddington, The Accountant, Snowden, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, and Joy. Jason also work on television productions, including ABC’s Once Upon A Time and the 3rd season of John Ridley’s American Crime.
We were fortunate to catch up with Jason for a chat about life in the film-mixing studio. But before we begin, it should be clarified that even within film mixing, there are sub niches, and Jason’s field is mixing the music for the films he works on. Once that is done, another post production facility with a dedicated ‘dubbing mixer’ will integrate his tracks with dialog and effects tracks for the final master.
Well, first off we wanted to get a little bit of background on Jason’s way into the studio, and unsurprisingly, it all started with a band… “Before I was working on film and TV music, I had a punk band called The Briggs that was on a great Indie label called SideOneDummy,” Jason shares. “And I engineered most of that material. One of the highlights from those days was getting to engineer the horn section from the Mighty Mighty Bosstones at my studio.”
Then we obviously also wanted to learn more about when he got started in music for film and what the main difference in his opinion is between working ‘just’ with music and music for film productions. “I started out as an assistant mixer back in 2000, and the first film score that I did was in 2002 on a film called ‘Moonlight Mile’. As for the difference between mixing a band’s music and a score for film, I’d say that albums, to a large degree, can be much more self-expressive than film music. Film music has to integrate, ultimately, with the vision of a film or TV director and producer. This produces its own challenges but is also what makes it very rewarding when all is said and done.”