Little House on the Prairie
followed. Sorrensen again
served as third man on the
sound crew, and again found
a mentor, this time in sound-
man Frank Meadow. "He let
me practice booming, trying
shots, and eventually working
with the actors." After Little
House, Sorrensen worked on a variety of projects, steadily making the
transition from third man to boom man.
"Your rookie year as a boom operator is really tough, because it's
when you make all your mistakes. You dip the microphone into the
picture because you don't quite understand framing yet, how a camera
operator is going to compose the picture. You have to start learning lens
sizes. For instance, 14mm lenses are very wide, so you can't get very
close to the actor. You have to learn telephoto lenses; things you can't
really learn out of a book. You just learn by observing, getting in trouble,
and getting yelled at."
With a couple years' experience working as a boom operator behind
him, Sorrensen landed work on the series Murder, She Wrote. "I had met
the mixer [Tim Cooney] when I was still a third man and he was a boom
man. He moved up to sound mixing, remembered me, and thought we
could work well together. You tend to work really close with people on
the sound crew, so you want to be able to get along with them and be on
the same wavelength."
After completing three seasons of Murder, She Wrote, Sorrensen left the
business for nine years, during which time he worked in construction
and manufacturing. Finally realizing that wages and benefits were better
working sound, he paid a fee to the union and was admitted back in
good standing.
Almost immediately, he landed day work on the series Party of Five
and worked a couple of nonunion movies in between. Then he started
getting calls to work on Ally McBeal and X-Files, filling in for regulars on
their days off.
Sorrensen reunited with sound mixer Tim Cooney, who had given him
his first boom job on Murder, She Wrote, to work on We Were Soldiers, fol-
lowed by Joy Ride and The Salton Sea, and television pilots for Birds of Prey
and The Lone Ranger.
"Keep your
sense of humor or
you won't survive."
--Kevin Sorrenson
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