Eric Marks is the founder of Pacific Standard Creative (PSC), a division of Pacific Standard Sound that is purpose-built to serve video game development studios, advertising agencies, trailer houses and filmmakers. PSC combines sound designers, editors and mixers; Hollywood mix stage access; and deep in-engine implementation expertise to deliver premium audio at any scale. It is owner-operated, creatively driven and built for how productions move today while being ready to evolve for the needs of tomorrow.

Marks co-owns PSC along with Oscar-nominated and multi-Emmy Award-winning sound artists Craig Henighan and Will Files. “We offer access to a deep bench of sound designers, editors and mixers and can scale teams up or down depending on the demands of the production,” Marks says. “PSC is also positioned to assume a co-development posture with game development partners, working in-engine to support implementation and technical sound design from first build to final delivery.” This means the studio can offer a suite of services including sound design, editorial, dialogue, mixing, Foley, implementation and technical sound design, “all within bespoke workflows tailored to the production and scope of each project,” he says.

Let’s learn more from Marks…

What does your job entail?
As the founder, I’m responsible for building trust with new clients, staffing each of our projects with the right talent and running the day-to-day operations. This includes building out our co-dev workflow to support game devs in the best way possible. I also supervise and mix projects when time permits.

What would surprise people about what that job also includes?
Running a sound studio is an ever-evolving job, with a lot of client and staff needs that you need to stay ahead of. Project schedules evolve, staff members might have personal preferences, and hardware and software need to get upgraded from time to time. It gets increasingly complex when you add co-development into the mix.

You might walk into a mix stage and it looks like a finished product, but the truth is that it’s the humans who bring their creative energy to the space and make projects shine. It’s important to have the right people on the appropriate projects and in the best frame of mind they can be in when working.

What is your favorite part of audio post? How do you start new projects?
I love that sound people are secret storytellers in our own way. We’re like ninjas, working in the shadows and bringing our magic into the mix, no pun intended. Every tiny decision we make brings context to a story, a character or a moment. It’s not always obvious to non-sound people, but we all feel it in our bones, and all those decisions leave an impact over time in a story.

Before we start on a new project, we typically have a spotting session with the creative leads and discuss their intention from moment to moment. Sometimes they bring specific ideas; sometimes they’re more open to what we might bring to it. It’s really helpful to dig in together to get a sense of their personality, how their story came to be and what things are missing from their perspective. We might have all sorts of ideas, but without input from the creatives, we could be way off track, and ultimately we want to support the vision that they have for their story.

After a spotting session, we divide and conquer: Our dialogue editor begins cleaning things up and edits all the dialogue. The sound effects team hits the ground running, from sound design to hard FX, Foley and backgrounds. Music often comes back around near the final mix, unless the team has also brought us on to compose the score. When that happens, it’s an incredible opportunity to create deep synergy between sound and music, as we can have open conversations throughout our process together, pick our spots and, ultimately, support each other and the story best. When an outside composer is on the music, we just try to get a sense of their schedule and the general musical style of the project and stay in touch. We also try to get clarification from the creatives on how close the temp music is to what the final will be, both in style and placement across the project.

When it comes time for the final mix, the creative leads come into our mix stage, and we all get a chance to sit back and react to the mix in context. We address any notes, make sure the story is clear and effective, and then print final deliverables.

How do you like to work with clients? How do you strike the balance between keeping clients and employees happy? Any best practices you can share?
We like to be listeners first, really dig deep into process and understand the creative intention behind a project, and use that to fuel our creativity. We’re not the sound studio that would impose our will on a project or a creative lead, unless requested. We want to build deep creative synergy by having extensive conversations early and often, and keeping our lines of communication open to maximize that synergy.

We’ve found that our team is usually happy when clients are happy too. We’re ultimately a service industry, and what makes us happy is delivering work that exceeds expectations and elevates great stories.

Are you a musician as well?
I’m personally not a musician, but there is a musical foundation to all sound work. You need to have some understanding of the audio frequency spectrum and the emotional impact of creative sound choices, and there’s certainly a crossover between the plugins and tools as well.

Boris Salchow, our head of music at PSC, is an exceptional composer and leader. We’ve been working together for nearly 20 years, and he’s truly elevated the work of all our composers. Our entire music team loves to create great music, especially for impactful games, trailers and ads. 

What’s your favorite part of the job?
I deeply enjoy the process of building trust with clients. To see the look on their faces when we’ve elevated their story is priceless. If we’re fortunate enough to be brought aboard their next project, we know that we’ve delivered on our promise and get excited to build upon that foundation together.

Do you have a least favorite?
There’s a phrase in our world called “temp love.” All of us have a natural tendency to get used to what we’ve heard dozens of times and then not want to change it in any way. There are certainly times when we’re brought onto a project, and the directive is not to touch the temp mix; just get it into the proper loudness spec. We’re used to this process, and I really do understand the reason for it, but we definitely get more excited by opportunities to spread our creative wings.

If you didn’t have this job, what would you be doing instead?
Back in film school, I did really enjoy directing films. Picture editing was fun too. Needless to say, I really can’t imagine working outside of this industry. I love creating and building with teams, no matter the role or the project.

How did you choose this profession? How early on did you know this would be your path?
I was very lucky that back when I was growing up in New Jersey, my high school had an FM radio station. That was pretty rare at the time. In 10th grade, I took a radio class that gave me the itch. It was the first time I could get my hands on equipment to record, edit and even broadcast. I helped with our high school sports coverage, including being a color commentator. I later co-hosted a daily radio show in high school, where I had to figure out which songs to play that would fit specific lengths of time on the air, write out topics and segments for our talk show in between the songs, etc. It was a lot of fun and really allowed me to build confidence in my technical abilities. I later bought Cool Edit Pro at home, and I was off and running before I went to college.

What are some recent projects you’ve worked on?
Last year, we were honored to be a dialogue support team for Battlefield 6. The amazing audio leads at Ripple Effect Studios at EA enlisted our help in editing, cleaning and organizing dialogue for the game, both in the single-player campaign and multiplayer, which were actually overseen by two separate internal audio teams. What made the project extra special for me was that I started my audio career in-house at EA back in 2011, down the hall from some members of the same team that eventually became Ripple Effect. It meant the world to me that they entrusted us to support their efforts on such an important project. To see the game go on to be nominated for Best Game Dialogue at the MPSE awards, and win the award for Best Audio at The Game Awards was really special.

 Can you talk about one that was most challenging and why?
Every project has unique variables, and sometimes it just comes down to evolving schedules. We’ve worked on projects where the schedule went from a week’s worth of work down to a couple of hours, needing to happen at the drop of a hat with no notice — all while our team was balancing other projects as well.

We once worked on a game where we were asked to record dialogue with the actors in our ADR stage and then do dialogue editorial. As we inched closer to the record dates, we started seeing that the scripts for the recording sessions weren’t coming in until the morning of the session, minutes before the actor would walk into the room. So there wasn’t really much time to prepare the session and documents for the day. As we got into recording, the writer and actors would argue about script to the point where the amount of lines we could record each day [was impacted]. The writer, who was the de facto voice director, ended up leaving the studio mid-project, and another person on their team took over directing responsibilities, which changed the entire dynamic and workflow of the recording sessions. We just did our best to stay patient, supportive and organized as things evolved by the minute.

Having worked in this industry for so long, what’s helpful is having seen a lot of different circumstances, and that prepares you for new challenges. We always try to learn from our experiences and use them to grow and be better prepared for the next one.

Has AI been playing a role in your business? What other trends are you seeing?
AI is certainly the elephant in the room, and it’s changing rapidly. Most sound people have actually been working with the support of AI for quite a while. iZotope, the most commonly used dialogue cleanup plugin, has been using AI to understand the barriers between signal and noise and has evolved this technology substantially over the years.

The reality is that tools are always evolving, but our focus is on telling powerful human stories. Technology is one of the many tools we utilize to do this, but our work goes much deeper into the thousands of choices that we make as storytellers every day.

We’re always keeping our eyes on technological developments for our craft and how they can help us maximize our time and energy toward telling great stories. But we’ll never let it get in the way of making choices that are authentic to the human experience because that’s why we want stories in the first place. 

Name three pieces (or more) of technology you can’t live without.
A great DAW (digital audio workstation) is a must. I’m still a Pro Tools guy, but I’ve been very intrigued by what Reaper has been building over recent years.

I actually think a great pair of headphones is essential too. It’s easy to get lost in the incredible sound of a giant theater, but nowadays many people are experiencing games and media over headphones, AirPods and phone speakers, so how well is your mix translating to those formats?

Last, I still love working on a Mac when possible, and I have to say that the Mac Studios that have been released these past few years are extraordinarily powerful for a home machine. You can easily power a giant Pro Tools session on a new M3 or M4 machine. Building a sound studio used to be incredibly expensive, but having hardware like this at our fingertips makes it a lot easier to get started.

What have you learned over the years about running a business?
Wow… well, funnily enough, I never really intended to be a business owner. Having been one for over 10 years now, I’ve learned an incredible amount. The most important thing I’ve learned is the need to surround yourself with the right people who have a great drive, attention to detail, creative mind and willingness to grow. Those traits can be hard to find. Everybody wants to work, but are they the right match for you and your mission? Hiring can make or break any company, and I’ve been incredibly lucky to find some exceptional people along the way who want to work with me. I’m very grateful for that, and they continue to inspire me every day.

How do you de-stress from it all?
As a business owner, it’s hard to step away completely. But I’ve found that you can use different parts of your brain on different days, and in a way, that serves to reboot the parts you’re not using all the time. If I were doing the exact same job every day, I think that would add up more, but I’ve been lucky to be able to work with a number of different types of clients who have vastly different needs. And even going out to meet new clients and forge relationships can build different muscles as well.

Any tips for those in a similar position?
If you can go out and experience the world, even in small ways, that will come back around and create more inspiration for your work. It might not feel like work in the moment, but your brain is taking mental notes, and it’s quite helpful down the road.

The industry has taken a few hits over the past few years. How do you remain successful and working?
The entertainment industry is going through a lot of change right now. That part is widespread, and in a way, it’s unavoidable. Change is the only constant, and it forces us to adapt and grow in new ways.

I’ve been fortunate to be diversified across a number of parts of our industry, and that’s done wonders for me during periods of transformation. If I’d only been working on game trailers, for instance, it’d be hard to stay afloat.

What I’ve found is that as long as I’m prioritizing what it means to tell great stories through the use of sound, and making sure our team is learning and growing every day toward the same goal, we’re able to keep working. We try to be great partners by going the extra mile to ensure our work is delivering on what was expected, if not exceeding it. We want to keep growing, keep learning and keep inching forward, one story at a time.

We’ve been incredibly lucky to have built trust with a number of clients, and that motivates us to bring our best each day and try to do the best work of our careers.