Building an Audio Post Production Mentor Database – by Faith Abi Haydar

Having a mentor in the audio industry is one of the most valuable learning experiences as a growing and learning individual. As a professional in the audio post production industry I am so passionate about sound design and SFX editing. I have been lucky to have many wonderful people give me advice, critiques, and support through my journey.

When I was in college I was the president of a club called the Femgineers that created a safe space for women and non-binary folk in our audio industries program. We went to the Leading Women in Audio conference a few years in a row and through that club I found my first mentor, Christa Giammattei.

She is an incredibly accomplished and talented audio post production engineer, and I love learning from her. She taught me so much about the post industry and how to succeed. She critiqued my work, gave me advice, and eventually was the one who recommended me for what ended up being my first paid sound design job ever.
I was really shocked at the love and mentorship I was receiving from this person and the opportunities I was gaining because of them. Later into my senior year of college I started interacting with people on twitter and met another incredibly talented sound designer and mentor Cathryn Stark, who has met with me and given me advice about jobs, taxes, rates, sound design, and critiqued my redesigns.

I’ve had mentors give me their old microphones they don’t need anymore, advice on the best places to live if I want to advance more in the post industry, and even how to reach my high hopes and dreams of working on big feature films. Even if people are too busy to be official mentors, I’ve encountered many amazing people willing to share their knowledge over a casual DM or a twitter thread.

One of these amazing people is Essa Hansen, an incredibly talented sound designer at Skywalker Sound, who decided to post about mentorship. She encouraged people to comment if they were willing to be a mentor and what they were open to. So many people replied in the comments, willing to be a mentor in sound design, game audio, mixing, and many more niches. 

Having such a positive experience with mentors personally, and also having a lot of time on my hands that day, I gathered everyone in the comments of that thread into a single database. The database was a google sheet organized with the mentors name, contact information, their niche in the post industry, and more information about them. 

You can view that original spreadsheet with this link here: 

Mentors from Twitter Database

I then created a google form where people could sign up to be a mentor. All they had to do was fill out a quick form and they were added to the official twitter mentor database. 

Become a Mentor Form 

I spent a few days informing people, tracking down mentors in the comments, sharing the form with my mentors, my old classmates and teachers, and spreading the word on my instagram as well. 

From there the database blew up and now has over 40 mentors on it. They’re all willing to be mentors in their niche and excited to help people in their industry learn and grow. It’s been an incredibly fulfilling process, just watching more and more names appear on the google sheet and watch as mentees get excited to reach out to them.

The fun didn’t stop there. I was reached out to by Greg Lester from gameaudiolearning.com. The Game Audio Learning site has amazing resources for not only people in the game audio industry but also the post and sound design industries. He proposed the idea of streamlining the database and adding it to his website so there was an easily shareable link, and a way to tag and filter the mentors so that people could easily search for whichever type of mentor they were looking for. Greg and I set out on the journey and it’s now a finished product on the game audio learning website at https://www.gameaudiolearning.com/mentorships I’m really happy with how it looks and I will be doing a whole new push for people to find mentors through this database with a brand new look. 

As creative and artistic individuals, we never stop learning or growing in our field. There is always a new technique you can learn, a plugin you didn’t know about, or a job opportunity right around the corner

Mentors are such an incredibly valuable resource and I encourage everyone to pursue a relationship with all of the people in your area of expertise. As creative and artistic individuals, we never stop learning or growing in our field. There is always a new technique you can learn, a plugin you didn’t know about, or a job opportunity right around the corner. Talking with other people helps me be inspired and hear sound through a brand new set of experienced ears. These people on the database are excited to help you learn and I urge you to take advantage of these opportunities while they stand. I am an introvert and I can understand that it is hard to reach out to people sometimes, but in the end it is so worth it to interact with other people in this industry. The life long connections and friends you make along the way makes it worth the energy and time to talk to someone new. 
 

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