As it turned out, the answer to Lara Cross’ career dilemma lay very close to home. But it took her years to find it.
After school she did a double major in drama and film studies at the University of Newcastle, with the intention of making children’s TV. Later, she went to New Orleans where a friend persuaded her to come to China to teach kids. She stayed there for five years (during the first SARS epidemic) and discovered a love for fashion.
“I was spending all my time making clothes because I had access to tailors and fabric. We only worked a couple hours a day and we just got paid too much money. So I was designing all the time.”
She wanted a longer-term career plan, but didn’t know how to parlay her background into the industry. She came back to Sydney and did three years at a fashion school and two years of textiles. She costume designed a few indie features and set up her own clothing business, Glory Box Designs.
Still, it wasn’t quite what she wanted. One day, in 2018, she had an epiphany.
The answer was sitting in her own home. Her partner, Nathaniel Watkins ran Villainsound and is one of the industry’s renowned soundos.
As his business was growing, he was looking to train new recordist to work alongside him. He had been trying to persuade Cross to take the gig, because she was already in post-production, doing some sound editing and sound design for him, and knew that her experience on set, her people skills, and her costume background would be an asset when it came to mic placement.
“I certainly didn’t know I could do it, but I was watching him doing the things that I had really hoped that I would be doing with fashion, travelling, meeting, cool people, making art, telling stories.
“I just realised work is just something that you do. It’s not who you are. I just had this revelation and I just thought, ‘You know what? I will give it a go.’
On the same day, she returned home to hear Nathaniel saying to a producer he simply couldn’t find the right person for their gig.
“He said, ‘I really hoped that Lara would be the one. It’s there if she wants it.’
“I walked in on this and was like, ‘Well, I asked for a sign. Here is the sign.’”
She shut her business and began learning how to be a top sound recordist, freelancing her way up recording shorts, showreels and agency work, and working under other recordists on long-form film and TV as boom operator and lav tec/sound utility through to, now, an HOD sound.
She’s worked on shows like the ABC’s Mother and Son and The PM’s Daughter and a raft of indie feature films that include Joy Hopwood’s The Gift that Gives. On some of these films she’s done both sound recording and post-production.
She’s found that all the skills she gathered in her career along the way come in handy now – including managing teams who have been used to the “shut up, listen and do your bloody job” school of management, or worked in an environment where bullying and harassment have been common.
“I love seeing Gen Z entering the workforce; these kids are alright. They speak their minds, are considerate, and are not holding any of those old gender prejudices.
“[I ask] ‘How would I want to be treated in this situation, how can we get what we need, and how does that translate also when dealing with other departments?’ While it is a very technical job, I think it’s the people skills that make for a good HOD.”
And sometimes, she employs more unusual techniques with her teams.
“I have little spray bottles of different essential oils, and I’ll just do a little spritz sometimes. It’s like, let’s just stop, take a breath, spritz, spritz, and let’s just come back to the moment. Beautiful, beautiful. I’ve got cleansing spray, Zen spray; like mad hippies.”
“I’ve found a really great place where I can be my best self, I get to help people every day to work on their dreams, we connect to tell stories and bring magic to life. Making art happen.
“It was really letting go of what I thought my life needed to look like to be open to do those things. To be free and take some risks. I still do what I always wanted, just in a different job.”
Denise Eriksen is co-founder (with Esther Coleman Hawkins) of Media Mentors Australia.
The company rolling out across Australia management and leadership training for early career HODs or 2ICs ready to take the next step in their careers.