Hollywood’s Sound Community Answers Call To Send Much-Needed Walkie-Talkies To Aid Ukraine Relief Efforts

deadline.com:

Hollywood’s sound community is pitching in to deliver encrypted walkie-talkies and satellite phones to Ukrainians in disaster zones cut off from communication.

Organizers say that 100 walkie-talkies were recently delivered to Kyiv and that more are on the way.Safe&Sound Ukraine, a grassroots fundraising effort led by Xenia Vinogradova, a Kyiv-based sound mixer, is seeking to raise $200,000 to source and acquire digital communication devices for aid, rescue and evacuation personnel inside the war-torn nation.

To date, it has raised nearly $85,000 in donations that go to United Help Ukraine, a US 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.Donations can be made here.The Cinema Audio Society has donated and become an official partner and supporter of Safe&Sound Ukraine.

Others joining the effort include the Association of Motion Picture Sound, Gotham Sound, LA Sound Mixers and Motion Picture Sound Editors.“CAS is proud to join others in the sound community to support the humanitarian efforts of Safe&Sound Ukraine,” said CAS president Karol Urban. “We applaud all that Xenia and her colleagues are doing to improve the lives of the affected citizens in Ukraine.”Vinogradova posted on Facebook: “Before the war, my life was similar to those of many sound mixers around the world: call sheets, deadlines, film crews, audio gear, and expressing my love to the world through capturing and editing the sounds of it for audiovisual works.“Now the times have changed, and I, like many other people here, have expanded the range and intensity of my work – I’m participating in multiple humanitarian initiatives while continuing to go out on the shootings with doc crews.