Engineer Chris Fogel has been the benefactor of a rather charmed career in the recording industry. He recorded and mixed one of the greatest selling pop records of all time, Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill, as well as many other notable pop/rock projects before recently making a seemingly smooth transition into mixing film scores.

Fogel's first big mark on that format came this fall with the box-office smash, Charlie's Angels. With all this success in a relatively short amount of time, as well as keeping residence in both New York and Los Angeles, his manager, Joanne Schwartz, keeps him busy on both coasts. Fogel has scarcely had time to stop and smell the roses. He is currently in between movies - Sandra Bullock's upcoming film, Miss Congeniality, was his last and Made, the follow-up film from the makers of Swingers, will use his talents next - so Fogel sat down with PSN to explain what's behind all the magic.

"For years, I was a DJ in clubs", Fogel recalled. "I was doing a party one night when I came across a pamphlet for Full Sail - in the toilet of all places! I ended up going there in 1990 and graduating Valedictorian before getting hired at Westlake Studios."

While working at Westlake, Fogel was able to form a positive working relationship with producer Glen Ballard. After cutting his teeth assisting on Ballard's projects, Fogel was moved to the captain's chair after Ballard built his home studio. It wasn't long before they began to cut demos on the then-unknown, Morissette. "What a lot of people don't know is that on Jagged Little Pill, the demos are the masters. We liked what we had and just decided not to mess with it and put it out that way."

The immense success of that record led to other projects with the pop songstress. "I did the live record with her down in Australia," Fogel noted. "Unfortunately, they had someone else mix it, and she didn't like it. I got a call from her on Monday, and she asked me to drop what I was doing and come to Australia and mix this record. So I left and went and did it. Although the tracks were poor, I think it turned out pretty well."

Fogel admitted that he and Ballard's working relationship has come to an end due to artistic differences but he is thrilled with the new path his career has taken in the past few years. He and composer Ed Shearmur have formed a budding partnership that has resulted in several top movie scores like Cruel Intentions, Blue Streak and the aforementioned Miss Congeniality and Charlie's Angels. For the latter, they recorded much of the project at NRG Studio A, taking advantage of the studio's Fibre Channel system to assist in the complexity of the project.

"It was fantastic," Fogel said of the file-sharing network that exists throughout the studio. "We had one guy doing editing while I was tracking, and it was great to not have to copy files." After recording the essential tracks, they moved to Fogel's studio of choice, Front Page Studios in Glendale, for the editing and mix.

"For Charlie's Angels we had all the film laid out in Digital Performer ahead of time," Fogel explained, adding that he prefers Digital Performer to Digidesign's Pro Tools when it comes to editing duties. "Anyone who has seen the film can tell that it is very sequencer-and electronic-based with live musicians over the top. Ed did about a month of writing at his house, and then we brought all those Digital Performer files into the studio and got ready for the musicians. Then I did rough mixes of everything with click separate, which we took to the Sony scoring stage and recorded the orchestra. We took that to Front Page and edited and mixed on the Euphonix System 5 console."

Fogel had high praise for Euphonix consoles and the part they play in his sound. "Front Page's main room with the System 5 is the most open, flat-sounding room I've ever worked in," he shared. "If you want a big sound, that's the room to go to. I mix exclusively on Euphonix consoles because I like to be able to instantly automate whatever I want, when I want. I've really figured out how to make the EQs sound right on the CS-Series consoles. The console is great if you want to automate aux sends, automate a pan or just automate, period. Just touch a button and you're going!"

Fogel continued, "I don't like to be limited, like you are on other boards, where you can only automate a certain number of features. I also like the fact that it is instant recall. I am always recalling mixes and going back to tweak. Simply put, the Euphonix System 5 is the best-sounding console I've ever worked on."