PROFILE
John Diemer
By Manus Hopkins
Growing up , there were more cows surrounding John Diemer than there were people , as the owner and operator of Toronto ’ s The Farmhouse Creative Labs often jokes . Around 40 minutes outside of Windsor , ON , in the centre of Essex County , Diemer ’ s community had a church , a school , a lot of cows , and not a whole lot else . There may not be an obvious link between dairy farming and professional audio , but Diemer believes his upbringing is what instilled in him his work ethic . And that work ethic as enabled his career as a top-level sound recordist , editor , and mixer for film and television .
“ I work a lot , and I work really hard ,” he tells Professional Sound . “ People always ask me , where does that come from ? And I think a lot of it does come from growing up on a farm and working from such a young age .”
Working on a farm may have taught Diemer the value of hard work , but it was a desire to not have to work on a farm forever that eventually drove him into the field of professional audio .
“ As formative as it was , it just definitely wasn ’ t something I desired ,” he explains . “ Most of the people in my family left the small town . They had bigger desires .”
Diemer left his town after high school to go to the University of Windsor for business , with a minor in music . He didn ’ t exactly know where he ’ d end up , but just thought university seemed like the right path for him , and he hoped he could find a career in the music world . Eventually , Diemer moved to London , ON , to pursue a one-year program at OIART , and has been working in audio ever since .
These days , Diemer says there ’ s “ too much ” on his plate work-wise , noting that he ’ s supposed to be slowing down , but it isn ’ t really happening .
“ We used to be split 50 / 50 ,” he says . “ Half of our time would be spent on location and then the other half in post , but I used to travel a lot for work — like a lot , a lot — 200 days a year sometimes , just doing docs and things like that . And then COVID happened .”
Diemer thought the pandemic would
make his work slow down because of how much travelling he did , but it ended up just making him available for more local work , and before long he was getting calls to work on numerous TV shows based in Toronto .
“ Because I was Torontobased , you don ’ t realize that if you ’ re doing a doc in Asia for a month , as much as you want to try to run the business back home , I couldn ’ t run it as successfully as if I was here in Toronto ,” says Diemer . “ Just being in Toronto , because of COVID , it ’ s just blown up .”
Things have shifted now to around 75 % post-production and 25 % location work for Diemer ’ s company . At any given time , they ’ ll have four or five shows in post , and one or two shows on location every two months . Diemer says he ’ s particularly excited to be working on Canada ’ s Drag Race : Canada vs . the World , which sees drag queens from the British , American , Canadian , and Australian / New Zealand installments of RuPaul ’ s Drag Race competing in Canada .
“ It ’ s really exciting for us because Canada ’ s Drag Race gets a lot of views because it airs in the U . K ., and a lot of people still watch it , but obviously not as many people watch it as the American or U . K . franchises ,” Diemer says . “ But , because we have queens from the U . K . and the American franchises , I think this probably will be one of the most viewed things that we ’ ve ever worked on .”
Diemer considers himself a handson company owner who enjoys doing the work rather than just overseeing it . Because he has a hand in everything his company works on , he doesn ’ t have a set day-to-day routine . He ’ ll often have his head down working on mixing or editing something , but every time he leaves the mix room , he ’ ll see something he can help out with , and never passes on doing that .
“ It ’ s a little bit frantic , but it ’ s in a really exciting , collaborative , and fun way ,” he says . “ It ’ s not a very sterile work environment . It ’ s very casual and fun , and we ’ re all very good friends here , so it feels nice .”
With Farmhouse Creative Labs growing , Diemer admits that the company is “ busting at the seams ” in its current space , and though he ’ d previously had a long-term goal of finding a new place , it ’ s becoming more urgent . Farmhouse Creative Labs ’ current space took six months to build , so Diemer knows a bigger space will take some time and be a chore to complete , but BOB he WITH hopes HIS WIFE to KAREN see something happen within the next year or so . But , as he explains , he doesn ’ t want to go too big , and only make essential upgrades — currently , some of the team are editing on headphones , which isn ’ t ideal for workplace comfort .
“ I still want to stay boutique and I don ’ t want to get too big because I worry that our quality of work would suffer and our work environment would suffer ,” Diemer says .“ I don ’ t want that that to happen . But I think there ’ s a happy medium between being a massive post-production house and having two really nice mix rooms and maybe five or six edit suites .”
Manus Hopkins is the Assistant Editor of Professional Sound .
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