Creating Sound Space With Karthik Mohan
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?
I am from Chennai, a beautiful coastal city in southern India. Right from my childhood, I have always been very fascinated with historical and mythological stories. My dad would take me to the movies every week and I just loved the experience of watching action films on the big screen. I was also fascinated with rhythms and learned to play the Tabla. When I joined college and was studying electronics engineering, I met a group of people interested in cinema. The digital era had just kicked in, everyone had a DSLR camera and wanted to make short films. It was around this time that I watched a Kamal Haasan film titled Uttama Villain and was so impressed and inspired to do something in the cinema. So, I started making short films with friends and they were generally well received. One film titled Motley even garnered more than 2M views on YouTube.
I soon learned what these short films lacked was realistic and smooth dialogue. No one on my crew knew what good sound was, let alone knowing how to create it. This was affecting the quality of my films and I decided to get to the bottom of it. I began a fascinating journey of exploring film sound. To get more experience I slowly started sound designing short films for friends, recording sounds and created a library of my own to cut from. I interned at Sync Cinema, a leading studio in Chennai and learned from the best in the industry there. While attending a workshop by Randy Thom, Director of Skywalker Sound at Yash Raj Films, Mumbai I was able to watch and analyze the sound of classics like Barton Fink, No Country for Old Men, Cast Away and that gave me a whole new perspective. It suddenly clicked for me, that film sound was this beautiful melting pot of storytelling, music, technology and cinema. This was when I realized that I wanted to do sound for the rest of my life.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started doing sound design/film production?
This one happened when I was working on An Evening’s Trail. The film was shot in Prague and the city itself was a major character in the film. There were sections of dialogue alternating with silent moments where the main character sits in quiet introspection. I have never been to Prague and I was given the task of creating something I hadn’t the remotest idea of. You might think now, what is so hard about creating the sound of a city? There is a certain amount of liberty one can take with the grander and abstract sound design like say a beast like creature since we don’t really know how they might sound. But a city like Prague has a very distinct European charm to it and a very unique sound to it, quite different from a lot of the modern cities today. It has to work when the audience hears it for the first time. If not, it can distract from the emotion and work to the detriment of the film.
This is where technology helped me. Apart from inputs from my director, I spent several days just listening to a lot of Prague Vlogs and reading up about the city. Based on that I made a list of the sounds that stood out for me. The church bells, river, cobblestone streets, alleyways, trams etc were some major elements. Then I went about collecting these sounds from libraries and location recordings which I edited in to create a sound space. When my director heard it along with a few colleagues from Prague, they loved it and told me they felt like they were in the real locations they had shot the film in. The film not only won a lot of awards but also went on to get Best Sound Design — Virgin Spring Cinefest, Kolkata 2021 and a Nomination for Best Sound Design — 3rd Olympiad Grand Prix, Greece, 2021. It still amuses me that I could pull that off sitting in my home studio here in LA. That just gave me a lot of confidence and reinforced the fact that the world is shrinking big time. But I do want to visit the city and experience it for real!
Are you working on any exciting new projects now?
I recently finished working as a Sound Editor on Iravin Nizhal, directed by 3-time Indian National Award Winner R. Parthiban, Score by Academy Award Winner A.R. Rahman and Sound Design by Academy Award Winner Craig Mann and Kunal Rajan MPSE.
I’m also working on a web series titled A Grunt’s Life: Season 2 as a sound effects editor. I’m also the lead Sound Designer/Supervising Sound Editor on an animated series titled Haisley for Noirtainment Productions. I also have a couple of Hollywood projects coming up with Sound Designer Kunal Rajan where I will be working as a Sound Editor.
Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are today? Can you share a story about that?
There are a lot of people who have helped me throughout my journey right until now. Choosing one particular person is just too hard for me. I believe everyone has a role to play and even if I hadn’t crossed paths with one of them, I wouldn’t be here today. I must take this opportunity to thank my parents for their constant support without which I wouldn’t have dared to change my career and pursue cinema. Director Ahmed, a very successful film director in Chennai, was the one who spotted my interest in sound and encouraged me to study sound at film school. The sound department at Chapman gave me such a solid foundation that I was ready to hit the ground running right away. All my directors and supervisors (special shoutout to Kunal Rajan and Eric Marks) who gave me the space to get creative and experiment on each film. And my idol, Skip Lievsay, who inspires me day in and day out to create and love sound.
From your experience, what are a few ideas that we can use to effectively offer support to others who want to work in film sound?
I think the biggest thing is to spread awareness on what the film industry is really like. Watching films and making them are as different as chalk and cheese. All the glamour and glitz can be really fascinating but that is not what the industry is about. A lot of people leave everything to join the film industry and then struggle once illusion fades away. One can grow only if they are extremely passionate about the art and craft of cinema. Learning to think about sound and tell stories using sound is something that is a journey of a lifetime. I was fortunate to have some guidance early on in my career and that helped me learn more about the different roles within the sound department and make informed decisions about my career.
Technology has become very accessible to everyone today. Learning Rx or picking up the latest equalizer doesn’t take much time. Learning when to use these tools is a very difficult art to master. For that we must focus on the fundamentals. Understanding the physics of sound (Acoustics) and how our ear and brain process that sound (Psychoacoustics) is something that every person entering sound should know. We must listen to a lot of cinema to understand how sound and storytelling has evolved over the years from the fixed channel Mono, Stereo, Surround to the object-based Dolby Atmos today. Only then can we be equipped to adapt to the constantly evolving techniques and technology in the industry.
Can you please give us your favorite” Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
There is a quote in the Gita that goes” Do your duty, but do not concern yourself with the results”. This is something I firmly believe in. Especially in the film industry, where you don’t know when the next project is going to come your way and what it is going to lead to. Out of the projects we work on, some never get a release. When they are released, some films tank while some films hit the jackpot. Following this principle helps me maintain a state of equilibrium and deal with this unpredictability.
As a sound editor, I can only focus on mastering my art and craft. I am in this field because I enjoy the process of creating and editing sound effects. This is what drives me every day and enables me to put in the same effort on each film irrespective of whether I win an award for that or whether the film becomes a huge hit or not.
How can our readers follow you online?
Instagram: kamo_fx
Facebook: Karthik Mohan
