Conversations with Ailin Gong

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ailin Gong.

Hi Ailin, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I started as an assistant sound editor at a documentary sound studio, where I got the chance to work on many big documentaries in the industry. During that period, I accumulated a lot of experience and greatly improved my editing skills. Meanwhile, I never stopped taking side work: indie films, short projects, student films, etc., which enables me to connect and work with different people. With my credits built up and receiving more union job offers, I started my career as a freelance sound editor.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
The challenging thing about freelancing is that work is always demanded. It’s a competitive industry. Half of the job is looking for the next job. I had times hesitated if I should find an in-house position. I also had times struggling to find more jobs. But there is always a positive side. I have more flexibility to choose the projects that I like. I can work with different people and learn things from them. What’s more important is that I am motivated to keep up with the newest tech skills and knowledge, always stay creative, and manage to finish work highly. It’s a road of striving and exceeding.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am a sound editor. I design and edit sound for film and television. Most of the sound we hear in the film is not recorded on set, so the sound editor’s job is to re-create them in the post. Not only do the spaceship or laser guns in the sci-fi movies need to be sound-designed and re-created, but all the city backgrounds, weather, traffic, group voices, etc. This rule even fits documentaries. There are some projects that I really enjoyed working on, like “Plague at the Golden Gate”; ” George W. Bush”; “Dickinson”; “George and Tammy” etc. Take “Dickinson Season 3” as an example. As the final season of the series, it was one of the most popular TV series of the year. It was a fun project for me to work on. There were quite some elements that needed to be designed — for example, the civil war battlefield; the lunatic asylum; the trip to hell, etc. I remember a scene where Emily loses her way in hell, and she sees Mrs.Dickinson sit in the crib, laughing and crying like an infant. When designing that scene, I wondered if I could make the ambiance more creepy with sound. Then came the idea of adding many different sounds of baby toys, like the toy train whining, bells jingling, the cuckoo clock singing, etc., and making them echo in the room. Though those elements are non-diegetic, with the crib image, they still make sense in hearing and make the atmosphere creepier and scarier. The charm of sound design is that you can re-tell a story using sound, which is what I like about it.

Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
It is hard to define what is “risk-taking.” Every decision we make will change our future more or less. It is more about choices. You make a choice and strive for the best results. I was a musician and played the piano for 20 years before going into the film post-production industry. After graduating from the music conservatory, I became interested in film post-production. So I decided to go out of my comfort zone and study the graduate program in film. It was a brand new area, and I had to learn everything from the beginning. I felt a lot of pressure and uncertainty and doubted if it was the right choice, but I stuck to it. Now I can say it comes out to be a great result. Even better, my sensitive hearing training in music helps me a lot when doing sound post-production.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm8988565/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sound_mushroom/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ailin-g-16b160158/

Image Credits
Chao Chen