Today we’d like to introduce you to Aobo Huang.
Hi Aobo, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
When I was in high school, I was a member of a music band as a guitar player. I always tried to record my guitar sound by my phone at that time. Gradually I just found that I needed more professional knowledge and equipment if I want to get high-quality sound, so I learned a lot online. From the Internet, I learned there were some majors in college named sound engineer, sound editing and sound mixing. Therefore, I applied a college in my home country, which is Beijing Film Academy. However, the courses in this college are more relevant with film sound rather than the music. So, that was the first time I got know with film sound. During the four years in Beijing Film Academy, I found that the theory of music recording and film recording were similar, like the operation of mic, software, and hardware. At the same time, I fall in love with film. I thought that I probably prefer to get a job for film sound. Later, I have been becoming a freelance production sound mixer and dialogue editor since 2015. I worked in China for two years and I realized there was still much of knowledge I needed to learn about film sound. As a result, I decided to keep learning more about film sound in the US because I thought America was a good choice for learning film. And I like American films more for sure.
So, I was enrolled by Savannah College of Art and Design, which is SCAD, for sound design major. I learned at SCAD for almost three years, not only the sound design was my major, but also, I took some art-relevant courses like contemporary art, art history, and printmaking, etc. Savannah is a beautiful and culture-rich city. That makes SCAD become a college full of arts and creative. At SCAD, I realized sound is not only a technical major, but you also need to be more creative and treat every sound clip and track with different art perspectives. After all, film is one of a form of art!
After graduating from SCAD, I thought it was at the time to get deeper in this industry. So, I moved to here, LA, a dream city for every filmmaker. Unfortunately, I met lockdown at here at the beginning for 2020. It was hard to get a job. I only worked as a production sound mixer for several times in that year. Money was a big problem. Fortunately, my family gave me many supports from finical and mental, which helped me so much. The situation changed in August. I got a job in a QC company in Burbank. I learned a lot about Dolby Atmos in that company. That’s very useful cause Dolby Atmos and spatial audio are everywhere nowadays. But I finally quitted that job because the job was too technical to put your own thought on it.
After that experience, I was awarded of sound editing and mixing are the work I really like. Since that, I have become a freelance dialogue editor and production sound mixer in LA till now.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It is definitely not at smooth road. As I mentioned for the last question. I met lockdown in 2020 when I just got LA. I dreamed that I could have a fancy career starting at here. But not. I got a job, but the job was not what I want. And as a freelancer, I must look for a job all the time. Find a connection and keep your old connection. Sometimes talking and getting along with people are more difficult than recording sound. Now, the living cost in LA is becoming higher and higher. So what I get to do is keep working, keep seeking work, and keep expanding connections. At the same time, I don’t want to lose my enthusiasm about the film, don’t want to be a making money machine for a living. I want to catch on the trend to learn more new technology and culture and be more creative. Just keep young and keep hungry.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Many people think that the most important thing as a production sound mixer is get the clean production dialogue tracks. But in my point of view, there is one more thing same important as getting clean dialogue tracks, which is keep the whole shooting workflow smooth. You can not let other departments to wait you, especially when director and directors of photography are rushing time for the daylights. Because compared with pictures, people can do more for sound in the postproduction. Therefore, as a production sound mixer, I hardly ever let people wait for me. I am used to being there earlier and do anything fast and well. If I do need more time to do my job for some reason, like I need to put on lav mic for many characters, I will let the first AD know as early as possible so that they can give me enough time. If they don’t give you the time, that would be their fault. As a dialogue editor, my job is give mixer a clean and smooth dialogue track. Sometimes the production soundtracks are terrible, and director and producer don’t want ADR in the post for some reason.
Thus, I have to use all the methods to fix the dialogue tracks which are full of background noise, cloth rustle sound and any other noisy sound. Luckily, we are in a digital time, there are many software are invented to fix any kind of noise, like Izotope RX, Waves de-noise and Clarity, etc. But is not an excuse to pay less attention on production sound. After all, the production soundtrack can give the audience the best performance from actors. We only left things in post what we have to do in post. For example, breath. We can not get some tiny breath on set, which can add more expressive force for performance. So we do ADR for it in the post. All in all, if we want to get a good dialogue sound for a film, we need to work carefully from production to post all the time.
What does success mean to you?
Living a life what you want to have.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://alberthuang7030.wixsite.com/website
- Instagram: pfxdsound
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aobo-huang-8016a7171
- Other: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm10614494/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk
