Conversations with Jeremy Jung

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jeremy Jung.

Hi Jeremy, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I was born in Seoul, South Korea and raised in Torrance, California for most of my upbringing. Growing up, I’ve always remembered how much I wanted to become a filmmaker. From the end of elementary school all the way through my senior year of high school, I’ve always shot fun little videos with my friends.

I also remember getting heavily inspired by music towards the end of high school. At the time, I didn’t know how to use both of those mediums together in a way that allowed me to be creative. I just remember growing up that I’d either be the world’s greatest director or the world’s most famous DJ.

Then I remember how attending college completed turned my world upside down. I got a 0.8 GPA in my freshman year of college and almost had to leave because the GPA made me lose my financial aid. I just remember those four years being the loneliest time of my life while also making it the most humbling. In high school, I was always following the status quo, plus I was quite social and found myself being the entertainer in the group. College was a time of me really finding a sense of agency, independence and really understanding multimedia as a collective art form. I was watching films that high school me thought would’ve been “the weirdest movie ever” and listening to music middle school me would have thought “this is whack as fuck”.

During the beginning of my college career, I definitely was trying to fit in. Then towards graduation, right around the pandemic, I’ve never felt more connected to others. Experiencing most of my life in the South Bay of Los Angeles, neverending-ly exposed to the surf, skate, smoke culture that is the South Bay, and then all of a sudden deciding I wanted to go to film school in a private institution (predominantly white) in Upstate New York. See, I was already experiencing true loneliness in college, and when the pandemic happened, EVERYONE was online. My curiosity during my early childhood with the internet allowed me to receive information online as tangible and I found myself already easily able to maneuver through the purely digital era that we live in now, post-pandemic. Consumerism turned to contribution.

After getting my Bachelor’s degree, there was a long period of literally staying indoors and learning as much as I possibly can about music production, sound design, film editing, filmmaking, even computer science. I thought I had learned everything I needed to in film school, but I realized I was barely scratching the surface. Then in the latter half of 2020, the film industry opened up again and I got a job as a production assistant for a few movies. As months passed, I started really feeling sad again. Why would I be sad? I’m finally done with education and I’m finally back home in the South Bay. I just started thinking of my future and listening to success stories of others, and I was so afraid that my 20s was only going to be working as a production assistant.

I remember telling someone at breakfast that I just wanted to be a sound designer in my 20s and do that and anything that had to do with the art form NOT on set in multimedia. Two weeks after being asked to leave my production assistant job, a friend from college Kevin Tsai asked me to work freelance as a sound designer and editor for a multimedia company called BASEWOOD. I’m almost two years into working here while also having the freedom of getting placements in music and being able to still DJ, and I’m just excited for what next year brings because this past year and a half has been one of the most blessed experiences of my life.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I mean being of immigrant descent is not easy for anyone. Having parents who have more than twice the amount of years of life experience as you and still having to learn at the same time along the way is never easy. I found myself later in my 20s teaching my parents of life tips, etc. I’ve always thought growing up that being Asian American was seen as the lesser. I’ve always tried to make it a point that that’s not the case, doing things that I normally wouldn’t do, trying to show that “hey, not all Asian Americans do this”, to the point where I’ve almost completely detached myself from the group identity within a Korean American diaspora community.

I think the biggest struggle was just the battle with my own identity as a California Korean American artist, a jack-of-all-trades but a master-of-none, a Torrance local who has experienced the East Coast for four years. It’s just a conglomeration of factors that lead me to who I am as a multi-dimensional human being and struggling to find the root of it. I’ve always felt like my life is a sponge, just absorbing everything that I expose myself to. I feel like I’ve gotten closer, now that I’m 25, to really understanding the essence of it, but I guess the beauty of life is the search for it.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’m a freelance sound designer, film editor, production sound recordist, music producer, composer, and DJ.

I feel like people in Torrance mostly know me for DJing, my Instagram following mostly knows me for music producing, and people that know me personally know me for my post-production work in the film industry.

I don’t like to say that I’m proud of all of these skills but I’m not a master at each one. I just feel like I’ve always been good at working smart and not working hard, except in music production, that requires working really really hard. I just feel like there’s not many sound designers in the market who are my age and who are non-union. It’s always been a huge help for other people when after I edit a short film or something that I’m also able to sound design it. And when I record audio on-set for something that I’m also able to edit it. I’ve always had an eye for technology and what it’s good for and also not good for and I’ve always been able to easily navigate my tools in the best way. I just don’t know many people who does everything that I do at the same time, and the ones that I do know are able to do everything are my biggest inspirations that I’ve never even met yet or hardly know in person.

What are your plans for the future?
I just want to keep working bigger jobs and literally just keep making music. I know that the Universe will always introduce me to the right people in the future (because I do be going out a lot lol), but I just want to keep working as hard as I am working so that when the right timing comes, and it will, that I will be ready for that opportunity.

I’ve had opportunities in the past that have come my way but never worked out for me because I wasn’t prepared. I just want to make sure that I’m prepared every single day that I live until the next one comes.

When it comes to BIG picture stuff, I just have so many ideas. No plans because life is unpredictable. Just frameworks and big ideas that I just hold onto until the right opportunity comes. And I’m not just waiting around for something miraculous to happen, I’m slowly working towards it by preparing myself.

Big stuff for Jeremy Jung.
Big stuff for Jboi.
Big stuff for Mint June.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://jeremymjung.com/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/jeremyjung/
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/jboitheproducer/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/thejeremyjung/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@jboitheproducer
• SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/jeremyjung/

Image Credits
Cathy Doherty Alex Harper Jackson Wilfong