Daily Inspiration: Meet Frank Ruiz

Today we’d like to introduce you to Frank Ruiz.

Hi Frank, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I, like a lot of other people in Los Angeles, came with nothing but hope and a dream when moving out here. I wouldn’t say I necessarily had a plan but I knew that no matter what, I had to make all the effort to move out to California worth it, because just moving out here was a difficult task in it of itself. I started off at what would be my 2nd internship at an audio-post house based in the West Hollywood area that was named Larson Studios. I began as a day shift intern doing all the tasks that were assigned to me and trying to soak up and learn all that I could from the folks I would interact with on a daily basis such as the transfer engineers, Re-Recording Mixers and Mix Techs of the facility. After a short while me and 2 other interns were giving the opportunity to switch over and become night shift interns and at 1st nobody took the offer due to the fact that it would conflict with everyone’s schedules. However, after my shift that day, I went over to ask about the night shift interning opportunity and decided to take them up on the offer since it would allow for more time to be spent learning and being hands on with things as opposed to when normal operations are happening during the day. Being on at night on my own with the engineers and team I was able to gain so much more knowledge and have more time to ask questions and get practice on things such as my keyboard shortcuts and listening in on quality control playbacks. This began the foundation of a lot of the skills I use to this day for the work I now do.

After the internship, with luck on my side and hope for what would come my way next. As I began what would have been my 3rd internship at the time, I managed to land my 1st paid sound gig working on a show cutting Backgrounds/ambiences for a television series. I worked with this show for about 4 years starting with the backgrounds and eventually moving into doing foley cuing/editing for the show as well as being the stage assistant for when they go to do the final mixes for each of the episodes. The sound team for this show has taught me so many of my skill sets that I use everyday and working with that crew is the reason why I am such a stickler on making sure everything is being done to the best outcome I can provide, with what I am given for a project of course.

I learned and was taught how to do things the full proper way with that show and got to see what it is like to do the whole audio-post process for an established series. This helped me a lot because when I started working on indie and smaller budget type projects, I was able to already have the mindset on how to approach things and go about them when I had a smaller team to work with, and in the case of projects where I had to do all the audio myself as a one man show. Depending on the deadline of delivery, it allowed for me to develop the ability to decide on what I needed to focus on to get the vision of the audio story telling completed within the allotted time frame. Especially within the current landscape of the industry where it seems every day more and more we are all trying to find ways to pump the content out faster and faster. It seems the way things used to be done are becoming less and less each day, and delivering a project as quickly as can be is becoming the new norm.

Now, especially with where I am at today, working on reality tv is such a quick turnaround time and compared to starting off in scripted to unscripted. It’s a different mindset that one has to have when working on something that is unscripted vs. doing things the scripted route and now having experience in both. I definitely would say one thing that I see that they both have in common and share in similarity is that being quick isn’t just something that is done for one. It is happening all across the industry and knowing how to get things done in an efficient and timely manner is essential these days.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Not even a little bit.

I’ve lost count of how many times I thought of giving it up and packing my things in or switching industries into something more stable and reliable, but luckily, I have such a great supportive group of people around me, that keeps me grounded and lets me know that I am still here and in a much different position than I was when I started. There are 2 big things that are always going to come at someone no matter if they want them to or not and that is Life & Time. Neither of these can be prevented or stopped and they do not wait for no one. Life is going to change, and that is just something that we all need to have in the back of our minds and accept for when it finally does happen because it’ll come without warning and we as individuals need to either roll with the punches and adapt or we get swept up in our ways and aren’t able to keep up with it. The entertainment industry is always changing and with those changes a lot of the folks who came out here like me to California are no longer here due to how drastic some of these changes have been through the last few years. I mean shoot some of us are still stuck and trying to process what happened in 2020. However, like I said life continues to go on whether we have time to process it or not.

Then, along with this, Time.

Time is just constantly ticking away whether it be for a deadline, sitting in traffic trying to get somewhere or just days going by until you can rest on the weekend.

Time does not wait for no one.

Just like before with changes in life, time also makes us see things differently as we grow in life, our careers and even our own personal values. When I 1st started out here in California I was only working, eating, and sleeping for the first 3 years that I was out here and never really made an effort to develop any personal connections or relationships outside of work. Now, having a personal life is a key of importance in being able to maintain my mental health, and not going through burnout because that is something we all will face at one point or another working in the entertainment field especially when we are trying to get our foot in the door and jump start our careers. There will be many things that we are able to sacrifice and choose between in the beginning but like I said, with time, these things begin to change. To me, now, time spent with those that care about me such as my family and community are one of the most important things to be able to enjoy. I noticed that in the past, like many others, I used to really like receiving items as gifts for holidays and birthdays or what have you, but now, to me just spending quality time or doing an activity together is more memorable than an item. I still love receiving physical things don’t get me wrong but I noticed now I enjoy more of just spending time with those who enjoy just hanging out together.

Financial hardships & mental hardships are 2 of the other challenges I faced along my path in my career, there were many times where I didn’t think I was going to be able to pay rent and by doing food delivery service app work, sometimes I barely pulled through and had enough to make it for the month. The chase of having to constantly go looking for work from one gig to the next is something I definitely do not miss and I will never forget the day when I realized I wasn’t going to need to be doing that anymore. I was thrilled that I actually got to enjoy my days off and not have to worry about if I should be working or not to try and make up some more money in case it was needed for something. The financial hardship, ended up becoming a part of my mental hardship and ultimately the 2 became one in the same. Like I said, with time and life many things are going to change and it is up to us to decide on how we navigate each obstacle that comes our way.

Will you let something be the thing that breaks you or will you overcome it in a way others have or find your own route to navigate? That’s the question we always need to be asking ourselves as we face things in life.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Well, my name is Frank Anthony Ruiz & I am a Sound Supervisor for the streaming network Zeus, along with this I also work on freelance projects doing Audio-Post for both television & film. My main focus and passion with my career, is to make a story in a show or movie sound as best as it can be and keep the translation of what the original creator envisioned when making the project. Depending on time & budget this will always factor in how much attention to detail I am able to do on any given project, as someone who really puts a lot of pride into their own work, I always try to give everything the best that I can to my abilities within the given timeline. However, as many of us are familiar with in this industry, a lot of times turnarounds and deadlines can be extremely fast, and we are required to complete our tasks in the quickest and most efficient ways that are possible but still kept within the allotted time-frame given to us.

Choices on how to proceed with a project that needs to be done quickly is something that I am tasked with often. With the array of tools at my disposal as well as my experience working on this type of content, this is something that I would say is sort of my specialty in the field. Now do not misunderstand, if I am given a substantial amount of time to be able to work on something then I will always take advantage of the extra time and dive deep into all the nitty details but in this day and age of content being required to come out more and more rapidly, I think a lot of us understand that building speed and knowing how to achieve the desired results more promptly is something that anyone joining the audio-post field these days is expected to learn and be aware of.

A lot of when I began my career, was explaining & showing me why things are done in a particular fashion, mainly so I could understand the process and flow of how things work when done in a certain way. For example, typically in a scripted film or television show process, once something is sent or “Turned over” to us folks in the Audio Post-Production side of things there are multiple stages and people that a show or film will go through before even getting to the final mixing stage for the project. It has to go through assembly, dialogue editors, sound effects editors, the foley team, and usually a sound supervisor who oversees all aspects of the project sound-wise. This process was something that I learned at the start of my journey in audio-post and it is something that I engrained in my brain as the way for how things are done when working on a project. However, as I mentioned before this is not always the case, and when I began my journey at The Zeus Network I quickly had to learn and create a new process on how to handle the workload for the content that was being produced at this company. It took a lot of time as well as going through endless trials and errors before settling on a workflow that was able to be what is essentially cemented now as our way of doing things for my team and me in the Audio-Post department of the company.

I think this is something that I am most proud of with working with The Zeus Network for so long because the fact that I was able to create the audio-post operations on how we handle things for our shows was not something I saw myself doing anywhere for at least a while until I was well into my career in this field. I am in a position that takes most folks a lot longer to get into and for that, I am most grateful that I was blessed with such amazing opportunities like this along the way & I am hoping that as I grow and continue meeting all these amazing folks along my journey that I am able to pass along my knowledge and experiences to those who are looking to learn or get their start in this field as well. One thing I have learned throughout this entire adventure in Audio-Post is that it is all a giant community of folks who are all connecting and passing information back and forth on different things in our field. We all are in this together & in today’s society more and more Audio-Post folks are discussing the trials and tribulations we all face, the ups and downs as well as the successes and losses we all experience in the industry, we are being more open & honest with each other on difficult situations or hardships we face or come across and altogether I am glad to see people conversing about just how much it takes to really make it in this field.

I’ve said this a lot in the past, but I am most proud to still be here and still thriving in my industry. I have seen a lot of folks who have tried to move out to Los Angeles like myself and unfortunately had to move back home because they just couldn’t make it work out here in the big city. This place is a difficult environment to thrive in not only because of how unpredictable the industry is but because it is just so expensive to even live-out here and get here in the 1st place. The ups and downs, the strikes, the pandemic, the pure chaos that is surviving Los Angeles, that to me is one of the biggest things that I am proud of. Both professionally and personally, I have been able to solely focus on my career in audio-post and I was able to quit doing food delivery services to supplement income when I didn’t have any audio-post gigs lined up.

None of this was in any of the sense easy and I would be lying to myself if I said there weren’t times when I thought for sure I wasn’t going to make it and have to move back home to Oregon. Thankfully, I kept to my word and said “No matter what, I am staying out here.” so I did everything I could to be able to afford to stay out here in L.A. and from all the odd jobs to selling a lot of what I owned and surviving paycheck to paycheck. I was able to keep my head held above the water and not sink until I was finally granted a full-time line of work with The Zeus Network and that has been one of the biggest blessings in my career as I was so uncertain if that would be something I could ever achieve in this industry. The timing of this was especially in good fortune because the facility I was working at before Zeus Network had gone out of business and that was my 1st experience with how shaky this industry is.

Years later and I am still here, the biggest thing I can say to folks who want to overcome these challenges is to determine how serious one is about making it out here. This place will test you and like most people have told me in the past when I 1st moved out here. It takes about 3 years to really get yourself settled in and make your community so those first 3 years are going to be the hardest and determine, whether or not you can make it out here. Find your drive and always keep your reasons for being out here in the back of your mind, this is your dream and no one else’s, so give it all you got because sometimes you may only have yourself in the beginning.

Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
Ohhhh, this is a really good question but also one that makes me have to contemplate on the answer.

I’d have to say the people I have met in both my professional and personal life during my time out here in both California as well as in the entertainment industry.

Every single person I have come across while out here has shaped a little bit of my character in who I am today. This city definitely changes people, and whether or not that is for the better or worse, that is up to those who I interact with to decide on their own. As for me, I personally love the person I have become and enjoy the progress I have built as well as the continued growth for myself that I see with the next goals I have set to accomplish for myself. I keep pushing myself forward because I like to keep going, and give my career my all, since this is the entire reason for me being here in California.

I am graciously thankful for everyone in my life that I have come to know out here, my mentors, family, colleagues, partners and my brothers and sisters in the entertainment industry like myself. Friends is not the word I would use to describe these people because they mean so much more to me than that. It has not been an easy path getting to where I am today, and everyday that I am still here I am reminded of the community I have found/made around me. This is what makes me the most happiest I have ever been in my life.

I am living my dream, as well as my best life and I am not going to stop moving up in my life because I still have so much that I wish to do.

For all those who have interacted with me in any way during my career I appreciate you and thank you from the bottom of my heart. I hope that I was able to bring something to your life, as you have done with me.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://fendergibson22a.wixsite.com/curriculum-vitae-r
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/frank_a_ruiz
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/frank.ruiz.945708
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frank-ruiz-771372a9
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Gibson8636
• Other: E-mail: Fendergibson22a@yahoo.com