Rising Stars: Meet Alice Wibisono of Los Angeles

Today we’d like to introduce you to Alice Wibisono

Hi Alice, 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?
Yes, definitely! My story is a little unconventional in most parts. The journey I went through to get to this point has lots of twists and turns (fun one). Being a sound designer has never been on my career list, I even grew up not knowing that this job existed. However, throughout my life, I have always realized my passion in storytelling. I would be standing in front of my class in elementary school, talking about my summer break and ridiculous stories. I would attend comic competitions –telling stories through short stories and drawings, and won a couple awards. I would not forget to mention that I also create silly videos with my closest friends and sisters with my phone camera and iMovie.

Coming here to the U.S, especially attending USC School of Cinematic Arts, I got the chance to explore more about what I’m interested in: the world of filmmaking. I still remembered being blown away making our first sound assignment of creating a soundscape without an image, making me imagine things beyond how I used to perceive films in general. That’s my first love of sound design. I eventually grew more and more passionate (and serious) in pursuing my career in the post sound world. With the help of my lifelong mentor like Suhail F. Kafity, M.P.S.E, who has worked in the industry and dedicated a big part of his life to teaching sound at USC, I became more confident with my craft of designing the sonic world.

It’s pretty crazy to think about my passion and interest growing in a spurt of three years. Currently, I’m a sound assistant in Enhanced Media, working alongside my supervisor, Quinn Cooper, using all of my skills and knowledge but also making room to learn more about the industry. I have done an internship with Palari Films working as a Post Production Intern where I learnt the entirety of the workflow of post production. Aside from that, I am a freelance sound designer! I have worked with clients with compelling stories with ranges of genre, from psychological thriller, to heartwarming animations, and mini episodes dramedy series. All stories are welcome to my ears!

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I don’t think an artist has ever had a smooth road to exist in the world, career wise. I’m sure a lot of my friends are hustling with all of their time and strength to break into the industry because truth to be told, it’s a very tough industry. It’s especially hard to have a consistent project going through the year. Sometimes it can be painfully slow, but sometimes you can also be overwhelmed by how many projects are offered to you. It’s very fluctuating. It’s incredibly hard sometimes to think that my career is sustainable enough to provide a living. Not to mention, the nature of the industry itself is based on the amount of time you’re willing to hustle–which sometimes makes a lot of people feel guilty to take a break and such. So, I guess the main struggle is the extraction of time and energy to try breaking into the industry and the constant fear of not being able to pursue this career. However, I’m very glad that I exist in a very supportive film community where we offer help to each other, making all of this bearable and fruitful.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I’m a sound designer based in Los Angeles and Indonesia! I worked on the very end of production before a movie was being released publicly or in the theaters. A lot of my job entails designing the world of the story sonically including, cutting sound effects and mixing films (stereo & 5.1). I’m most known to work on diverse projects. I can’t really categorize myself as working in a specific genre. For me, a sound designer job is to enhance the fruit of the story by building the sonic world. So, in other words, I have made a very painful design for an asian hate story to make it creepier and horrifying, I made ghost sounds to make them more humane and understanding, I made the silent world of microorganism exist lively like our human society, and many more. I’m always thinking about the story then, applying to the way I’ll design my sounds. I may be a little different from others because I didn’t come from a technical and scientific background, which a lot of sound designers do. I stem from a creative background that just happened to be passionate about sound – it involves a lot of emotions and less about the technical side. This doesn’t mean I’m opposed to learning about this stuff but, my workflow just happened to involve a lot of my thoughts about the story, helped with my ‘pretty okay’ knowledge of the science of sound.

I had very monumental collaborations with directors but a short animation called “In This Together” directed by Jiamu Tao is one of the highlights of my proudest projects. This short has just received an award as Gold Winner in Collision Award 2024, and has been going to places in festival runs. It fulfilled me to be able to let the world know about Jiamu’s craft and my part in helping her sound designing this film. Our collaboration has been very perplexing and fun knowing that designing this came from a blank paper like all animation do. But, I’m proud that I was able to breathe life into this short film.

Have you learned any interesting or important lessons due to the Covid-19 Crisis?
I think Covid-19 crisis hits all of the sectors of the movie business, if not any kind of business. I learnt a lot about converting what’s more unconventional and morphing my own work to more virtual and accessible for people. Gladly, working in post already made my work less affected the production people where their living wage came from going on sets. However, without having movies being made, undeniably the post production people will struggle as well. So, I guess working in the film industry is always a domino effect and relies heavily on collaborations – which for better or for worse, works for me. For me, just the importance of being able to do a lot of things at once helps in tackling Covid-19 crisis because eventually, you do need to survive and still think about your financial management.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://alicewibisono.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alicewiwi/?hl=en
• Other: https://medium.com/@alicewiwi

Image Credits
Ally Wei
Ryan Gomez