Pro Story: Eugene Kim

I've known Eugene for a handful of years now. As with everyone on the Pro network, he knows the importance of belonging to a community where you can learn and find support. His is a story that shows that your true calling will find you eventually. He's tenacious, motivated and a positive force in the sound world.

Eugine's Story

I'm a career changer who had zero interest or knowledge about sound.

I love the Bay Area (Oakland) and couldn't imagine living anywhere else. After culinary school and cooking for about 10 years around the country and in Korea, I had my shot as an executive chef at a country club in upstate NY, so I jumped on it. After the gig, I worked in NYC for a bit but couldn't see myself cooking professionally for the rest of my life anymore - not a great feeling. In fact, pretty awful.

I didn't have a clue about what to do after leaving the kitchen: med school, law school, physical therapy, accounting? I shadowed a lot of different jobs, hoping to find a fit. My wife's friend, who was the ADR mixer for the show 'House', offered to chat and something about her job resonated with me. Working camera side seemed too much in the spotlight, and I somehow knew that sound was under-appreciated, and that drew me in. The one consistent thread in my life has been an attraction to underdogs, sidelined characters, the unseen cavalry - a perfect fit for audio.

I looked at a slew of programs: IAR, SAE, Touro, Full Sail and none of them appealed to me, especially after having gone through a trade school (culinary). My experience was that after graduating and starting at the bottom of kitchens making nothing, I struggled like hell to pay off those loans - I looked at starting salaries for audio engineers and thought it would be the same story, so I skipped those programs and interviewed as a student-intern with a few studios in NYC and chose a studio in Chelsea. That studio started my 2nd career in audio and the owner is still my mentor, good friend and someone I turn to if I have a mix issue.

The owner assumed I had some knowledge about audio (I had zero) and asked me to get a few xlr cables, and I had to tell him I didn't know what those were. He had me sit on the floor with his assortment of mics (an incredible collection, looking back) and learn them all. I learned about polar patterns, shock mounts, etc. for a few days until he felt I could stand up with a mic without dropping it.

It was a working studio, so we did working studio stuff during the day: set up mics, headphones mixes, Logic sessions, patch-bay routing, pulling out/installing rack gear, and lots of organizing. One interesting fact about the owner: he's 99% blind (congenital), but was able to "see" a poorly coiled cable or disorganized corner. He has great ears, super picky ears. I dreaded tracking and mixing days with him because nothing I did seemed good enough.

After client work was done, we'd do sound lessons: Nyquist theorem, miking techniques, signal flow, gain staging, compressor settings, eq, etc. After 6 months, the owner hired me 3 days a week (hard time wages, like I figured). That's when I really started learning about the business and craft of working in sound. It was such a steep learning curve - I had only worked briefly as a teacher and in kitchens, so I had no idea what I had done, trying to break into sound in NYC with no background in audio. I made so many mistakes, some very terrible. Once, I kicked the power switch to the Equitech (a power conditioner) shutting down all the racks, the board (a Neve5300) all the computers and a Studer tape machine. But I also remember making my first $50 tracking a Broadway singer for his side work, and walking down 6th avenue at midnight, feeling so proud for finally having been paid for actual sound work. Looking back, the owner trusted me with his studio more than he probably should have - every time I thought I'd be fired and should apply to law school, he gave me a short talk and moved on. So I stuck around and kept at it, trying to hear eq, compression, and what made a mix good. I did understand that I was getting the education the way I intended this time around: industry trained, and to learn by working on paid projects so I could understand what a paid, finished sound product sounded like.

Kitchen work prepped me well for studio work: I was used to long, hard hours, prepping deep for service, working clean, keeping my station organized, growing a thick skin, staying calm in chaos and under pressure. Studio and sound work taught me how to run the business side of an operation: how to write emails, behave in client facing sessions, understand basic accounting, relate to industry folks (very similar to restaurant people), the creative process, and most importantly for me: to learn what to say yes to and what to pass on.

After about 6 months of tracking, and some basic editing, a producer from a cable network stopped in. He asked what I did and I gave my pat answer, "I'm an audio engineer." He asked if I wanted to mix a 5.1 feature film. Sure, I replied. After he left and I relayed this conversation to the studio owner, he told me, "Great! Now go figure out how to do it." He was very supportive - he let me turn the rather large iso booth into a tight editing suite, helped me finance a Bluesky 5.1 setup with the deposit and then I was off on my own, as he was purely a composer. He did impart very good, valuable advice about mixing in general, which I still use today. I put out an ad in craigslist for someone to teach me Protools (I had no clue how to run the software). I connected with some amazing post engineers who understood my situation and taught me a path forward. They also said that I was nuts. I would work on whatever was on the studio roster during the day, go buy a 4 pack of Red Bull, and edit through the wee hours, crash for a few hours on the couch either at home or at the studio and repeated this until the deliverables were due. It was crazy to try and learn, and apply post production in real time. I googled and read everything I could find about post: Purcell's Dialog Editing, LoBrutto's Sound On Film, Walter Murch, allllll the forums: duc, gearspace (formerly gearslutz), protools is awesome!, random bits here and there. I built much of my basic muscle memory for keyboard shortcuts on that project (command S is a spinal reflex now). There were so many 3 a.m. moments of panic, where I felt alone and sunk in that makeshift editing room. Thank god for the internet.

They screened the film at a festival in Los Angeles and called when it was over to say, "A little loud, but not bad!" We celebrated with sushi and beer over here and I decided audio post was what I wanted to do. So I did as much post work as I could get: ads, a ton of shorts (great to learn Izotope on), docs, corporate work - anything that would pay and I could use to build a reel. After a few years, a client who I did corporate work for asked if I would record location sound. I thought I had an idea what location sound would be like (very wrong. I have a picture of me on set for the first time in my life - still embarrassing). I didn't really know what to do or what to charge, but the client said yes to $400 for the shoot. At the time, it was the most money I had ever made in a day and made me very curious about the work. We did a simple corporate shoot for Theory clothing at their headquarters, I rented some basic equipment and it all went well. I was instantly hooked and wanted to do more of this kind of sound work. It felt like a great combination of kitchen culture (very intense, physical prep for service) and the craft of recording sound. I was off again looking for any production sound work I could get, and eventually found my way into a great local and international community of sound mixers that helped me elevate my craft and business.

I still do some post work, and podcast mixing here and there but the bulk of my work is on set. I still enjoy post and get a thrill when I watch picture married to a finished mix and see how it brings the story to life. I would have never imagined that I would be living in NYC, working in production sound as a freelancer. But that's how it worked out, and I'm very grateful to be able to do work I enjoy and find meaning in. Learn more about Eugene at his website.​

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