MPSE Wavelength

film. I did dialogue editing on the very first film he did. He was a short film hero in our generation, and it was his debut film. I worked on it and he was kind of nervous, but he was still a very nice guy. He's pretty critical about himself too. Sometimes he was like, "I don't like my movie," but he's a great guy to work with, very nice guy. For Snowpiercer, he wanted to have David Whitehead be his lead sound designer because he liked District 9. It didn't sound like a Hollywood kind of film—it had a B-movie feel that he wanted to utilize, but still sound sophisticated and interesting. So that was a great thing to take District 9 as a common approach. They initially wanted me to cut the dialogue on the film because I had cut the dialogue for them, which was the main studio behind Snowpiercer. I was going back to the very first place I worked at after 10 years. I actually really wanted to work on backgrounds for the film! I was begging, "Please let me cut the backgrounds," and they said, "No, but you can cover sound effects like punches and guns." David Whitehead was already covering the abstract effects in Snowpiercer. I was glad to be able to edit the doors in the film. That was a good thing. But I really wanted to do the backgrounds because it was such an interesting concept. But I enjoyed working on it. EM: It sounded amazing. That film is so good on every level. SRC: I don't know. When I hear the gunshots in that film, I sort of wince like, "I should never have done that!" For me it's like, "Oh my God." Ha ha. EM: I thought it was great. Circling back to documentaries, what are some of the biggest challenges you face most often on a documentary project? SRC: I think the most challenging thing is when I can't find the flow of the story. If I think I've done good work and the story isn't flowing, I start to think, "What am I doing wrong?" To fix that is the hardest part because sometimes I'm lost like, "What am I doing wrong here?" Sometimes you get so engrossed in your work that the work itself prevents you from using your imagination. That's very challenging. Like sometimes you go back and think, "Oh, I should have done it differently," but you're so engrossed in your work that you need to break away. It's important to be creative and do something that nobody else would do, or find something that inspires you. To find inspiration in your work, in your documentary, is probably the most challenging thing. EM: Do you have any tricks on how to find that, even in a crunch at the darkest hour? SRC: I think the spotting session is actually very important. I think getting the work done is actually not so difficult. For the Japanese film 37 Seconds, we had four days of spotting sessions, but that was also a tight schedule. I started in December and in January it was premiering in Berlin, so I had three weeks of editing and one week of mixing. That's all I had for a feature film playing at Berlin! Actually, what I found most amazing was that I spent four days just spotting things, but those four days were more valuable than one week of editing. Once you get the inspiration and imagination, it's not that hard, but finding that idea is actually more difficult. EM: That's really inspiring. Sung Rok, it was really great to talk with you today. Thank you so much for your time. SRC: Thank you, thanks for having me.

• Cover