Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1475048
C A S Q U A R T E R L Y I FA L L 2 0 2 2 25 In 2010, I gathered a group in my city, but since our town is so small and sound engineering is a rare profession here, I had to learn on my own. It was the reason I've entered the University of Culture and Arts in Kyiv as a sound engineer. Studying at the university helped me to find my first job and start a career path. In 2017, I started working at Foley Walkers Studio. At first, I only did sound editing and, with time, I was recording Foley for films. Today, I am [working with] Foley Art and Mad Friends|Sound House. The war actually mixed up my position. Now, I'm a part-time sound engineer, a part- time business owner, a part-time editor—and the list goes on. Xenia: The entertainment industry in our country wasn't impressive when I was a child. The aftermath of [the USSR], along with a deep financial crisis, was influencing the state of our culture. So, the Ukrainian film and television industries were evolving quite slowly up until the Revolution of Dignity in 2014. This event caused an incredibly powerful uprising of self-faith and inspiration in our cultural circles, changing the quality of our entertainment and film industries among others. This was, sadly, also the year when the Russian aggression against Ukraine started, and Crimea was annexed. So, along with elevating our culture, we had to defend our citizens, territories, and national identity. I began studying film sound in 2009, and my first projects were student films. Since graduating from university, every job position I've obtained has been sound-related. I've been taking on different roles; sound designer, music editor, studio recording engineer. However, my main specialties are production sound mixing and sound editing. I also love recording ambiences. Cinema sound has been an object of my fascination for many years and I love growing in this field. There's really no limit to the new things you can learn and get better in. Tell me about the moment when the invasion began. Were you working? Dmytro: My last shift ended six hours before the first rocket fell. We had to leave Kyiv for some time. We were back finishing the film in April, when it was already much safer, but the air raids constantly went side by side with us. Xenia: When the full-scale invasion started, I had one project in the post-production stage and two in the production stage. I actually had a shooting day scheduled on the day when the full-scale war started and, funny enough, for an hour or so I wasn't sure if I was still meant to go to the set. We already had rocket attacks all over the country, but I wasn't sure if it was the real start of an invasion or just a provocation. You are never fully prepared for things like this. Of course, the filming was put on hold and we went to our bomb shelters. Illia Popel and Foley artist Danylo Horokhov