We were lucky to catch up with Camilo Gomez recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Camilo , thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
As an audio engineer based in LA since 2017, its been a wonderful journey where I had the opportunity to work on numerous short films, commercials, documentarie, tv series, and music projects. Being involve in the audio world is a really fun experience but it also has a lot of responsibilities and challenges where I’m constantly adapting my workflow to my client perspective and needs. Sometimes the projects are really creative which allows me to get creative but sometimes projects are very determine by the client specifications and I need to follow the guidelines so we can end with the desire result. Its a coordination of the crew, the producers and the talent.
What I always find very useful is to listen carefully what the intentions of the project are and depending on the circumstance it’s my duty take decisions fast to help get the best audio possible. One of those projects that involved a lot of pressure was working for Spotify Radar/Rap Caviar Interview Series, where I was able to interview Lil Durk, Peso Pluma, TrippleRed, Chief Kieff and more legendary artist. During this sessions I was ask to coordinate the audio and microphones for the interview where I worked close with the Director of Photography making sure I knew what frame and where he was pointing the camera so I could hide my mic and dont interfere with the image. Its also my job to coordinate with the production so I can find the right time to mic the artists. To put a microphone in someone is sometimes invasive and it needs the right amount of charisma and communication to be able to place the microphone in a spot where you cant see it but that it a good quality for the recording. This is my biggest challenge since normally production doesn’t give me a lot of time to do this and I will not have a second time to adjust the microphone, so its my responsibility to make sure I can put the microphone on the right place without it being a distraction for the talent. Most of this interviews are rushed by the artist time and schedule, so every minute counts and making sure the talent sounds good is top priority for me no matter the case.
Theres a lot of things going on when you are with a whole team, not only on the artist side but Spotify crew, the location crew and more people which usually are A&Rs, Managers and Photographers. When everything is ready to go there is someone in charge of doing the questions and directing the interview. Some of this material you have probably seen on Instagram or Tiktok and since I make music, I found this project very meaningful for me because it allow me to meet people on the industry I’m part of but also connecting personally with my favorite artist since no matter what I need to directly talk to the talent to be able to place my microphone.
Another really meaningful project for me was working with Splice, a company that makes tools for music producers. One of the best experiences I had was to do the audio for the Splice Awards where they select the top producers on the music industry and interview them to recap all the music they produced for the year and celebrate their productions. On last year edition they brough Kenny beats, murda beats, HitBoy and more producers. It was an amazing experience having a lot of talent on a room and being able to have small talks with this incredible musicians and producers. Because its a project that runs almost live, it’s a lot of pressure to make sure I can place the microphones on the talents and be able to get clean sound in Downtown LA. Because LA has multiple films and audiovisual projects very close together it is very hard for me to find frequencies that are available for me to align all my wireless mics. Most of my problems are also dealing with external audio sources like ambulances, police sirens, traffic and airplanes. There has been so many time where I need to call a complete stop on the project because we need to hold for a plane that is crossing above us. This is very annoying but it needs to be done so that the audio can be clean. During this project we record small interviews and recorded the vibe of the room where all this producers where talking to each other about music, beats and the process of creating a vibe on the studio.
Even tho I would say there are many meaningful projects I’ve had the opportunity to work, working for Spotify and Splice was an amazing opportunity for me since I am very passionate about music and not everyday you can have wonderful chats with people that inspire you to keep doing what you love no matter what.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I started my music journey as a conservatory student where he learned to play the piano, guitar and drums. At a young age he developed a big sensibility in music recording and analog synthesis which brought to the audio engineering world. It all started when I was in college, and I started doing audio recordings for films, news, documentaries and music. It was when I moved to to Los Angeles in 2017 where It became a full time thing. During the day I will work as a sound guy, recording audio for films and during the night I will go to the music studio to record artist. It all started by simply applying to projects, reaching out film producers, network with artists and just meet creatives. With time I started refining my purpose and created my company called CG Productions where I offer audio engineer services for films, audiovisuals, music and more. On the film side I focus on doing Production Sound Mixing where I’m in charge of recording all the audio and mix it live on location. Then after the filming is over, its my job to do the audio post-production where I organize, clean and mix all the audios recorded on set and deliver the final Stereo or 5.1 version for theaters. On the music side I work as an audio engineer where I record, mix and produce a song along with the artist at different studios in LA.
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
Being a creative that is making a full time living of their art its always a big challange. I think no matter what art you create, there is always people out there that can connect with you. Bulding a solid platform is key because as you create a community you need to have tools so that your audience can support you. Weather is buying merch, tickets or donations its important to have that platform out there because the audience that really connect with your art are willing to support you. As a society we need to understand that to support a creative it doesnt involved money sometimes at all. When you find a nice creator just by sharing or interacting with his platform helps a lot. Not everybody is willing to buy but you can share amazing art with the people you know and that stills support a lot the creator.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
I think the most rewarding aspect of being a creative is truly inspiring other creatives to thrive and keep going. It is very hard to be a creative or to be a full time creative these days, we only see the example of successful artist but there are many creatives out there that make art because they love it and thats really inspiring. When you do what you truly love it doesn’t feel like a job, it feels that you are just enjoying what you do and thats probably in my opinion the best aspect of being a full time creative, because we all have those times when we don’t feel good with what we are doing or we feel overwhelm and thats when we remind ourselves that its all worth it because you are passionate about it.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.cgproducer.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/producercg
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/producercg
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCk7fvlLOagmaLk28bVN2RDw
- Other: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm8960003/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_3 https://www.twitch.tv/cgproducer
Image Credits
Where all taken from my phone