Meet Aniket Solanki

 

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Aniket Solanki. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Aniket below.

Aniket, thank you so much for taking the time to share your lessons learned with us and we’re sure your wisdom will help many. So, one question that comes up often and that we’re hoping you can shed some light on is keeping creativity alive over long stretches – how do you keep your creativity alive?

I believe as a filmmaker and sound designer and for that matter any artist it is very important to observe the world around us. We are creatures of habit and especially in this digital age it is very easy to live inside a cocoon which could be highly detrimental because all art serves as a reflection of the world and the time we live in. So one thing which I love doing is taking a walk around places which I visit to really soak in the environment and the culture along with the people and sounds of the place. I also like to watch a lot of different movies and I make it a habit that I am at least watching one movie every week while simultaneously reading a book or a graphic novel. I think it is really important to consume good art and to learn from the masters because it really opens up ourselves to different view points and different lenses to see the world.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

I am a sound designer and sound mixer doing post production sound in films and television. Sound designers are the hidden heroes of the film industry as we contribute to the aural experience of the film. None of the sounds that you hear in a film are real, which means that they aren’t recorded on set but have to be re constructed in post production. From the whoosh of the Millenium Falcon to the zap of Spiderman’s web sling, all these sounds that we immediately associate with our favorite movies are designed and constructed by people like me. I like to approach sound design in tandem with the story and the script. I like to believe that we are all storytellers and I tell stories through sound in films.
I worked on a film in 2023 called “Two Breaths” where I travelled to Hawaii as the production sound mixer. It was an incredible 2 weeks with a great cast and crew. The film recently premiered in Cannes at the American Pavilion. Last February, I also had the opportunity to do production sound for the first short film shot at Sony’s newly built Virtual Production stage. It was a great experience and I could not believe that I was working at the Sony lot while being in school. I am currently working on a Bollywood thriller titled “Room” which will do it’s festival run later this year.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

I feel one of the biggest qualities which led me to where I am today is curiosity. I was always curious about new ideas , new career paths and that has led me to where I am today because I would watch movies and immediately became curious about how it was done or who is the person who thought about this idea. The other two qualities which are kind of personal but help in the long run are empathy and kindness. Empathy is very important if we are working in any kind of artistic field and I believe that kindness goes a long way. It’s rewards are exponential in the long run. For anybody who is just starting in the film business I think my advice is to keep on going, keep on working on your ideas. It is a marathon not a sprint. As long as you are making stuff and working on your skills you are doing great.

Looking back over the past 12 months or so, what do you think has been your biggest area of improvement or growth?

I think personally one of the biggest things that helped me last year was the acceptance of the feeling that the most important thing I can do is keep on working and not worry about the results. Before that I would obsess over the results of the films I worked on, whether they were good or successful and this would lead to a rather vicious cycle of self doubt and imposter syndrome. So instead of that I focussed on putting in hard work and not worry about the results but rather believing that the results would eventually show up. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next month but someday.

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Image Credits

Sebastien Chiu
Ji Lee

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