Victor Popescu / Square Sound Studio — sound, music and a journey shaped over time
Business Story / sound / studio
A Business Story about Victor Popescu, the person behind Square Sound Studio and the Brazda lui Novac / Mathmatrix projects, built around sound, music and the craft behind the studio.
About the Victor Popescu project
Victor Popescu is a sound designer, musician and the person behind Square Sound Studio. The film follows a profession that is difficult to show visually: sound, the decisions made inside the studio and the path built between music and audio production.
In an AltIași interview, Victor says that he recorded Renée Zellweger in Bucharest after filming for Chicago, when the team decided to change the lyrics of the final song.
For N-trance Media, the project is a Business Story about technical and creative expertise: a way of translating into images a profession that, most of the time, is heard without being seen.
- Relationship
- We have known each other for around 30 years.
- Location
- Square Sound Studio.
- Shoot
- One main day, plus additional inserts.
- Interview sound
- Lavalier microphone + studio microphone.
- Film sound
- Worked on and mastered by Victor Popescu.
How do you film a person whose material is sound?
Victor and I have known each other for around 30 years. The idea for the film came from both of us, except that he already had the story very clearly mapped out in his head and knew exactly how he wanted to tell it. We disagreed creatively a few times. Victor was impossible to bend. :)) After all these years, that did not surprise me too much.
We filmed at Square Sound Studio during one main working day, then returned for additional inserts. The keyboards, synthesizers and the rest of the studio environment are interesting if you know what you are looking at, but the main problem remains the same: sound is invisible. Visually, an audio studio can very easily become almost monochrome.
I used enough light and colour to make the space feel alive and organic without turning it into an artificial club set. For the interview I used a lavalier microphone and the studio microphone. I do not need to list equipment models to explain what happened there; what mattered was that Victor remained in his own environment, while the image still had life.
It is the only film of mine where I did not create the final sound.
Victor worked on and mastered his own sound for the film. It is the only project of mine where I did not create the final sound. It felt natural: he has spent his life working with sound, and I had come to film him precisely inside that world.
In the film he also says that I was one of the people who changed the direction of his life towards sound. A high-five followed. It was spontaneous and it stayed in the film. During this shoot I also rediscovered that Victor is even more stubborn than I remembered. :))
Victor also contributed his production and editing experience. This was not a project where one person simply “provided a service” while the other sat in front of the camera. We pushed each other until the film sounded and looked the way it needed to.
“I’ve known Mugur for about 30 years, so there was no way he could make a standard ‘presentation film’ about me as if I were just another client. We disagreed, obviously, because I knew very well what I wanted to say and he knew very well how he wanted to film me. :)) In the end, it became a film I recognise myself in, one that tells my story without turning me into someone else. And the fact that I worked on the sound while he worked on the image seems to say quite a lot about who we both are.”