Sound Design grad Jodie Kupsco didn’t always want to work on video games. In fact, she had a pretty clear vision for her career – giving sound to the next generation of blockbuster movies. And when the Park Ridge, IL, native went to Illinois State University, she concentrated on sound design for theatre.

Then she came to VFS and a new world opened up: the video game. Now she’s landed at EA Chicago, where she had a hand in the hip-hop fighter Def Jam: Icon, which won praise from game review site IGN: “The sound quality… is hands-down one of the best features.”

Jodie’s next project is again for EA, the recently announced, as-yet-untitled fighter starring Marvel superheroes. Along the way, she’s learned to adapt and had some surprising revelations about the way theatre and games intersect. And she’s sharing it all with us.

Where are you from, and what brought you to VFS?

Jodie: I grew up in Park Ridge, IL, a northwest suburb of Chicago. I started doing sound design when I was 15, working on my high school theatre productions.

When I started looking at schools, I was planning on double-majoring in both film and theatre, but I couldn’t afford to go to any of the larger film schools. I ended up getting a scholarship at Illinois State University to do theatre sound design, which helped me financially, but they didn’t have a film program there.

When I was a junior at ISU, I started looking at various grad schools that I could go to and study sound design for film, and I discovered that very few programs like that existed, and none in the U.S. That’s when I found VFS. It was a one-year program that had the curriculum I was looking for. I couldn’t pass it up.

Why game audio?

Jodie: I had always enjoyed playing video games and had even pulled ideas from games that I used in the theatre, but I never even considered doing game audio before I got to VFS. I had dreams of becoming the next Gary Rydstrom, working at Skywalker Sound on movies like Jurassic Park and Saving Private Ryan.

Once we started Leonard Paul’s game audio classes, all that changed. I realized how similar game audio was to theatre sound design. Neither games nor theatre are linear like film. They can be different each time you see them. The timing is different, the length of cues are different, and the entire soundscape has to adapt to that specific moment. This was just one of the many challenges that appealed to me.

How did you come to be working at EA Chicago?

Jodie: I was hoping to follow several of my classmates out to L.A., but decided to stay in Chicago. I saw a listing on Craigslist from EA Chicago, looking for a contract dialog editor. I had seen this listing on EA’s site before, but they were asking for at least 3 years of experience editing dialog. I sent in a resume and got a phone call the next day about setting up an interview, and within a week I had the job. My original contract was for 3 weeks, but it ended up getting extended for almost an entire year.

I’ve never regretted moving back to Chicago and not heading out to L.A. I absolutely love Chicago. We’ve got great food, a growing entertainment industry, and people won’t look at me weird when I start yelling at the Cubs or the Bears.

What’s your role there, and what does it entail?

Jodie: When I first started as a contractor, all I did was edit dialog for Def Jam: Icon. There were hours of recordings to go through and I was the only dialog editor for the project. After we finished the editing process, they kept me on to do some dialog mastering for the game and some sound design.

After Icon shipped, we started working on our unnamed Marvel fighting game. This entails engineering dialog recording sessions that we do in our studio, attending recording sessions that we do in other studios, and assisting with the casting and direction of talent. I am also editing and mastering some of the material that we record while corralling contractors.

I also work closely with the audio programmers with implementing all of the dialog into the game. Basically anything to do with the dialog is my responsibility.

Knowing what you know now, what advice would you give aspiring sound designers?

Jodie: Don’t ever assume you won’t work in a particular area or you won’t have to know how to do a specific task. Learn it all and keep learning. Good, steady jobs are hard to find and even harder to get.

VFS gives you an excellent foundation and puts you way ahead of designers coming from all those recording arts schools, but that doesn’t mean that you get handed a job interview when you graduate. You need to work hard to develop your skills at school and get as much experience as you can. Take advantage of the faculty and facilities, because unless you have thousands of dollars to spend, you won’t have any access to studios and great gear when your finished.

Like anything else in life, you get out of it what you put into it.