Check Out Vicky Vien’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Vicky Vien.

Hi Vicky, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Hello! My name is Vicky Vien and I am a first gen Vietnamese/Chinese American. I work as a production sound mixer for film productions all throughout Colorado.

Since I was a kid, my life revolved around my family’s restaurant business “Double Happy” located in Downtown Louisville. I started working/ helping out at the restaurant when I was in the third grade with my sister (and occasionally cousins when they dropped by to spend time with us). Double Happy used to be the hub for all our family occasions. We had birthdays, holidays, and even our own private karaoke nights when we whipped out the speaker and microphones from the storage room! I remember when I was a kid, my cousins and I would always explore Downtown at night when hardly anyone was around. My parents worked late so what else could kids do besides ride their bikes around town at night yknow?

Being a restaurant kid always had its ups and downs. On one hand, you have the entirety of a restaurant’s inventory at your fingertips and could pretty much eat an awesome meal whenever you wanted. On the other, you had to work everyday with your family through rush hour and everything from opening to closing. Having to work with your sister after a big personal argument was the WORST. But despite that all, I think I am honestly closer to my sister and family because of it. I used to hate working at the restaurant because I was never able to do school clubs and other activities after school. Now that I’m older and don’t work at the restaurant anymore, I found that my experiences at Double Happy taught me really valuable social skills and how to navigate issues and/or requests from customers and clients in my current line of work.

My sister and I continued to work with my parents in our family restaurant throughout high school and college which was definitely challenging. We had our designated “homework table” in the dining room while answering phones and waiting tables which was just the norm all throughout our schooling. I graduated high school in 2020 right as COVID was beginning to escalate.

I went to the University of Colorado Denver and majored in Film and Television. Because of COVID, the first couple of semesters were primarily on Zoom and it definitely wasn’t the most ideal setting to meet the people that I’d be spending the next four years with. It was honestly so funny to see classmates on the rare occasion that we would have classes in person because we had only seen each other’s faces on a screen for the past year. The following three years feel like such a blur to me now that I’ve been out of school for a bit. I spent a lot of time with my cohort and we worked together on numerous productions for our film courses. When I was a sophomore, I grew to love production sound mixing. With more encouragement from my professors I started to seriously consider working in sound more often.

I feel like for many first gen college students, it’s really difficult to follow a path that isn’t STEM related and it definitely did take some convincing for my parents, but they never really tried to persuade me to do anything else and instead told me to just do my best and just keep at it. During this time we had also been dealing with Covid and how much it had affected our family’s restaurant because of how Asians had been treated during those couple of years. I think one of the most important things that helped us get through these times was just making sure that we were supporting each other as much as possible.

During film school, I loved getting to meet and work with kind and super talented people who are still some of my closest friends today. I think right as I was graduating I was so afraid that I wasn’t going to be able to have as many opportunities as I’ve had but there are seriously so many film folks in the Colorado scene who are just epic! I’ve worked on short films, documentaries, a kids show, and a couple of feature films now and I really do love my job. It takes me to places I’ve never seen and I get chances to meet new people and make friends who all have their own crazy film stories to share which I find to be one of the most rewarding aspects of working in film. Yes, it comes with its own challenges. but I think with the right people and support, they’re overcome easily. In a way, working at Double Happy and working in film aren’t too dissimilar. In my eyes the work always needs creative problem solving. Sometimes that consists of using a small PVC pipe to wire a microphone on talent with tight jeans and other times its using spare straws in my car to help dress a car dashboard to make it look “messy”. In the end, all these films are achieved with a bunch of people who are just solving one big puzzle and I love it.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I think that the obstacles and challenges we face in our lives are what help build our identity. I think there have been many occasions in my life where I wanted to give up, but what kind of pushed me to keep going was knowing that my parents and family came here with practically nothing and built their business from the ground up. They supported each other in buying cars, houses, and other necessities to build a family on top of that. I don’t want my family’s efforts to go to waste and I want to keep working hard so that I can ultimately support them when they need me.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I work as a production sound mixer on various types of film productions. Short films, kids shows, documentaries and now a couple of feature films. Something that I value on film productions and crews are people who I can genuinely connect and bond with. There aren’t a lot of women who work as production sound mixers and I think it is always such a privilege to get to work with them. I’m also queer so that’s another thing that I find to be nice to connect with others on when I work on film sets. Granted, not every production is going to be like that and that’s okay, but it’s always a plus to get along with the people you work with. I think I generally value working with people who care about people. Community is everything to me, and that will make or break your production.

Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting out?
Working in production is by no means a simple task. It takes time, patience, and I think a lot of socializing for sure. It took me all of college to kind of familiarize myself with film etiquette and workflows and honestly sometimes it can vary from film set to film set so it takes a lot of adaptation sometimes. Be okay with getting criticism and be okay with making changes if something you’ve always done doesn’t work for some reason. Don’t be afraid to ask for help because if you don’t you’ll get caught in something that can easily overwhelm you. Building experience is also crucial. I didn’t start out as a sound person, I started as a production assistant who was later given a sound department opportunity because I expressed interest in sound with other crew who recommended me. I also became good friends with a lot of other sound mixers in Colorado who have been amazing colleagues and mentors.

It is super valuable to have decent breaks between long film productions because burnout is a really common occurrence. These breaks also don’t have to consist of not working, just yknow- doing something that can help the creativity and passion for this job reignite and to find that spark again.

No matter what, don’t be afraid to be who you are. Share your real personality with people because it is one of the best ways to bond with others as they too will also show their true colors and no one will feel the need to have a constant shield of superficialness up. Be genuine and be honest.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.vickyviensound.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vicky_vien_/

Image Credits
Zack Hartman Photography
Ben Fout (Truce Media)