A Journey in Sound from Chennai to Los Angeles for Karthik Mohan MPSE

From catching the latest releases in Chennai’s theatres as a young film enthusiast to fine-tuning the sonic atmosphere of films in Los Angeles studios, Karthik Mohan MPSE has travelled a unique path shaped by passion, precision, and persistence. What started as a college-level curiosity about muffled dialogues in short films has grown into a diverse international career in cinematic sound design.

A turning point came when Karthik, inspired by Kamal Haasan’s Uttama Villain, began exploring the finer details of sound. His fascination deepened after attending a masterclass by Oscar-winning sound designer Randy Thom of Skywalker Sound. Karthik later enrolled at Chapman University in California to pursue his MFA – Film Production with a sound design emphasis, where he developed technical fluency in Dolby Atmos workflows, Izotope Rx among other key tools in modern sound workflows.

His early work on Las Escondidas earned him a nomination for the Verna Fields Golden Reel Award, a recognition presented by the Motion Picture Sound Editors (MPSE), a global association for accomplished sound professionals. Since then, Karthik has contributed to feature films and documentaries across multiple languages and cultures, with releases on platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, AMC+ and The Roku Channel. His work has been part of films featured at Festival de Cannes, Tribeca, and SXSW among other prominent film festivals around the globe.

Among his prominent credits is Jawan, starring Shah Rukh Khan, the highest-grossing Indian film of 2023, released in over 10,000 screens globally and in immersive formats like IMAX, ICE and 4DX. Jawan was the sole Indian film nominated at the Astra Awards 2024, hosted in Los Angeles by the Hollywood Creative Alliance. He has also worked on Mahaan, an action feature starring Vikram, the Amazon Prime survival drama The Girl on the Mountain and multiple festival hits like Paper Flowers, Four Samosas, Max Dagan among others.

More recently, Karthik served as sound effects editor for the Netflix film Test starring R. Madhavan, Siddharth and Nayanthara and as supervising sound editor for the documentary Zzaslow K-427, which premiered at the landmark TCL Chinese Theatres in Los Angeles in 2025.

Now a voting member of the MPSE, Karthik continues to explore sound as a storytelling tool. “I like to think of every new film as an unexplored world of sound,” he says. With more projects on the horizon, his journey is only expanding with no signs of slowing down.