About – Gaurav Chopra

Gaurav is one of those few awarded Artistes that excel on both sides of the microphone.

He is one of those Sound Designers, who is a sensitive, knowledable, highly skilled Sound Engineer/Acoustician and an equally gifted, talented & trained Singer.

He has recorded and mixed many musical scores for commercial and parallel cinema, film songs, advertisements and musical albums.

Further, Gaurav has also been awarded for his Sound Design in commercials and has worked with many of the stalwarts of the music, entertainment & film industry.

Over a 30 year period, Gaurav has worked with major Advertising Film Directors, Advertising Agencies and Production Houses such as Prahlad Kakkar (Genesis), Mahesh Mathai (Highlight), Nomita /Subir (Whitelight), Sumantra Ghosal and Ram Madhwani (Equinox), Deven Khote (UTV), Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra (Flicks), Mukul Anand/Sunil Manchanda (MAD Films), Ashok Mehta (Ashok Mehta Films), Ayesha Sayani (Shunyata-ID8), Kailash Surendranath (Kailash Picture Company), Jeet Surendranath (Far Commercials), Piyush Panjuani (Equus), Vishal Punjabi, Haroon Mirza, Farah Khan & Shekhar Kapur (Red Chillies Entertainment), Rajiv Menon (Mindscreen Chennai), FCB-Ulka, Chaitra-Leo Burnett, Rediffusion, JWT, McCann Erickson, Lowe Lintas & Dentsu. The scope of work covered production mixing (sync sound recording, especially of those commercials involving film stars and child actors), dubbing supervision and recording, music recording, sound effects creation, Foley and finally, mixing for television.

Gaurav has been awarded for his Sound Design by the IAAFA (Indian Academy of Advertising Film Art) on two occasions.

Thereafter, he has been invited to be a Member of the Jury for the IAAFA awards.

As Production Mixer, Gaurav has worked on documentaries directed by Zafar Hai, “The Taj of Apollo Bunder”, “The Merchant Princes of Bombay”, “Keepers of the Flame” (celebrating the centenary death anniversary of Jamsetji Tata and birth anniversaries of JRD and Naval Tata), LV Prasad Eye Institute and “A Brilliant Sun” (Aditya Birla). He has also worked as Production Mixer on a documentary on Amitabh Bachhan, “The Everlasting Light”, directed by Ram Madhvani. As Sound Designer, Gaurav has worked on the documentary of Zakir Hussain (Tabla maestro) called “The Speaking Hand”, directed by Sumantra Ghosal, as well as a film, “The Saints of Sin”, directed by Aniruddha Sen. He also Sound Designed a short film for Fuji Film Company, called “Informer”, directed by Kiran Deohans as a test film for Eterna Vivid 500 film stock.

Gaurav, Sound Designed a series of documentaries on the Indian Foundation for the Arts (IFA), directed by Sumantra Ghosal, under the Bengali Language Initiative. He also Sound Designed the mamoth project, “Mayar Khela” a 3 hour long musical opera written by the legendary Rabindranath Tagore & directed by Sumitro Mukherjee.

Gaurav worked as Sound Designer, Recording Engineer and Mixing Engineer of the anthem & advertisement films of the Kolkata Knight Riders and Mumbai Indians, IPL Cricket teams.

With regard to background scores, Gaurav worked as Music Recording & Mixing Engineer of the scores of many Indian feature films such as Damini (Directed by Rajkumar Santoshi), Rajkumar (Directed by Pankaj Parashar), Sooraj Ka Satwa Ghoda (Directed by Shyam Benegal), The Making of the Mahatma (Directed by Shyam Benegal) and Sardar (Directed by Ketan Mehta). These were some of the first few films having a soundtrack recorded on a digital format, with Damini being the first. These included the scores by the veteran composer, Vanraj Bhatia.

With regard to overseas projects, Gaurav worked as Music Recording & Mixing Engineer of background scores of films such as Exotica (Atom Egoyan-Mychael Danna), Jaya Ganga (Vijay Singh) and Dubbing Engineer (local Indian talent) of Kamasutra, A Tale of Love (Mira Nair).

Gaurav worked as Production Mixer on overseas as well as local advertisement productions of Blank Slate (Stratum) for directors such as Bryan Buckley with Conan O’Brien (Amex), Christopher Riggert (Sony Handicam) and products such as Starbucks Coffee and Reebok Reezig with Indian cricketers, M.S.Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh. For the Dubai Tourism “Be My Guest” Campaign with Shah Rukh Khan, directed by Marcos Grandia, produced by Stratum.

Shah Rukh Khan Dubai Tourism 2019 Be My Guest 1

Gaurav worked as Production Mixer on overseas as well as local advertisement productions of Blank Slate (Stratum) for directors such as Bryan Buckley with Conan O’Brien (Amex),

Christopher Riggert (Sony Handicam) and products such as Starbucks Coffee and Reebok Reezig with Indian cricketers, M.S.Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh.

For the Dubai Tourism “Be My Guest” Campaign with Shah Rukh Khan, directed by Marcos Grandia, produced by Stratum.

With regard to Song Recording, Mixing & Mastering for Hindi Feature films, Gaurav worked on films such as Saaz (Directed by Sai Parnjape & music by Zakir Hussain), animation film Hanuman (Percept Picture Company & music by Tapas Relia), animation film The Return of Hanuman (Directed by Anurag Kashyap & music by Tapas Relia), 1920 (Directed by Vikram Bhatt & music by Adnan Sami) and Sadiyan (Directed by Raj Kanwar & music by Adnan Sami).

With regard to Song Recording, Mixing & Mastering for Hindi Feature films, Gaurav worked on films such as Saaz (Directed by Sai Parnjape & music by Zakir Hussain),

animation film Hanuman (Percept Picture Company & music by Tapas Relia), animation film The Return of Hanuman (Directed by Anurag Kashyap & music by Tapas Relia),

1920 (Directed by Vikram Bhatt & music by Adnan Sami) and Sadiyan (Directed by Raj Kanwar & music by Adnan Sami).

Gaurav also worked as Sound Designer (Head of department) for Hindi Feature films, such as, Kasak (Directed by Rajiv Babbar), Sound Designer and Stock/Ambience effects Editor of Aamras (Directed by Rupali Guha) and Always Kabhi Kabhi (Directed by Roshan Abbas – Red Chillies Entertainment). He worked as Sound Designer, jointly with Baylon Fonseca, for Lamha (Directed by Rahul Dholakia) & supervised Dubbing as well as the Film Mix of Kites (Directed by Rakesh Roshan). Gaurav also worked as Part Production Mixer, with Baylon Fonseca for Rock On & Karthik Calling Karthik (Both produced by Excel Entertainment). He also designed and created specialised sound effects for Drona (Directed by Goldie Behl).

He worked as Sound Designer, jointly with Baylon Fonseca, for Lamha (Directed by Rahul Dholakia) & supervised Dubbing as well as the Film Mix of Kites (Directed by Rakesh Roshan). Gaurav also worked as Part Production Mixer, with Baylon Fonseca for Rock On & Karthik Calling Karthik (Both produced by Excel Entertainment). He also designed and created specialised sound effects for Drona (Directed by Goldie Behl).

Gaurav also worked as Sound Designer (Head of department) for Hindi Feature films, such as, Kasak (Directed by Rajiv Babbar), Sound Designer and Stock/Ambience effects Editor of Aamras (Directed by Rupali Guha) and Always Kabhi Kabhi (Directed by Roshan Abbas – Red Chillies Entertainment).

He worked as Sound Designer, jointly with Baylon Fonseca, for Lamha (Directed by Rahul Dholakia), & supervised Dubbing as well as the Film

Mix of Kites (Directed by Rakesh Roshan). Gaurav also worked as Part Production Mixer, with Baylon Fonseca for Rock On & Karthik Calling Karthik (Both produced by Excel Entertainment).

He also designed and created specialised sound effects for Drona (Directed by Goldie Behl).

With regard to Album projects, Gaurav worked as Song Recording, Mixing & Mastering Engineer of music albums such as “Colour of Love-Music for Romance” (Louis Banks), “Badalte Mausam”, re-released as “Kabhi to Nazar Milao” (Adnan Sami), “Hanuman Chalisa” (Anup Jalota) and as Sound Engineer (Indian artistes), “Global Drum Project” (Zakir Hussain & Mickey Hart).

With regard to the complex Art of Live Sound Mixing, Gaurav has travelled the world as FOH (Front of House) Mixer for Adnan Sami on his tours, covering European cities (such as Amsterdam, Glasgow and London, including performances at the Wembley Arena). He also toured USA, Canada, South Africa, Singapore, Indonesia & Malaysia.

Theatre & Musical stage productions are always a challenge and Gaurav has toured the country with “Jeeves & Wooster – Perfect Nonsense”, as well as “Mousetrap”, both productions from London’s West End. “Million Dollar Quartet” another Broadway as well as London West End Hit. He also toured the country with the Elton John Tribute Band, Ultimate Elton & The Rocket Band, featuring Paul Bacon.