Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/6359
38 Post • January 2010 www.postmagazine.com ily pick up where he left off. "Here, we try to keep things as virtual as possible, so that any- thing can be changed at any moment," he ex- plains."Most of the time we deliver a six-plus- two, which is a 5.1 and a two-track. If it's going out theatrical, Dolby will come in and do their printmaster for 35mm." T H E TAQ WAC O R E S Snap Sound (www.snapsound.tv) in Nor th Hollywood is a boutique sound de- sign facility that caters to the independent filmmaker. Zach Seivers is a partner in the studio with Justin Davey. The two both hail from North Carolina, and collaborated with each other remotely for the first two years they were in operation.Today, Snap Sound has two identically-equipped 5.1 rooms and a voiceover booth, and can handle sound design, pre- mixing, Foley and ADR. For final mixing, the par tners have relation- ships with larger studios nearby, in- cluding Monkeyland Audio, which allow them to come in and set up shop to complete a job. The studio recently completed work on a low-budget independent film by director Eyad Zahra that's slated to screen at this year's Sundance festival. The Taqwacores is a drama that centers around a young Pak- istani engineering student named Yusef who moves off-campus into a house with a group of Muslim punk rockers in Buffalo, NY. His new housemates introduce him to Taqwacore, a hardcore, Muslim punk-rock scene. The influences challenge Yusef 's faith and ideologies. "It's an interesting juxtaposition between two very different worlds, colliding together," says Seivers. "Rumanni Filmworks is Eyad's company. He approached us because of the editor, Josh Rosenfield, who works with me here in Los Angeles. This is his first feature editorial experience. He had experience with me on shor t-form material and knew that I was super vising and sound designing independent feature length material, so he approached me and introduced me to Eyad." Early on, the director and Seivers decided the film's soundtrack needed to have a hard edge to it. "We decided we wanted to do a mono mix and not do a 5.1 mix — and not to do a stereo mix even," Seivers recalls. "We wanted to do something that had a hard edge to it and a grungy quality. It's low- fi, but it's polished and ver y professionally done. So it has a great blend between the punk-rock spirit while still being a well mixed and sound designed film." Seivers says the mono mixed proved to be a good learning experience. "You only have one speaker so it's less about spatializa- tion, and it's more about dynamics. It's about creating a sense of space through volume Ari Posner scored Eating Buccaneers; Pirate provided audio post services. Audio For Independent Films