In just a few short years (six to be exact), Tattersall Sound has emerged as a leader among the country’s long-form audio post shops.

Besides the obvious top-quality work, president Jane Tattersall points to the ongoing upkeep of strong ties with industry types as one of the keys to her shop’s success.

‘This is a relationship-based business,’ says Tattersall, who along with supervisor, editor Fred Brennan and senior staff members Peter E. Gibson, David McCallum, Janice Ierulli, John Laing and Rod Deogrades, has been feted with over 20 awards and nominations for the shop’s post sound work.

Recently, veteran dialogue editor Wayne Griffin worked with Tattersall on the Sony Pictures action feature The Big Hit.

Tattersall counts her relationships with staff as being as important as those nurtured with clients. ‘I give a lot of freedom to the people who work here, and I try to put people on projects that they’re interested in to get their own creative satisfaction out of working. This isn’t an assembly line sweat shop.’

By offering sound services to up-and-coming independent producers and directors a few years ago, Tattersall is now well positioned to reap the benefits.

‘Now they’ve grown up and are starting to make features,’ notes the sound diva, using director John Fawcett (The Boys Club) as an example. ‘The type of people I’ve attracted both as clients and staff are people who are interested in their jobs as opposed to earning a living.’

And to go with Tattersall’s impressive list of recent Canadian projects including features The Hairy Bird (Alliance/Miramax) and Jerry and Tom (Lions Gate Films/Miramax) and series Fast Track (Alliance) and Straight Up (Alliance/Back Alley Film Productions) are a whack of big u.s. projects including The Big Hit and Fox’s A Cool Dry Place.

‘I really like doing these higher budget features, not because of the budget, but because of the schedules,’ says Tattersall. ‘You get a longer amount of time to do the same amount of work so everything gets better.’

Though Tattersall Sound has earned a reputation as one of the best places to do post sound for features, Tattersall says she also welcomes series work. ‘When we did Fast Track it kept four people working for 10 months. I was glad to be able to give some good people so much steady work.’

On her ‘wish list,’ Tattersall would ‘love’ to work on another film by David Wellington (I Love A Man in Uniform, Long Day’s Journey Into Night), as well as a feature film with Rhombus Media’s Larry Weinstein.

Housed at and affiliated with deluxe toronto, Tattersall Sound was one of the first companies to embrace the digital revolution in sound editing. Tattersall says plans are in the works to be able to utilize the convenience of digital picture. Meanwhile, at press time, McCallum was in Halifax buying high-end hard drives at a liquidation auction for bankrupt computer company Dynatek.

Tattersall’s recent awards include a ’98 Gemini for the Rhombus production of A Tale of Tanglewood: Peter Grimes Reborn. McCallum and Tattersall shared the award with location recordists John J. Thompson and Peter Cook and sound mixer extraordinaire Lou Solakofski of Casablanca Sound & Picture Services.

The shop was also recently nominated for two MPSE Golden Reel awards for best sound editing on Alliance’s Hunchback of Notre Dame and Fast Track.