Zahir Isaacs (Sound Technician)

Zahir! My China! I have so much time for this guy. He has impeccable manners, he’s endlessly kind, he ALWAYS has time to help fetch and carry for pretty much anyone and everyone, and just generally be awesome, even if it has nothing to do with his job description. Also, he manages to make fiddling with my pants all day not awkward at all (there are wires and battery packs in all sorts of random places, and they need checking and re-adjusting and battery changing way too often).

Besides any of that, he’s absolutely brilliant at his job. You see that grass blowing in the breeze? But you don’t hear it do you? See a bee? Yip, but no buzzing interference in the soundtrack. Trees can practically be bending sideways to the wrath of near gale-force winds (which they sometimes were, Knysna comes to mind) and Zahir has us covered.

Zahir also has incredible attention to detail – he has to work in tandem with Chris and Farrell on the cameras, be their shadow and catch the sound that is going with their shots, but he can’t be in their space to the point of it killing their work flow, or – his least favourite sentence on set I’m sure ‘boom in shot’ if he’s wielding his enormous sound muffler (which even has its own hairbrush (I wish I was kidding)). Like I said, awesome. Thanks Zahir, for being so much more than our sound boss on the road.

Maboneng

Orlando Towers, Soweto

Photo’s from ‘Sarah Graham’s Food Safari’ by Ricardo de Leça.