Swell Music + Sound, a Bay Area studio that specializes in original music, sound design, sonic branding and audio mixing and post, has tapped music veteran Ana Velasco as its new executive producer.
Prior to joining Swell, Velasco was with Format Entertainment, a music licensing and supervision company serving the entertainment and media industries. She’s worked as a music coordinator on such films as Cocaine Bear, as well as Unfrosted, Jerry and Marge Go Large and Shotgun Wedding, as well as music supervisor for a variety of short films. Prior to joining Format she worked with brands and agencies as creative sync manager at Position Music; while there she worked closely with music supervisor Michael Frick, a colleague of Swell founder and creative director Elad Marish.
A published poet and writer, Velasco was born and raised in Mexico City, and after a stint in New York she relocated to Los Angeles, and now divides her time between there and her hometown. She’ll be working with Swell out of both cities, and her Latin heritage represents an opportunity for Swell to connect with Hispanic agencies and brands, Marish noted.
Velasco met up with Marish at an awards show in L.A. earlier this year, and the connection clicked. “We bonded over our passion for music and its indispensable role in storytelling, from ads to videogames and of course film and TV,” she said.
Marish noted that Velasco will be on hand to meet the company’s San Francisco clients and friends at the upcoming AICP Awards screening and panel, set for mid-October at the Exploratorium. Swell Music +Sound is the official music sponsor for the event, and will be DJing the reception after the panel discussion and screening.
Founded in 2009, Swell’s client list includes such brands as Pepsi, Meta, Nike, Airbnb, Old Navy, Fitbit, Barefoot Wines, Uber and Google. It’s also produced work for local faves like the NBA’s Golden State Warriors and MLB’s San Francisco Giants. In addition to providing original and licensed music, sound design and audio post for brands and agencies, the studio has extensive credits working in music videos and short films, and has created #Beatific, a psychedelic indie pop band that’s been releasing original tunes online.
Carrie Coon Relishes Being Part Of An Ensemble–From “The Gilded Age” To “His Three Daughters”
It can be hard to catch Carrie Coon on her own.
She is far more likely to be found in the thick of an ensemble. That could be on TV, in "The Gilded Age," for which she was just Emmy nominated, or in the upcoming season of "The White Lotus," which she recently shot in Thailand. Or it could be in films, most relevantly, Azazel Jacobs' new drama, "His Three Daughters," in which Coon stars alongside Natasha Lyonne and Elizabeth Olsen as sisters caring for their dying father.
But on a recent, bright late-summer morning, Coon is sitting on a bench in the bucolic northeast Westchester town of Pound Ridge. A few years back, she and her husband, the playwright Tracy Letts, moved near here with their two young children, drawn by the long rows of stone walls and a particularly good BLT from a nearby cafe that Letts, after biting into, declared must be within 15 miles of where they lived.
In a few days, they would both fly to Los Angeles for the Emmys (Letts was nominated for his performance in "Winning Time" ). But Coon, 43, was then largely enmeshed in the day-to-day life of raising a family, along with their nightly movie viewings, which Letts pulls from his extensive DVD collection. The previous night's choice: "Once Around," with Holly Hunter and Richard Dreyfus.
Coon met Letts during her breakthrough performance in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?" on Broadway in 2012. She played the heavy-drinking housewife Honey. It was the first role that Coon read and knew, viscerally, she had to play. Immediately after saying this, Coon sighs.
"It sounds like something some diva would say in a movie from the '50s," Coon says. "I just walked around in my apartment in my slip and I had pearls and a little brandy. I made a grocery list and I just did... Read More