Industry News :: Sound Lot: WB Goes High-Tech

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By Sheigh Crabtree
Warner Bros. Studios plans to open the most luxurious of the industry's postproduction sound facilities in the winter.

The century-old sound division, home to the first Academy Award for sound for "The Jazz Singer" and more recently for 1999's "The Matrix," will be "future-of-the-art," studio execs said, when the doors officially open this year.

Not only is the facility located in a brand new building featuring the latest hardware and software, but execs intend to deliver a five-star client work environment as well.

"We wanted to create a facility that's the Ritz Carlton of postproduction," said Kim Waugh, vp postproduction services for Warner Bros. Studio Facilities. "Filmmakers spend weeks, if not months, doing their feature film sound. We plan to give them all the creature comforts while they work on the newest stages with great talent."

The 52,000-square-foot Mission-style building has been three years in planning and construction and will feature the lot's trademark open-air courtyards, fountains and arched doorways on the outside, while providing an "ultra-modern atmosphere" on the inside, Waugh said.

Known as Building 150, the site will house two cinema re-recording stages, an ADR stage with a talent green room, 12 sound editorial/design suites and 12 DVD audio mastering suites, all outfitted with Pro Tools HD.

Building 150 is the first major motion picture recording facility to house fully automated digital mixing desks that can support up to 1,000 channel paths, capable of 24-bit 96k operation, execs said. Six soundproof editorial rooms on each stage are networked to allow editors access to files in the mix.

Some of the client perks Warner Bros. execs are touting include two filmmaker lounges fully equipped with kitchens, bathrooms, showers, WiFi access and concierge services.

"Sound on a film is 50% of the experience," Waugh said. "We want to provide filmmakers a world-class postproduction experience, completely different from what they are accustomed to."

While other postproduction sound studios have been moving toward pared-down sound services, primarily to appeal to midsize- and smaller-budget films, Warners' post execs plan to offer the most full-featured and up-to-date postproduction facility in the industry.

"We're enhancing, we're not looking at creating micromixing environments," Waugh said. "In fact, one of our existing mixing stages has the largest (ProControl) Icon (console), on very large dubbing stage, in the industry. If anything, we're going in the opposite direction so (filmmakers) can work with this new technology and our Oscar-winning crews in large cinema sound environments instead of a 25-by-35 room."

When completed, Building 150 will house four large format re-recording stages, six television re-recording stages, a scoring stage, a Foley stage, screening rooms, three ADR stages and two audio restorations stages supported by up to a dozen picture editorial suites.

The new building is located inside Gate 4 at Hollywood Way and is adjacent to Warners' postproduction services for Emerging Media group, which services the interactive gaming community.

"This extraordinary building reconfirms our commitment to the postproduction community," said Norm Barnett, senior vp postproduction services for Warner Bros. Studio Facilities. "We have certainly raised the bar, and we are thrilled to be able to offer the industry a facility of this caliber."

The facility last was upgraded in 1999 when the technology was overhauled for digital postproduction.