Mocha Chai Laboratories, Singapore’s first fully integrated digital film lab, has installed the Christie Vive Audio cinema sound system in its dubbing theater to provide the best possible cinematic audio capabilities for post-production tasks. The dubbing theater, which is fully equipped with audio post-production and 4K color grading facilities, is fully compliant with the DCI-standard.
The Motion Picture Sound Editors and the Cinema Audio Society will host the 8th Annual MPSE Golf and Poker Tournament, September 18 at the Angeles National Golf Club in Sunland, California. Proceeds from the event will benefit the MPSE’s Ethel Crutcher Scholarship Fund, which provides mentoring and support for student sound artists, as well as the organization’s work in promoting the role of sound in movies, television, gaming and other entertainment media.
Paramount Home Media Distribution will release a collection of home entertainment titles with a DTS:X soundtrack. Paramount’s first titles released on Blu-ray Disc with DTS:X audio are Daddy’s Home, starring Mark Wahlberg and Will Farrell; The Big Short, starring Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt; Zoolander No. 2, starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson; and Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, starring Tina Fey and Margot Robbie
Wanda Pictures and Dolby Laboratories today announced that Wanda Pictures’ feature For A Few Bullets will be released for Dolby Cinema locations in China on July 15, making it the first Chinese local language movie mastered in Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos.
Founded in London in 1997, award-winning Factory Studios has produced the sound for projects by many high profile clients, including EE, O2, Renault, Nike, Three, eBay, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Harvey Nichols, BT, Sony and Samsung. Last year it became the first UK facility to include a Dolby Atmos-licenced suite for commercials and trailers, which features 35 Alcons CRMS Cinema Reference Monitor System speakers.
Ymagis Group has acquired Berlin-based Christa Kistner Synchronproduktion, one of Germany’s leading dubbing companies for the cinema and television industries. Under the terms of the agreement, Ymagis SA, through one of its wholly owned German subsidiaries, becomes the sole shareholder of Christa Kistner Synchronproduktion. Christa Kistner remains in her functions as its managing director.
Scott Farr is one of the busiest and most sought after production sound mixers in Southern California. So he’s quite familiar with the rigors of carrying his audio kit over a long day of work.“The trick”, he explains “is how to best carry the weight in the front, and distribute it evenly so you don’t tear up your back, while keeping your shoulders free. And you have to be able to easily interface with your equipment.” Farr was one of the first to use the new K-Tek Stingray Harness, designed specifically for carrying and working with front-mounted audio bags filled with equipment.
Post work for director Rebecca Miller’s new romantic comedy Maggie’s Plan, currently in wide release from Sony Pictures Classics, was a labor of love for Technicolor PostWorks New York. A long-time supporter of independent film, the facility furnished suites and systems to picture editor Sabine Hoffman and her crew. It also provided resources for dailies processing, editorial finishing, color grading, sound mixing and deliverables. The project involved months of concentrated effort, spanning pre-production through the film’s world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Cinema immersive sound is upside down. Technology providers invest in intellectual property for immersive sound rendering engines, but they compete on the availability of content. Trading on content has been counterproductive to growth, contributing to a lackluster immersive sound installation count that is less than two percent of worldwide screens. Immersive sound has more moving parts to address than distribution, but the industry is fixated on a design from scratch, do-everything, distribution standard that’s two and a half years in the making and at least as many years from finding its way into cinemas. A deeper look shows that the key friction point of production for competing systems has been addressed. It’s time to put immersive sound right side up and grow the format.
When Two Worlds Collide, winner of the World Cinema documentary prize for Best First Feature at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, focuses on the alarming and sad conflict between indigenous people of the Peruvian rainforest and corporations bent on exploiting the region through mining, drilling and clear cutting.
