NEWS

The Sound of the Future: Warner Bros. Cues Up New Audio Post Facility
by by Michael Kunkes
photos by Bob Beresh

If you haven’t driven through Gate 4 at the Warner Bros. Burbank lot in the last couple of years, you may have noticed that the parking lot isn’t there anymore. The studio may have lost a parking lot, but gained what it claims to be the world’s most technologically advanced post-production sound facility for the feature film industry.

Three years in planning and construction, the 52,000-square-foot mission-style building opened for business in December and marks the end of the post-production sound department’s 25-year stay at Warner Hollywood Studios (the former Samuel Goldwyn Studio)––first as owners and from 1999 until the present as tenants.

Designed to be the first all-96k feature audio post facility, the building revolves around twin, noiseproof re-recording stages with specially configured AMS/Neve DFC’s (Digital Film Consoles), 12 editorial and sound design suites, Christie 2K digital cinema projectors with MPEG video server, and 12 DVD audio mastering suites––all Pro-Tools HD equipped. A new ProTools-based ADR stage, designed to closely emulate the acoustical attributes from the Warner Hollywood stage, is equipped with a Digidesign Integrated Console (ICON), the first ADR stage to be supplied with that console (Warners already owns the largest ICON dubbing stage in the world, Stage Six). An additional 20,000 square feet of office space is earmarked as the new home of the Warner Bros. feature post-production department.

Warner Bros. is the last of the major studios to completely revamp its feature film post facilities. Part of the reason, according to the studio’s vice president of post-production services Kim Waugh, was to coincide with the closing of the Warner Hollywood Studios facility at the beginning of 2006. The other, he says, was dictated by technology integration. “If we had done this a year ago, we would have had the last generation of 1k projectors and we would not have had the latest Neve DFS or ICON consoles,” Waugh explains.

The new dubbing stages will be home to two of the industry’s leading re-recording mix teams. On Stage Nine are effects mixer Ron Bartlett and dialogue mixer Mark Smith (a 1995 Oscar winner for Michael Mann’s Heat), who have collaborated on recent films such as 8 Mile, Iron Jawed Angels and Gothica. Across the hall on Stage Ten, the team of veteran re-recording mixers David E. Campbell (music), John Reitz (dialogue) and Gregg Rudloff, CAS (effects), hold court. The last dedicated three-man mixing team at a major studio, the trio shared 1999 Oscar, BAFTA, CAS and MPSE Awards for The Matrix, and have worked together off and on since 1983’s Risky Business.

Built by the architectural firm of HLW International LLC, with acoustical engineering by San Francisco’s Charles Salter Associates, the facility was constructed from a synthesis of input at the studio, led by Kevin Collier, Warners’ director of engineering, and Bob Budd, an engineer in special projects/post-production services, as well as the studio’s re-recording mixers and editors. “We’ve been working on this for three years, calling all the shots of the tech sound process, right down to the picking of paint colors,” says Collier. “Everything was geared toward pushing the envelope to the next level of performance.”

Rudloff adds, “Man-agement was great about bringing all the teams in. They presented the ideas they had, and wanted to know from us what we were looking for, as well as what had and had not worked in the past.”

In setting up specifications for any new dub stage, there are traditionally two all-important barometers: sample rate––which correlates directly to the quality level of the digital engine––and the number of signal paths that can run through the console. “We challenged AMS Neve to provide us with a console that would run at 96 kHz, a higher sampling rate than anyone has ever before used in film mixing, even though it has seen a lot of use in music recording,” Collier says. “We basically doubled everything, customizing from a 48k/500 path, to 96k and 1,000 signal paths, and effectively challenged them to give us four times the processing power and speed than anyone had. That was very significant.”

The emphasis, with any feature stage, is on service and comfort, but Warners has gone out of its way to connect with clients on both levels via a new level of infrastructure. All of the new dubbing stages have six dedicated ProTools HD suites, each of which connects directly to the “PPSnet,” Warners post-production services’ own internal sound media network. “From a workflow standpoint, our goal is to be as transparent as possible and get clients where they need to be with the fewest number of hurdles to jump,” Collier states.

Each room is routed out to workstations on the stage or to the machine room, where another 16 ProTools systems are based. Music editors, picture editors, effects editors or sound supervisors can access any of these rooms or systems from any place they want to work. “Previously, you may have had a system in one room that was routed to the right side of the console, and that’s where the editor had to work.” adds Rudloff. “Now, people can set up in any of the rooms and access any system with the touch of a button, or they can have the same accessibility sitting right here on the stage. That allows for a much better synergy and smoother workflow. It’s just a much nicer environment in which to work.”

Each of the stages also features large custom LCD, under screen level VU and PPM (Peak Program Metering) displays (designed by Warners’ engineer Jim Deas), so mixers can monitor levels without having to look down at the board. “Jim’s even got them set up with dual scales, where I can look at VU and PPM at the same time,” Rudloff enthuses. “You can also set a threshold indicator on the PPM scale, which alerts you when you’ve reached a predetermined level of your choice. As an effects mixer, I live and die by those things.”

The entire second floor of the facility is dedicated to DVD audio mastering, with ProTools HD and Sonic Solutions’ “No Noise” software. “Right now, we’re working on the DVD release of Grand Prix, and we just finished up Viva Las Vegas,” Waugh relates. “For that show, we took all the mag tracks as they were originally mixed in 1960. Then, scene by scene and word by word, we started building them out in 5.1 until we got a spectacular dynamic track.”

Client comforts have been strategically designed to keep a show moving in a relaxed but efficient fashion. Each dub stage includes a bathroom and shower; a filmmakers lounge with a 70” flatscreen TV; elegant seating and a 5.1 environment; an outdoor patio with fountain and fireplace; and a personal concierge service. “A stage is really only as good as the service being provided to clients,” says Waugh. “At many facilities, clients will pace the hallways or walk around the studio when they need to discuss things. Here, clients can go off into their own special environment without leaving the dub stage’s comforts.”

On the stages, progressive design changes have been created to provide clients and editors a clear line of sight and a closer line of communication with the mixers. The credenza behind the board has been replaced with a tier of editing and ProTools workstations angled to the sides of the room, with a large central furnished area to specifically accommodate producers and directors. “Our goal was to put as many people on the stage without anyone getting in each other’s way,” Waugh explains. “It’s a much better utilization of the space.”

“A lot of rooms today were built before current technology,” Rudloff adds. “In the days of film, most everything in the editing process as far as sound was concerned, was done outside the dubbing stage. As digital technology appeared, everything started showing up on the stage because of the power and flexibility it offered in keeping the decision-making process open longer. As a result, the dubbing stages started to become cluttered. The long credenzas behind the dubbing console originally contained patch bays and other gear but it created a big, long barrier between our client and us. We needed to find some way to streamline the physical process in the way we were all working.”

Dub stage content and personal client file space is backed up by a 200-gigabyte RAIDed (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) fileserver. “The message here is that no one likes to work in lower resolution unless there is some advantage to it,” says Collier,” who adds that the advent of virtually unlimited storage will make resolution less of an issue at the mix. “I think we’re going to see large, uncompressed or minimally compressed files coming to the dub stage, so I don’t think anyone is going to want resolution to be a limitation anymore.”
At press time, the first Warners production scheduled for the facility will be Wolfgang Petersen’s Poseidon, to be mixed by Campbell/Reitz/Rudloff and edited by Peter Honess.

“There has never been the level of creativity in sound as there is today,” Waugh summarizes. “In order to provide the Warner family with the very best in service, we’ve created a facility that will not need upgrading for years to come.

Michael Kunkes is a freelance editor and writer specializing in animation, production and post-production. He can be reached at writermk@sbcglobal.net.
[Group photo: The veteran mixing team of David Campbell, left, John Reitz and Gregg Rudloff. Photo by Bob Beresh.]

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