SOUNDFIRM at FOX Studios Sydney

In 2002 I was given the opportunity to visit the studios at SOUNDFIRM at FOX Studios in Sydney. The original tour was supposed to take about 20mins, but extended out to over 2 hours. I felt quite privileged to see behind the scenes of a THX certified audio post production facility that has turned out some pretty impressive soundtracks such as THE MATRIX and ROBOTS, so decided to re-visit the studio to discuss possible changes in the industry.

Main Dubbing Stage And Screen

You can not see the full console in this shot, but there is three multi-track mixing desks all linked. In 2002, I got to see the mixers at work. It was very interesting watching the automated slides moving whist the sound mixers added in more tracks. Note the extensive room treatments on the left.

The Mixers watch a digital projected image of the film and make their audio decisions based on what they feel is most appropriate for the on screen visuals. The screen is Acoustically Transparent and the LCR speakers are placed behind the screen for the best sound to image match.

The Back Of The Room

The seating at the back of the room is for the producers to view their work during post production. This stage uses surround arrays (Krix speakers) to emulate the sound heard in an actual cinema so that both producers and mixers will know how the film will sound during its exhibition run.

A New Age Mixing Console

This might just be the future of Multi channel audio. This console was designed by engineers that work in the facility and can be networked to pretty much every existing system in use today. The "arc" across the top is actually an LED display of the number of audio channels that this desk can mix.

FOX Studios sees the market potential for re-mixing film sound for the HD formats, and that work might very well be done on smaller scale studios using a console like this one.

I would like to thank Bruce Emery for his time and for allowing me to document my visit.

Mark

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