Acoustic consultancy White Mark Ltd has designed and installed a Dolby® Atmos™ screening theatre for technology solutions and servicing company the EIKON Group. The 12-seater theatre, which now forms the centrepiece of EIKON's 3,000 square foot London post production facility, is the first of its kind that White Mark has built in the UK. David Bell, White Mark's Managing Director, says: "The Dolby® Atmos™ Premier film mixing theatre that we built for Cinelab in Moscow was our first experience of designing a facility for this new format. Since then we have seen a significant increase in interest, not only from companies like EIKON that deliver services to the cinema industry, but also from companies that deal with cinema advertising." Bell adds that, in terms of cinema sound, Dolby® Atmos™ is the most exciting development to have come along in years. "The fact that it is a cinema-only format and can't be replicated in the home makes it very important for the film industry – one that could give it a whole new lease of life," he says. "You only have to look at the recent Oscar success of Gravity to see how well 3D Atmos sound can complement 3D pictures, and how much cinema audiences appreciate this enhanced experience. EIKON's screening facility may be the first Atmos theatre we have built in the UK but it certainly won’t be the last as we are already working on designs for six more." Located in London's Poland Street, EIKON specialises in creating foreign versions of feature films for major studios and independent distributors. The company also handles VFX for foreign localisation, soundtrack replacement, censor editing, subtitling and Digital Cinema Package mastering. Equipped with an Alcons Audio professional sound system, EIKON's new theatre was completed at the beginning of this year and is already being used as a client screening room and quality control facility for grading and mastering. Laurence Claydon, EIKON's Director of Technology, says: "Our screening theatre supports the latest cinema picture and sound formats and was built with optimum viewing quality in mind. As the first ground-up, purpose-built Atmos facility in the UK, we were able to adhere perfectly to the specification set down by Dolby and create the best possible listening and viewing environment for our customers." Claydon, who also runs the internationally acclaimed technology consultancy Cinefilm, has worked with White Mark on a number of projects in the past. These include the design and build of two preview theatres at NBC Universal's international headquarters in London. "White Mark consistently achieves excellent acoustic isolation on all their builds and I have never been disappointed with any of their facilities," he says. "Internally, their studios always have incredibly tight bass, and just the right balance of absorption and diffusion for a perfect listening environment. You really can hear every detail." Claydon adds that client reaction to EIKON's screening theatre has been very positive. "We recently completed mastering work on foreign versions of Robocop, and our client, Sony Pictures, was incredibly happy with the result," he says. "There is definitely something special about our White Mark room. Another customer commented that, having seen and heard a recent feature film over 50 times in various venues, he’d not heard or seen it better than in here." -ends- About White Mark: Established in 1997 by David Bell, John Dunnill, Derek Buckingham and Alan Cundell, White Mark Ltd specialises in production facilities for music recording and the film and television industries. Over the last fifteen years it has designed and supervised the construction of over 500 production suites worldwide. The company’s impressive client list encompasses some of the world’s most famous music recording facilities including Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios in the UK, Germano Studios in New York, Hit Factory/Criteria Recording Studios in Miami, Strongroom in London and private studios for producers and musicians such as William Orbit and Damon Albarn. In the area of audio post production, White Mark has completed over 140 audio studios and many broadcast and video editing facilities for more than 60 companies in Soho alone. The list of clients includes Grand Central, Hackenbacker, Envy, De Lane Lea, Scramble, Lipsync, Molinare, DeLuxe, 750mph, NBC/Universal, Wave, Unit and Boom. Advertising agency clients include worldwide facilities for Hogarth International and AMV/BBDO on four continents. www.whitemark.com
