The centrepiece of Eikon’s London postproduction facility, a new screening theatre is the first Dolby Atmos room that acoustic consultancy White Mark has built in the UK.
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.
The 12-seat theatre is equipped with an Alcons Audio loudspeaker system, and is being used as a client screening room and quality control facility for grading and mastering. ‘Our screening theatre supports the latest cinema picture and sound formats and was built with optimum viewing quality in mind,’ says Eikon Director of Technology, Laurence Claydon . ‘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.’
‘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,’ says White Mark MD, David Bell. ‘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.’
‘The fact that Atmos 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 continues. ‘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.
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 the new theatre has also been 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.’
‘Eikon’s screening facility may be the first Atmos theatre we have built in the UK but it certainly won’t be the last,’ Bell says. ‘We are already working on designs for six more.’
