Russian company Cinelab has awarded the contract to design and build its new state of the art film facility to UK acoustic and studio design consultancy White Mark Ltd.
Due for completion at the end of 2010, the new complex will have a total of 14 studios including four dubbing theatres, two of which are very large and will be built to Dolby Premier License criteria. It will also feature an extensive and highly specified Foley suite, multiple edit and pre-production suites, sound design rooms and a large orchestral studio.
White Mark Ltd beat off stiff competition from other studio and acoustic design companies to win this contract – a fact that the company’s Managing Director David Bell puts down to its solid reputation for delivering first-class results.
“In recent years we have been very fortunate to work with many of the top post production facilities in Soho and around the world,” he says. “We have also won prestigious awards for our facilities in the music recording field with our projects for the Hit Factory and for Red Bull in Los Angeles. Coupled with our work for such large film facilities as Savalas in Glasgow, Real World Post and our work with Grand Central at the Parliamentary Inquiry into Crossrail, our profile has been raised and people are understanding that we have an almost unique experience of all aspects of technical design, along with an ability to produce a comprehensive solution to any mix of facilities needed by their business, wherever they are in the world.”
Having worked on projects all over the world, White Mark has developed a working method and drawing system that allows multi-lingual work forces to build accurately from its documentation. This is certainly necessary in the case of the Cinelab project where White Mark is working closely with local architects and builders to completely refurbish the building that will house the new complex.
“This is a massive project that involves the complete renovation of a former cold store building on the banks of the Moskva River in Moscow,” David Bell adds. “The entire three-storey building is being totally gutted so that every studio in the new complex can be built without compromise. Every room will ultimately meet the most stringent criteria in terms of both acoustics and aesthetics.”
Cinelab already owns a number of preview theatres and edit suites close to the new complex. These attract national and international work, including Russian language dubbing of Western feature films. The new complex will allow Cinelab to expand its remit and offer an entire audio post production service to its customers. It hopes that the combination of a unique location and state of the art facilities will appeal to Western film producers, encouraging them to move their projects to Moscow at a much earlier stage in the production process.
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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 decade it has designed and supervised the construction of over 170 audio 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, Hit Factory in New York (for which the company won a coveted TEC Award for Best Acoustic Design), 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 100 studios for more than 40 companies in Soho alone. The list includes Grand Central, Hackenbacker, Envy, Scramble, Lipsync, Molinare, Ascent Media, Wave and Boom. This impressive achievement means that a significant proportion of mainstream British television output passes through rooms designed by White Mark.
