For over 80 years, Pinewood Studios have made dreams a reality, enabling storytellers to bring their creations to life on the big and small screen.
Renowned across the globe for excellence in its field, Pinewood offers the creative industries a unique complement of world class facilities, services and expertise.
UK based Pinewood and Shepperton Studios (Pinewood Group) comprise 40 Stages, including the 59,000 square foot 007 Stage, the globally unique underwater filming stage and one of the largest exterior tanks in Europe, 3 dedicated state of the art TV studios and associated production accommodation, a comprehensive post production division and lighting.
Pinewood Post specifically offers an extensive range of mixing theatres with state-of-the-art technology available for dry hire, plus Localisation and Screening Services capable of running all film and digital formats.
JENS CHRISTENSEN, DIRECTOR OF POST PRODUCTION
“Audio post-production has been and continues to be a major part of Pinewood Group’s offering and we have a total of 17 mixing theatres across the Pinewood and Shepperton studio lots. These include five theatrical Dolby Atmos stages, of which the Powell Theatre at Pinewood is the largest Dolby Amos mixing facility in the UK. The mix rooms are supported by 17 sound editorial suites, with all audio facilities based around Avid Pro Tools for editing, recording and mixing.
The larger theatres are typically used for audio post-production on feature films, but we have a wide range of theatres to suit all types of content from big studio films to smaller independent and broadcast projects, as well as ADR, Crowd and Voiceover recording.
Recent projects include the Netflix production “Rebecca”, mixed in the Powell Theatre, and the forthcoming action film “Outside the Wire”, which was re-recorded in Pinewood’s other big mix room, the Pressburger Theatre.
Shepperton has facilities of equal stature – such as the Korda Theatre – which recently hosted the mix for “Wrath of Man” for Miramax and a further 9 theatres supporting both original productions and a thriving localisation business. The Pinewood Localisation Team provide mixing services on foreign language versions for many of the major studios. Our ability to leverage up to 17 theatres within a secure studio environment, enables our clients to achieve global day and date releases on tight timescales. This capability is unique in the industry and has seen us provide services on many of the biggest grossing movies of all time.
UPGRADING TO AVID S6
In recent years we have made a conscious effort to homogenise the audio set-up across the Group.
A key part of this has been the replacement of Avid S5 mixing consoles – and even older legacy controllers such as ICON – with the Atmos-capable, modular Avid S6 mixing system.
This year, Avid S6s have gone into Shepperton’s Theatre One and Adrian Biddle Theatre, to ensure both our team of staff Re-recording mixers and freelance Re-recording mixers brought in by productions, can be instantly familiar with the mixing console in all our Theatres.
A LONG PARTNERSHIP
I’ve worked with HHB throughout all of my almost 19 years with the Pinewood Group. I originally started out as a Re-recording mixer at Shepperton and during the time since, we have installed many Pro Tools systems and various control surfaces, all supplied by HHB. In the last five years there has been a rollout of the Avid S6 console to replace both the Euphonix S5 and older Digidesign controllers.
HHB supported all of these console migrations and enabled Pinewood Post to become one the first facilities to adopt an ‘in-the-box’ workflow. We’ve just bought our 13th S6 and although the aim has been to have a more homogenised approach, with the same equipment and technology – Avid Pro Tools and S6 – in all our theatres, there is still the flexibility to satisfy specific requirements. We often host freelance mixers with specific console layout requirements, and we can accommodate that because of the Avid S6’s modularity.
HHB has played a major part in our adoption of the S6. Whenever I ask Paul [Sisley] to get a new Avid S6 – or anything in fact – he always asks if he can get if from HHB, which is a testament to how HHB supports us and what they do. I certainly expect HHB to be involved in any future installations for Pinewood Post.”
PAUL SISLEY, HEAD OF POST PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY
“A major part of the installations at Pinewood Post is the Avid MTRX interface for routing and monitoring. This is fully modular and allows us to customise the set-up with specific I/Os. This can be MADI, DigiLink, AES3, Dante, 3G-SDI and others.
Whenever we install an S6, we install an MTRX as well. Another important element in our installations is the studio furniture supplied by Frozen Fish Design. Their Bucket system allows us to move complete consoles around to meet the needs of each production.
A lot of post-production is based on business relationships. It’s where everything starts. I’ve had a long relationship with HHB through the various post houses I’ve been with and that continues at Pinewood.
ENDURING SUPPORT
Sometimes you change supplier because the support is no longer there, but that’s never been the case with HHB. They’ve always been approachable, and they are always able to answer any questions we have about the technology or an installation.
We put our most recent S6 into the Adrian Biddle Theatre not long ago and JJ ,John Johnson, HHB chief technology officer was closely involved in every stage of the installation. This year we approached the main Avid resellers in England for the Shepperton installations and HHB came out tops.
The support over the years has been consistent and is very much still there.”
