Studio Name: 20th Century Fox DVD Mix Room
Location: Los Angeles
Date Opened: September 2007
Designer: Peter Grueneisen/nonzero architecture/studio bau:ton
Acoustics: David Schwind/Charles M. Salter Associates
Photo: © Fox

Equipment: 32-fader Digidesign ICON D-Control console, Pro Tools Mac Pro 1 (for the ICON) Version 7, Pro Tools MacPro 2 V. 7 mastering/streaming/processing machine, PCAudioLabs dual-core Intel-based PC for DTS encoding, SmartJog and Aspera file transfers, Dolby DP570 multichannel audio tool, NTI monitor switchers, Gefen fiber DVI extenders, Denon 7.1 consumer AVR2307CI, Sony Blu-ray player, Evertz Fiber–connected HD video and audio, Brainstorm DCD-8 multi-video sync and multi-word clock generator, Genelec surround monitors (1037C L/C/R; 1050A surrounds; 770A subwoofer).

Description: Screening room 6 and its projection booth are located in a '30s-era all-concrete bunker that was built for use with nitrate film, complete with explosion-proof vaults. The massive 1-foot-thick concrete walls were integrated into the design. The room was assembled with floating sand-filled floors. Fabric wall treatment covers a matrix of hard, soft and diffuse nonparallel matrices. The front L/C/R speaker wall soffit is floated and sand-filled. The back wall and ceiling spaces are filled for bass trapping. The space was designed to be a multiformat mixing room, able to handle any format of video. The original concept was to bridge the gap between Fox's large mixing “Dub” stages and small DVD video-sized mastering rooms. This way, the director’s DVD editions of some of the movies could be mixed there, and the backfield could still be in the six- to eight-person range. The small speaker mixes done after the big film dub on the large stage could be relocated to a smaller and budget-appropriate studio.