With production underway on Sony Pictures Animation’s Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2, and postproduction continuing on The Smurfs 2, Sony Pictures Digital Productions (SPDP) announced it is bringing the studio’s sound department and Colorworks, the studio’s digital intermediate facility, under its umbrella. SPDP will now offer a host of postproduction services, including visual effects and computer animation, sound mixing and editorial and digital mastering, color grading and film restoration.
“These changes to the production organization will help us continue to provide our partners with the same world-class suite of facilities and services they have come to expect from Sony Pictures Studios over the years, and I am thrilled to welcome the expertise of Colorworks and the studio’s sound department, with their incredible teams of experienced professionals, to Sony Pictures Digital Productions,” said Bob Osher, president, SPDP.
These changes come following the announcement that Gary Martin, president of Sony Pictures Studios, will be retiring in 2013. Martin was responsible for opening the lot’s Barbara Streisand scoring stage and helping to develop the sound department into a facility with a stable of Oscar-winning sound mixers and sound supervisors. Along with Sony Pictures Technologies president, Chris Cookson, Martin opened the studio’s digital intermediate facility, which introduced the industry’s first fully-4K workflow. Osher and Randy Lake, executive vice president and general manager, Sony Pictures Imageworks, will work with the sound department’s Richard Branca and Tom McCarthy, and Colorworks’ Chris Holt, in managing the studio’s combined postproduction operations.
Sony Pictures Colorworks’ 14,000 square foot facility, housed at Sony Pictures Studio’s Stage 6, features colorists and state-of-the-art technology capable of real-time, 4K processing in a full digital workflow. The Sony Pictures Sound Department’s sound editors have six Oscar wins combined, including the 2013 winner for achievement in sound editing, Zero Dark Thirty.
