NEW YORK CITY — Sim (siminternational.com) has completed a major expansion of its post production facility in New York City. Additions include three audio mix suites, one with Dolby Atmos capability, an ADR/VO recording studio, two broadcast color correcting bays and an online editorial finishing bay.
The new resources are geared toward scripted television, as the facility seeks to support a current boom in broadcast and streaming production. Sim New York is also growing its offline rentals department, which provides onsite editing systems and related technology to film and television productions.
“We are responding to an acute need for more, high-quality post services in New York, especially for television,” says Sim Post New York, partner and VP, Kim Spikes. “New York has always been busy with independent film and documentary production, but television production has risen sharply, partly in response to tax incentives offered by the state. Our new sound and picture resources are designed to meet the finishing and delivery needs of those scripted productions.”
Sim’s high-end audio facility in Toronto - where it has contributed to Handmaid’s Tale, Vikings and Penny Dreadful - served as a catalyst in expanding the New York space. The expanded audio department will serve as a base of operations for a sound team that it assembled last year when Emmy Award winning re-recording mixer Sue Pelino, re-recording mixer Dan Ricci and assistant audio engineer Ryan Schumer - all formerly of Broadway Video - joined longtime staff re-recording mixer Keith Hodne.
The centerpiece of the expanded audio department is a broadcast mix suite with 7.1 Dolby Atmos capability. It features an Avid ICON D-Command 24-channel mixing console, an Avid Pro Tools 12 workstation and Focusrite RedNet Dante for audio networking. Two other new mix suites, set up to support 5.1 surround sound and pre-wired for future Atmos expansion, also feature Avid ICON D-Command consoles, Pro Tools 12 and Focusrite/Dante networking. A new ADR/VO studio can accommodate as many as five actors.
On the picture side, the two new color bays are identically configured with Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve 15 running on Linux workstations, with Advanced Panels, and Sony BVM-X300 HDR OLED monitors. The online room is equipped with an Avid editorial finishing workstation.
The new resources add to an existing picture finishing department that boasts a 4K theater, with dual-use capability for color grading and audio mixing, and four other suites for color correction, online editorial and VFX finishing.
Sim New York’s offline rentals departments can support the onsite editorial needs of productions operating anywhere in the New York area on short- or long-term bases. It has a large inventory of current generation Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere workstations, as well as storage systems, plug-ins and furniture. It also provides technical support in the facility or on-location.