News
Avatar Wins TEC Film Award
11 February 2011
Fox’s upgrade to USP-loaded DFC continues to pay dividends
Avatar has already rewritten every box office record, and paid out handsomely on investment. That much alone justifies the decision by Fox Studios to upgrade its AMS Neve DFC Gemini consoles with USP (Ultra Scale Processing) technology in the lead up to post production. And indeed it’s questionable whether James Cameron’s concept for Avatar could even have been realized without the quantum leap that USP represents – having the world’s most powerful mix engine under your fingertips doesn’t only allow you to do more, it also allows you to do it better and quicker. Quicker is good in a world where time is money. Better is even better, at least for the engineers whose work satisfaction (and reputation) depends on quality as well as quantity.
The technical team has already been honoured at several awards ceremonies, but the ultimate accolade for those responsible for Avatar’s soundtrack is the recognition of their achievement by the sound industry itself – as happened at the 2011 TEC (Technical Excellence & Creativity) Awards. Noted in the citation were both the soundtrack team, including the re-recording mixers Christopher Boyes, Andy Nelson, Juan Peralta and Gary Summers, and Simon Rhodes, who recorded and mixed the award-winning score on the Neve 88RS at Fox’s Newman Scoring Stage.
