Singapore’s film industry gets a boost with Dolby ATMOS dubbing theatre

The Singapore local film industry has received a lift after post-production facility Mocha Chai Laboratories (MCL) opened Singapore’s first Dolby ATMOS dubbing theatre. (ChannelNewsAsia.com)

ATMOS is a surround sound technology unveiled by Dolby Laboratories in April 2012, and first utilised in Pixar’s Brave. It allows filmmakers to break away from the traditional idea of “channel-based” surround sound by panning audio through an array of speakers placed around and above the audience with the utmost precision.

MCL’s mixing theatre in Singapore is not only fully equipped with all the state-of-the-art Dolby ATMOS technology, it is also the first in the world to be fitted with Christie’s Vive, a cinema audio system known for delivering rich, dynamic and detailed sound. This means that Singaporean filmmakers will no longer have to travel to other countries, such as Thailand and Hong Kong, to get their final picture grade and cinema sound mix properly done. The local industry can now have films finished and ready for the cinema – in compliance with global standards – in Singapore’s first fully integrated digital film lab.

MCL founder and managing director Chai Yee Wei told Channel NewsAsia that the plans to build the Dolby ATMOS dubbing theatre started two years ago. “I decided that in order to be able to control the quality of our products out of the door, we needed to build a place that can do both colour and sound finishing all under one roof,” Chai said. “Mocha Chai Lab was the first in Singapore to offer accurate cinema colour finishing and delivery, but if we want to do a proper Dolby sound final mix, we would have to outsource it. We lost many clients over the years who wanted a one-stop shop to facilities overseas.”

A filmmaker himself, Chai – who is best known for his 2013 Xinyao film The Girl in Pinafore – had experiences working with post-production facilities overseas, and felt that there should be a local facility. Along with award-winning sound designer Lim Ting Li — who’s most recent work was Boo Junfeng’s Apprentice – the pair felt that many homegrown filmmakers were left with no other choices but to go to Thailand or Hong Kong to have their films completed.

“We realized that it is a vicious cycle. If we keep going overseas, we will only keep perpetuating the idea that there are no talents in Singapore, and thus never have the incentive to build a facility here,” Lim said. “If we do not start it, no one will. And so we did. Now we have a ‘place to call our own’. We can have a place to groom our own talents.”