Film laboratories don’t often change their address: but in a move that is symbolic of the changing face of the region’s largest film services group, Atlab is moving its flagship Sydney lab into brand new premises at Mowbray Road, Lane Cove at the end of October. The state-of-the-art facility is the largest of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere and is a significant step forward for the region.

“We started with a completely blank canvas,” says NSW General Manager Anthos Simon. “We took a long look at the way things were being done, kept what was good and improved on what wasn’t. We’re very proud of what we’ve been able to achieve: it‘s a big step up for the industry at-large and for our crew. The client facilities are expanded and vastly improved, and we’ve also been able to build with flexibility and growth in mind so as our needs change our infrastructure can too”.

Atlab’s digital department was relocated to the new premises three months ago, and the latest move will see all the front-end film processing and printing, film duplication and sound mixing services relocated to Mowbray Road, and the Hotham Parade building closed completely. The move will locate all of the company’s digital and traditional film services under one roof, providing a more efficient service and further advancing its objective of providing fully integrated end-to-end services for the filmmaker. Occupying an additional 3,000sq metres of floor space, the newly installed laboratory and digital services will operate right alongside, but separately from, the bulk printing facility, which regularly produces up to a million feet of release print per day.“Having a production lab, release print lab and digital lab all in the same place provides a phenomenal advantage to film makers in terms of creative and technical control.” added Simon, “The quality umbrella we can extend from original neg through digital to print is essential to providing a world class Digital Intermediate.”

The lab had outgrown its Hotham Parade home of the past eighteen years, and established a new, state-of-the-art international release printing facility at the Mowbray Road site two years ago, to provide release prints for the Asia-Pacific region for all the major film distributors.

The new premises include a new digital grading suite with a Barco Digital Cinema projection Systems, D-Cinema Mastering Facility, E-Cinema test lab as well as a newly designed sound mixing theatre and a presentation theatre. Increased warehouse space includes Atlab’s new Media Logistics division, which provides print & advertising & video storage and delivery logistics for several major film distributors. The building is also connected by broadband to Greater Union’s Bondi Junction cinema, facilitating Atlab’s pilot program of delivering all cinema advertising to the theatre in digital format.

The move will take place over the weekend of 29-30 October 2005, with the new lab opening for business on Monday 31st October. Contact details are:

Atlab
Unit 3, 706 Mowbray Road, Lane Cove West, NSW 2066
PO Box 766, Artarmon NSW 1570
Phone 02 9429 6500  fax 02 9429 6598