Sony Pictures Imageworks
website: https://www.imageworks.com/
Sony Pictures Animation
website: https://www.sonypicturesanimation.com/
Facilities on the lot
Barbra Streisand Scoring Stage
Originally designed as a normal soundstage, the score for Wizard of Oz was recorded here, and came out so well, the stage has been used exclusively for recording musical scores ever since.
It’s named after Barbra Streisand because she wanted to record her albums here after having such a good experience recording _____. However because she produced and sang on the tracks, it took too long for her to walk from the vocal booth to the control booth to listen back. To solve this problem, a vocal booth was built in the control room to her specification. This arrangement has since been used by many other performers including Michael Jackson and Andrea Bocelli.
The stage has a wonderfully homely feeling, with many mementos of past recordings and visitors hanging around the ceiling. The highlights are:
- John Lasseter’s Hawaiian Shirts
In 1995 during the score recording for Toy Story, the head of Pixar left his shirt behind, and engineers decided to frame it and hang it up in preparation for his return. When he returned to record A Bug’s Life, he loved seeing the shirt, and decided to leave one to be framed each time he visited. As of April 2012 there are 8 shirts hung there. - Bicycle
An un-named engineer working at the stage apparently had a habit of blaming faults with his bicycle for his being late to work in the mornings. After this happened a few times, his colleagues decided to remove the possibility of it happening again by hanging the cycle well out of reach in the corner of the studio. - Spider
This arrived following the recording of A Bugs Life in 1998. - Star Trek Enterprise
The small scale model of the spacecraft was hung to commemorate a recording for Star Trek: Next Generation. - Smashed Guitar
During a musical recording for a Family Guy episode, a guitar had to be smashed up by Seth Macfarlane. He did such a good job of it, engineers have hung it up for posterity.
Some more information on the facilities at the scoring stage can be found at Sony Pictures Post website (the photos were taken before the items above were hung up).
Dubbing Theaters
More about these motion picture dubbing stages can be found on the Sony Pictures Post website.
- Cary Grant
- William Holden
- Burt Lancaster
- Kim Novak
- Anthony Quinn