Lime added to Santa Monica's mix: these three audio post vets have found that being their own boss allows them ultimate independence

Post, April, 2004 by Marc Loftus

SANTA MONICA -- Lime Studios (www.limestudios.tv) has opened, here, offering mixing services for commercial projects, as well as sweetening and final mixing for episodic television. When the doors opened back in December, it marked the culmination of a year of effort dealing with design and building code issues. It also represents the next stage in the careers of its principals, audio pros Loren Silber, Mark Meyuhas and Bruce Horwitz.

Meyuhas spent part of his career at POP Sound and, more recently, AudioBanks. Silber also comes from POP Sound after a stint at Editel Chicago earlier in his career. For him, Lime offered the opportunity to break away from the bigger facility structure, without going the home-studio route.

"It started out as a conversation," says Silber of Lime's independent concept. "I didn't want to work at a place where I couldn't do the kind of work that I had been doing, which is pretty much the cream of the crop in the commercial world. And I didn't want to be in the type of place that was too garage-like or too home grown. I had all of these technical requirements that had to all be [met], and they did."

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Bruce Horwitz was also looking for change. He had a one-room studio called Candysound in Venice where, for six years, he used Digidesign Pro Tools for music tracking and some post work. But the record industry, he says, "was dicey," and he was looking for a more post-oriented--and stable--operation.

"I saw that it my line of work, it was really a contracting market," says Horwitz of the music business. "I was trying to do more and more post, because there was stability in that. So I was looking around and met Mark, and he had worked with Loren for years. We started out just talking about it, and two years later we had a place to work. It's been quite a journey."

THE GEAR

The lower cost of entry into the audio post business was key in setting up their own shop. While POP Sound centers around the AMS Neve AudioFile system, Silber and Meyuhas felt that Pro Tools had, at this point, caught up with and surpassed the AudioFile, and was considerably less expensive.

"For audio these days, you can get into the market for a lot cheaper than you could 10 years ago," says Silber, "especially with the evolution of Pro Tools. You don't need a half-a-million-dollar board to do the work. If they are doing feature films on Pro Tools, there's no reason why we can't do commercials on Pro Tools."

Lime opened with two comparably-equipped 5.1 mixing rooms. Space for a third room has also been allocated, allowing for future expansion. The studio's two Pro Tools systems run on Macintosh G4s and include the AVoption|XL, Digidesign's hard-ware/software tool designed to integrate Avid video into Pro Tools. The solution gives both Silber and Meyuhas high-quality, nonlinear video to mix to. Mixing is handled via Digidesign Pro Control 24 interfaces.

"We have a machine room that houses everything, basically," explains Horwitz. "It's really quiet in there," adds Silber. "It's nice not having the G4 in the room with you. We kind of styled the rooms so that they are very empty looking. All the furniture is real minimum too. We don't have a lot of outboard gear. Everything is plug-ins."

THE WORK

One of the first jobs to come to the facility was a 5.1 PAL project for Volvo. The European commercial was designed to lure viewers back to the automaker's Web site, where they could view a short film.

"It's a little scary doing that when you just open," Silber jokes, "as opposed to ramping up with some nice stereo TV mixes."

Since then, the studio has completed mixing on a number of commercial projects, including Adidas' Impossible is Nothing campaign featuring footage of boxing legend Mohammed Ali working out with some of today's top athletes.

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For Jaguar, Lime mixed a spot in which the car chases a mechanical rabbit around San Francisco the way a greyhound would at a dog track. In a second spot, the car sticks to the inside of a tunnel to avoid police.

DirecTV is a regular client, with its campaign featuring well-known actors reading actual letters from the satellite service's viewers. Silber's worked on the ones starring Robert Duvall and Joan Cusack. While at POP Sound, he mixed the commercial with Danny DeVito.

Additional clients include Burger King, Gatorade. Honda and Bud Lite.

And while Lime has a steady stream of commercial jobs on any given day, the crew is looking forward to working on longform projects too. "One of the great things about being a smaller place and owning it is that if we want to take on a one-hour project, we are free to do so," says Silber. "We don't have to go through any sort of hierarchy and worry about the implications of doing this or that. It's just nice to be able to decide that we can do it. Being a smaller place, we can be a little bit more flexible."

According to Horwitz, Lime just completed work on its first television program, X-Dance, which he describes as an "extreme board show" for Fuel TV. "Anything with a board--snow boarding, skate boarding, surfing, kite surfing. Dangerous, crazy stuff. We provided the final mix."