It has been talked of for a while, but this time it's official. On Friday, the shareholders of the Les Dames company joined the Wallimage team at the notary office to sign the capital participation agreement. Goal of this undertaking is to develop the creation of a 'budget' mixing studio in Wallonia and the labelling to Dolby standards. We did not want to pass up on the opportunity to meet the spokesperson for the 'Les Dames' Group (Dame Blanche ltd, Genval les Dames ltd and Agent Double llc) in order to see what the future will bring for them.

This capital participation had been talked about for a while. What took so long?
This project was started about 18 months ago and finally comes to fruition. Important strategic choices had to be made though. Since there was no reason to hurry, we took some reflection time in order to analyse the different options open to us.

What are these options?
Our main focus was the extension of the Genval studio by creating a new studio there. This one will be in the old strongroom (the station 6 building served as a bank before it became the place we all know), a room about 4 meters on 6, already built with a structure resembling that of an atomic shelter.

That's hardly the size of a big mixing auditorium for cinema...
Indeed. The studio is meant for mixing in 5.1 for TV productions and cinema pre-mixing. Goal is to have a 'low-cost' offer, more adapted to the real needs of certain productions. Together with the creation of this studio (which will carry the very scientific name of G3 for 3rd Genval studio), we will develop a dolby labelled auditorium.

Don't you need a 35mm projector to obtain such a license?
A few years ago, this was indeed so. But since recently it is enough to have an optical reader to be able to compare the sound tracks in reading.

A new studio, Dolby... I imagine you calculated the risk.
We are lucky that the Genval studio has an excellent occupancy rate at the moment since it is occupied almost every day until December 7. We are currently taking options for the evenings until this date.

So for sound effects and mixing...
Yes, our company is built on know-how. Philippe Van Leer is our associate but we also work with other sound effects engineers. Mathieu Cox, mixer, is certainly not the only one to work with us, we totally dissociate the tool and the operator.

Since you are talking about the upcoming films, what are the tendencies?
We will have French-Belgian films, like Black Box (Versus), Blanc comme neige (Need) and Quartier lointain (Entre chien et loup), but also French, Luxembourgian and Dutch films. For example, we will have Indélébile, from a French production, Fidélité Films, who already worked with us for Le petit Nicolas. I think we can say that they are coming back because of the quality of our services, since the project is benefiting neither from the Tax Shelter nor from the Wallimage fund.

As for dubbing, while the beginning of the year was difficult, we managed to adapt to the market changes (economical crisis, elimination of advertising on the French public channels, new broadcasting supports such as VoD, fusions and other takeovers, etc.) and we are also full until October.

Wallimage only took a limited risk by investing in the Les Dames company...
They understand very well that further development will have structuring and lasting effects for our company but also for CINEMA MADE IN WALLONIA.

Interview by VBdT