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Fantasy Studios RIP


Philip Perkins

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I received this today.  This is a major league bummer.  Those rooms are irreplaceable.

 

Dear all,

 

We are sad to inform you that the Berkeley building at 2600 Tenth Street in which we operate is being sold, and that Fantasy Recording Studios will be closing effective September 15th, 2018.

 

We wish to thank you for your patronage and for the privilege of working with you on the incredible projects you have completed at Fantasy. We are grateful and proud that your works of art will represent us forever.

 

Our wonderful staff engineers and producers have freelance relationships with other studios and production spaces, and would love to continue serving you going forward.

 

Again, thank you for everything. Jeffrey, Jesse, Adam, Alberto, Robert, Cody, and James send you our best wishes on your future endeavors.

 

The Fantasy Studios Team

 

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Those recordings were all owned by someone else (the old stuff by Saul Zaentz and Concord Jazz etc.).  The big loss to the community is the engineering staff (who will still be around freelancing I hope) and the rooms themselves, which would be impossible to recreate today without the spending of millions of dollars more or less not available to the music studio business any more.  I hope someone has A Plan, but I haven't heard one yet.  I don't know if the whole complex (incl the tower and the parking lot) was sold as well or if it is just the wing (really a separate building) containing the music studios.   I know many filmmakers, editors and sound post people who have workspace in the tower, it's been a great community for a long time and I'd hate to see that community broken up.

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Gone, they say, as of Sept. 15.  Fantasy Studios has dodged a lot of bullets over the years and kept going, and we here in the SF area thought they were doing OK: the studios seemed pretty busy and they brought the new dubstage online just a short while ago (the rebuilt dubstage was run by the music studio folks, unlike the old days w/ Saul Zaentz).  So it's kind of a potential triple-whammy for the film community in SF: the only remaining major recording studio complex in town, the only "bookable" dubstage in town (ie that isn't out in Nicasio!) and the office and work rooms of a great many SF area film professionals all on the block at once.  I hope the reality of what goes down isn't that we lose all of those.

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I am saying this with, of course, nothing other than a thought coming out of my internet mouth (and we know how well that goes sometimes) but is there any possibility of a co-op situation where some/all old/new tenants become owners?  It might be an idea to float.  I do know that the Bay Area is always at or near the top in real estate prices but. . . .

 

One 70-year-old theater here in Seattle is or maybe was destine for the wrecking ball to allow for (even more) hi-rise apartments but the community might just be able to get it on the Historical Registry and save it, and maybe, the neighborhood that surrounds it.  Good on them!

 

D.

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I think a co-op would be tough. Besides the studio, there's a six or seven-story office building. And at least on the floors I frequent, the tenants are filmmakers, and various post craftspeople. Not tons of money, some turnover (but also a bunch of long-time tenants). 

 

11 years ago the building sold for $20 million. I'd guess it went for a whole lot more this time. Probably out of reach of everyone in the building. 😞

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Oh, the condo buildings in SF are fully occupied I assure you.  There seems to be no limit to how much people will pay to buy or rent them.   A bunch of new recording studios have started up (somehow) in the SF area ( Oakland mostly) recently, but none of them have orchestra-big rooms like Fantasy.   Maybe Skywalker will finally build some new smaller studios to complement the one big one they have....plenty of room to expand out there.

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I wonder if some of those new recording studios are backed by dot.com money. Sort of like Meets The Eye in San Carlos... Marshall was an early (and good) Google engineer. Maybe something like that is the best hope for the Zaentz center... 

 

Maybe we need to drop some hints with these people...

 

The Tech Exec Cover Bands Of Silicon Valley

A rather surprising number of investors, engineers, and top-level executives from startups and companies like Facebook (Hi, Randi Zuckerberg!), Google, and Pandora belong to a cover band (or two). They play private gigs and charity events around the Bay, like Silicon Valley Rocks, which raises money for a non-profit promoting music education in schools. Below, we round up some of the most most, uh, interesting ones.

 

https://www.buzzfeed.com/azafar/silicon-valley-execs-are-in-cover-bands

 

original-grid-image-28122-1401836052-11.

 

Uh...maybe not...

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The prospect of someone with deep pockets that could step in is intriguing. You would think that there would be enough tech people in the Bay Area that understand how vital a facility like this is to the area.

 

Hell, George Lucas could pay for it out of petty cash! And while he of course has his own facility, a town like San Francisco needs more than one film dubbing operation, and also needs a creative center that brings related businesses and individuals together.

 

-Scott

 

 

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Remember last time the building was sold, the tower tenants got really active that their rent not be raised (since IIRC, most were way below market rate). They emphasized to the city the special community, the number of Oscar nominations, and so on. The owners relented and kept rents (or at least most of them) comparatively low. Will be interesting to see how things unfold this time (esp for the producers on shorter-term leases)... Maybe a new owner would be happy with the existing buildings and a new building over the (rather large) parking lot? I'm just gassing here, though...

 

A local article with some more info on the sale (though not much more than what Phil's already provided here), some music and film history of Fantasy & Zaentz, and a few pictures:

 

 

Fantasy Studios, internationally renowned film and music studio, to close its doors

http://www.berkeleyside.com/2018/07/29/berkeleys-fantasy-studios-an-internationally-renowned-film-and-music-studio-to-close-its-doors

 

 

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More from Berkeleyside:

 

Berkeley’s Fantasy Studios closure came because of financial struggles

 

Rich Robbins, the owner of Wareham Development and Fantasy Studios, said it breaks his heart to shutter the fabled music business that has operated in Berkeley for 47 years, but that it was struggling financially.

“It could have been closed eleven and a half years ago,” said Robbins in an interview on Monday. (That’s around the time Robbins licensed the rights to the name.) “It’s an industry that’s dead. All the studios are closing. It’s been subsidized the entire time we have owned it, and I mean massively subsidized, even investing in equipment.”

[snip]

Robbins has also decided to put the building on the market. It is basically an office building now, not a cutting-edge center of music and film. About 75% of the tenants are professionals like attorneys and architects. 

======

 

Good to get the perspective of the owner; I'd guess he's being at least mostly truthful.

 

You can read the article here:

http://www.berkeleyside.com/2018/07/31/berkeleys-fantasy-studios-closure-came-because-of-financial-struggles

 

 

 

And here's a picture of Studio B:

StudioB-Fantasy-Studios.jpg

 

 

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  • 1 month later...

"A studio ain't nothing but bricks and mortar, it's the people who make the magic"

Jerry Wexler

A studio used to be where the technology was, now you have all those abilities  on your phone.

 

Starday King Studios were state of the art mid 1950's recording studio in Nashville, James Brown recorded here.

It was located on a busy truck route around Nashville.  It was busy and a lot of local engineers learned their chops working here. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starday-King_Sound_Studios

 

Starday King today

Screen Shot 2018-09-17 at 7.49.19 AM.png

The history of the studio 

 

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My first apartment was on the corner of 6th and Dwight. One could purchase illegal narcotics within stones throw. There was way more activity at night than during the daylight hours. I recall the train tracks acting as a de facto walking path. 24hrs a day there was somebody guaranteed to be walking up or down the train tracks along the aquatic park. Graffiti and garbage piles changed almost daily, it seemed as if it happened instantaneously. One day there was a pile, the next day without a trace it was completely gone. The feeling of loneliness was the most common. Despite being surrounded by more people than ever in my life, I had never felt so alone. The first time I went to Fantasy, I was with a teacher of mine, he worked there and had a small office. I remember thinking at the time that his office was small, looking back on that experience now; I had now idea how much Rick would influence my career. I moved soon after and never returned to Fantasy Studios. I can never forget the moment I realized the impact that the work created at Fantasy had on my life. I look forward with high hopes to the next chapter in the world of audio. 

 

 

It gets good around the 21:00 mark...

 

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