I
T’S EXTRAORDINARY TO THINK that
there’s little evidence to suggest that he or she is looking to
Thomas Edison first experimented
understand the specifics of the actual technologies on offer.
with high frame rate film images at
Technologies come and go. Indeed, one industry veteran
46fps as early as 1891, while Exposition
once suggested that 3D keeps coming back “like athelete’s
Universelle (World’s Fair) held in Paris
foot”. There’s no guarantee that an apparently once sought-
in 1900 showed off such technologies
after technology will always have commercial legs. In that
as infinite aspect ratios, synchronised sound, and massive
context (and outside of the realms of technology showcases
screen projection systems. The public’s appetite for awe-
and exhibitions), it’s worth examining the two key timelines
inspiring technology for the delivery of moving pictures has
of the evolution of both sound and picture technologies, and
apparently never waned, and cinema exhibitors today still
why 1.37:1 Academy Ratio and Academy Optical Mono were
rally to lure in the public with ever-more impressive,
challenged for supremacy. It was, after all, the ubiquity of the
immersive picture and sound experiences. But while the
cathode ray tube in living rooms in the 1950s which spurred
average moviegoer appreciates an enhanced experience,
exhibitors to explore uncharted waters of immersive cinema.
The Surround Sound Evolution (from analogue to digital) As if the arrival of talkies in 1929 had not elevated cinema to new heights, surround audio was not long behind with Disney’s introduction of the ‘Fantasound’ system for the 1941 release of ‘Fantasia’. At a cost of $85,000 for a 54-speaker fit out in each location, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco were the only three cities to get a taste of these first documented presentations of surround sound. Walt Disney himself invented the concept with the help of Bell Labs, and the system included three front screen channels and two rear channels of discrete audio. As large-format projection, such as Cinerama, Vistavision and Todd-AO 70mm took hold, so too did corresponding multichannel surround technologies. Three or five separate screen channels, plus a rear mono surround channel of magnetic striping, would capitalise on added real estate available either side of the picture on the larger film format prints. Declining US theatrical audiences in the 1960s and 1970s, combined with the advance of the shoebox-style, one-speaker-per-screen multiplex cinema, meant that a technology revolution was inevitable. Dolby Laboratories, with its legacy of professional and domestic tape noise reduction, introduced Dolby Stereo for the release of “A Star is Born” in 1976, and four channels of matrix surround information were encoded onto the analogue, nondeteriorating optical track of 35mm theatrical release prints. Dolby also developed its enhancement of the analogue technology in the 1980s with Dolby Stereo SR (or ‘Spectral Recording’), increasing the dynamic range of playback. The 1979 release of “Apocalypse Now” included Dolby Stereo 70mm with sixtrack
magnetic
striping, with the addition of noise reduction twin
www.cinematech.today
and
surrounds.
“Declining US cinema audiences in the 60s and 70s made inevitable a technological revolution” 1 2 / 1 8
>
6 1