More Wizardry in The Sphere
The writer has to make a confession. Despite, finally catching up with watching ‘Star Wars’, he has yet to watch ‘The Wizard of Oz’, despite it being (according to the US Library of Congress) ‘the most watched film in movie history’. Nevertheless, he was intrigued by the details of a new version of the movie that will be shown in the Las Vegas Sphere. The new version combines the full immersion of the technology from the Sphere with AI to allow the exploitation of that technology.
The original film was made in 1939 and was, at the time, at the forefront of cinema technology, with its use of the Technicolor process. Although not initially commercially very successful, it was a critical success, being nominated for five Academy Awards (‘Oscars’). It’s real success came when it was shown on TV by CBS in 1956, reshown in 1959 to capture 58% of the TV audience (dream on, Netflix and Prime!). After that it was shown annually, at least, on US TV. It was released on DVD and then scanned in 8K for the Blu-ray version. It was re-graded for 4K Ultra HD Blu-Ray in 2019 using HDR+ and Dolby Vision.
However, the Sphere pushes resolution even further, and there was a desire to make the movie even more immersive. The decision was made to recreate the film to use the full width of the Sphere (around 19K x 13K) and to exploit the ‘4D’ aspects of the Sphere. So, for example, some scenes were re-created so that initial ‘pannning’ shots were replaced by wide static scenes showing the whole of the set. This meant that characters had to move in the scene so that the additional parts of the film matched with the existing scanned content. That was done by using AI techniques.
AI was also used to create, effectively, avatars of the Dorothy and other characters that were then animated using AI. Regenerating the content allowed the full resolution of the Sphere to be used to give a higher level of detail than would have been possible simply from scanned content. Google built a custom AI model that could replicate Judy Garland’s looks and generate from that the super resolution images shown in Las Vegas. This process eliminates issues such as graininess from the original film stock. AI was also used to ‘outpaint’ what the scene might have looked like in the original studio.
A key element of the new presentation is the ‘fourth dimension’ of 4D, the addition of physical special effects such as wind, sound and smell. For example, when Dorothy is swept up by a tornado, special machines generate wind, blowing leaves and other particles around to create a vortex of wind and sound. Of course, this kind of effect is not unique to The Sphere. The New York Times reported last year that the idea was first brought to a cinema by a South Korean cinema chain in 2009 and is now in over 800 theaters around the world.
Korean specialist CJ 4DPlex has added physical effects data to more than 1,000 feature films. The NY Times reports that almost $68 million was taken at the US box office in 2023 for 4DX screenings as theater owners look to add something you can’t get at home from a great TV and sound system alone.
There’s an interesting piece from the CBS Sunday Morning program on YouTube that includes some clips from The Sphere.
“The Wizard of Oz at Sphere” is set to open on Aug. 28
