CMU School of Drama


Monday, April 24, 2017

Creating Cinema in the Round

fxguide: All special venue films have their own challenges, requiring filmmakers to not only be technically inventive but often at times reinvent their very language of film for a new storytelling environment. While one can research such projects extensively, these one off specialist theatres pose a real challenge and a need to remain focused on providing an engaging story in the midst of complex one off technology. One such highly successful project just opened in Sydney.

2 comments:

Katherine Sharpless said...

It's pretty incredible to read about all the challenges the crew faced, technology they employed, and innovations born from the one idea to stretch the movie screen to be 270 degrees. I remember going to the IMAX at the history museum as a kid which has the dome screen, but mostly they would just play videos of constellations and planets in there. An actually movie is so much more challenging. I never thought how the simple stuff wouldn't work when you just stretched out the screen, not that I knew anything about film production to begin with- but it can be hard to create an engrossing storyline and relatable characters like in a typical movie when so much is different tech wise. The size of the screen could throw the audience out of the story. I would love to see more unconventional movie theater experiences though, as an audience member and a designer, because it adds more than a dozen feet of canvas, but more options (like the new surround sound) to the industry.

Kelly Simons said...

So cool! I love anything that’s virtual reality or augmented reality, the ideas and the technology are so fascinating. I am a little surprised though, that the venue that’s embracing this 270 degree cinema isn’t a film festival, but rather the Taronga Zoo in Sydney. This seems a little more backward, especially with all the new technology the designers and technicians had to wrangle. The article states: “Allan's strong technical background was required to invent the various solutions to filming 270 degree cinema and projecting it. When the Main Course team started, nothing was locked in, from the number of cameras required to the number of projectors that would need to be built into the theatre. Allan quickly discovered that when filming 270 degrees, the solutions are neither found in traditional cinema nor modern VR or 360 cinema.” It seems like there was a lot of hurtles to get past in order to make this cinematic experience work.