IMAX’s iconic, pre-show trailer has been hyping audiences up for blockbuster films for two decades, but while its spiffy, space-age visuals have remained up-to-date, the accompanying audio was due for an overhaul.
With that in mind, IMAX has partnered with Man Made Music for a sonic shake-up. To coincide with the opening of its 1,000th theater, the company has created a new, “official sound anthem,” dubbed Pure Experience. The new theme was created with a hodgepodge of electronic sounds, plus a 150-piece orchestra and a 75-voice choir. The new tag will hit ears in 65 countries ahead of screenings of the latest James Bond film, Spectre.
IMAX touts Pure Experience as an anthem capable of taking advantage of its theaters’ state-of-the-art sound systems, which can handle the airiest highs, right down to rumbling, 20Hz lows.
A clip of the new open is embedded above, and it’s easy to imagine that the new, immersive anthem could help bring your anticipation for an upcoming film to a fever pitch when it hits IMAX systems.
It’s also worth noting that — while stunning visuals are pretty much par for the home theater course — truly top-of-the-line audio is harder for your average consumer to come by. With the proliferation of streaming options, and the persistent threat of illegal downloads, putting butts in theater seats has become a bit more challenging in recent years. As such, IMAX’s signature surround sound hardware, coupled with its towering screens, offers something that’s hard to find anywhere else.
The company’s souped up introductory video describes the dilemma thusly “watch a movie, or be part of one.”
Sam Mendes’ Spectre is currently showing on IMAX screens, while Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens will begin its hostile takeover of the format on Dec. 18, 2015.
China just gave Hollywood a cautionary tale about AI filmmaking. Sanxingdui: Future Past, billed as the country's first fully AI-generated movie, hit theaters on October 23 and bombed at the box office.
According to Futurism, the film's reported $1.5 million production budget landed on more than 10,000 screens. Yet it pulled in only about $181,000, averaging roughly $20 per screen, making the budget difficult to recover.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?