by mrandish | 2025-04-12 19:53:50+00:00
As someone with a background in both film and video production technologies (as well as being a high-end home theater projection enthusiast) I think this project is doomed to be terrible - and not just on aesthetic grounds but also technically (I'll explore why it's technically doomed in the next paragraphs). But first, what might be good about this? Well, it might be interesting seeing how well they get AI video to maintain consistency of elements between shots. The article is vague but, extrapolating, I assume they probably composited multiple establishing and master shots along with production stills and set schematics to stitch together extended master environment reference plans. Then 3D artists modeled, textured and lit photo-real versions of these extended environments to match the stitched reference material. Those were then used as fine-tuning to constrain the AI outpainting to that ground truth. It might be interesting to see these techniques used to extend the original WoZ 4:3 aspect to a 2.4:1 widescreen format. However, I think it's going to be a disaster because they're extending the outpainting to encompass the Sphere's extreme 165 degree horizontal field of view. Pushing that far will derail any aesthetic or technical value the project may have had.

The biggest technical problem is a 165 degree FOV is not just ill-suited for theatrical storytelling, it's actively harmful because it significantly constrains the compositional and creative choices a director and cinematographer can make. Historically, Hollywood has experimented with a variety of wider (or taller) than typical cinematic formats including Omnivision, Circle-Vision 360, MagnaVision, Cinerama, IMAX and many others. Over many decades of experimentation, it became clear that, for cinematic storytelling, formats up to around 2.5:1 were mostly upside assuming the costs and space could be supported. Extra-wide formats like Cinerama and IMAX had creatively useful upsides but came with some significant downsides which could be minimized with careful handling. Ultra-wide formats like Omnivision, Circle-Vision and, now, Sphere, were primarily useful only for theme parks and short "You Are There"-type features such as Disneyland's Circle-Vision Grand Canyon tour. It can be helpful to refer to the reference chart on this page showing the different FOVs in a typical theater overlaid with the SMPTE, THX and 20th Century Fox recommended FOVs. https://acousticfrontiers.com/blogs/articles/home-theater-vi...

Experimentation showed that ultra-wide formats, which are more than double typical cinematic FOVs and originally developed for world fairs, are simply ill-suited to cinematic storytelling. In addition to audience fatigue during longer run-times, significant technical challenges of optical distortion, and high costs - perhaps the worst part was the director losing much of the ability to signal to the audience what's important through framing and composition. This signal channel between the director and audience usually goes unnoticed by most viewers but it's a profoundly important storytelling tool for directors and cinematographers. To be fair, I do think immersive/surround visual formats can be useful in the context of a theme park attraction, amusement ride, VR headset or interactive gaming. They just don't work well for cinematic storytelling - like Wizard of Oz. It's a good tool being used for the wrong job.

Recently, I screened the "Postcards from Earth" movie at the Sphere. This movie was created specifically to launch the Sphere and is their featured demo. And they indeed struggled mightily with the issues I've outlined. Ultimately, they chose to mostly not use more than about a 60 degree slice from the center of their 165 degree canvas, at least for anything significant to the story. All that very expensive, compromise-causing extended FOV was relegated to ambient scenic support except for a few brief "stunts" where some large object would arrive from overhead or an edge. But even those would quickly move from being at the edges (and too close/big), to exist in the center 60 degrees like everything else. Also, Sphere content must strictly limit any camera panning, tilting or side dollying to avoid causing motion sickness.

The issues I've outlined above are primarily "Production" problems with Ultra-Wide FOVs, however the extreme format also causes significant "Presentation" problems. These presentation problems come from the Sphere going all-in on creating such a large, extremely wide-angle, wrap-around presentation that fills the entire visual field for 17,000 seats. Unfortunately, choosing that "feature" as the top priority requires other important tech aspects of visual presentation like contrast, dynamic range and resolution to be significantly compromised. A key problem is that the wrap-around screen being 165 degrees causes it to illuminate itself nuking the contrast. The sides down near the horizon line are opposite and shining directly at each other. Another significant issue is that it's almost impossible to shoot or present real-world camera content able to fill the entire 165 degree Sphere screen with a single natural image. As near as I could tell, the entire Postcards from Earth movie doesn't contain even a single full-screen frame that was shot with one camera. It's all CGI with occasional real-world camera shots composited into small frames within the wrap-around CGI field. This is because it's incredibly challenging (if not entirely impossible) to photograph a single image that wide and tall while keeping the perspective from being severely distorted. During the "Planet Earth"-type scenes, the director clearly had to go to great effort to keep any real-world object with straight lines from getting too big. On top of the significant cinematic, compositional and tech issues, the content of Postcards from the Earth is also weak. The story was trite, shop-worn and heavy-handed. The acting, music, cinematography, etc was overall weak - basically what I'd call "pretty good for a video game cut scene but certainly not AAA cinema grade."

In terms of nice things to say... well, the audio presentation wasn't bad. By which I mean, it wasn't great but it was impressively good for that huge of a space dominated by a massive non-parabolic reflector. Basically, the massive size and unusual shape of the space make it extremely challenging to provide a decent audio field to the majority of seats. IMHO, the audio engineering team over-achieved in the degree to which they're able to address many of those challenges. There are a huge number of tuned speakers hidden behind the acoustically semi-transparent screen driven by a lot of DSP power. Very expensive and technically quite difficult. Unfortunately, the resulting audio - while technically impressive given the significant constraints, still isn't nearly as good as a well-tuned flagship Dolby Atmos, THX-certified theater in Hollywood or Manhattan. Another unfortunate aspect is the perforations in the screen required to enable the audio transparency further reduce the screen's ability to generate peak nits of brightness.

If you want to experience today's highest fidelity theatrical imagery for cinematic storytelling, the Sphere isn't it. Sadly, it's not even close (which makes the >$100 price for a bad movie, presented poorly especially egregious). The best you can experience today is visiting one of the 31 real IMAX cinemas (out of 1700 IMAX branded screens (aka "LieMAX" screens)) but only when they are showing a movie A) Distributed in the full 15 perf / 70mm 2D IMAX format, and which was B) Specifically shot to utilize the full 1.43:1 aspect ratio of the full IMAX format. Unfortunately, that's a small minority of what's shown on those 31 screens. Most films shown on IMAX screens weren't really shot specifically for full 1.43 IMAX format (which is super tall compared to normal cinema aspect), so they're just open gate (unmasked) versions of films primarily framed and lit for typical wide format exhibition (like 2.39:1). Also, avoid anything shown in 3D because the 3D projection process (whether IMAX or not) always significantly reduces brightness, contrast and resolution vs 2D projection.