Tour Time

One of the most interesting things about the tour to me was seeing how much the image still dominates sound in a modern theatre. It seemed like there was more technology or emphasis given to creation of the image to the creation of the companioned sounds.

I suppose I could be saying this because our guide was a projectionist and, well, of course projectionists are going to be obsessed with the image. However, just by the amount of machinery alone, you would have to assume the image is still the primary focus of cinema. Between the large standard projectors and the smaller 3D projector I think about 90% of the occupied area in the booth was devoted just projecting an image. The sound racks, as we saw, were small and tended to be placed in an out of the way place.

I know we have talked about the image has dominated cinema and still does but it is hard to see that sometimes when you are in a class that is focusing on the sound aspects of film. I think we have addressed this repeatedly in class but it really didn’t sink in completely for me until I started see the large amount of mechanical effort that put forth.