4DX cinemas shower audiences with rain, snow and heat along with the action on screen
“We can hit you with 10 smells,” explains the technician, pointing at the nozzle about three feet from my face.
— Obviously, not all at once. But as the film progresses. We have flowers — meadows, flowers, freshly cut grass. We have sweets — we created a chocolate one especially for Wonka. And then there's the atmosphere — salty ocean breeze, brewing coffee, freshly baked bread, gunpowder, burning tires for car chases. And for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles last year,” he adds with obvious pride, “we introduced cheese.”
I'm sitting in the 4DX cinema at the O2 in Greenwich, south-east London, surrounded by dozens of hidden pistons and flanges And if you haven't seen a movie in 4DX yet (watch seems like the wrong word), these devices work together to create 21 different multi-sensory effects that match the action on screen.
Some make your chair tilt, roll and rotate on three axes, others make it shake and vibrate. Others, built into the headrests of your own seat and the seat in front, spray and/or douse you with water (which you can turn on and off), release scents, tickle your ankles, and blow warm air into your ears. In front, on either side of the screen at floor level, are smoke machines capable of creating waves of fog that roll toward the back of the room. High on the walls are strobe lights and fans that blow bubbles, throw artificial snow, create a breeze and spray even more water onto the entire audience from above.
Is this the future of movie theaters or a ridiculous gimmick? And does one necessarily exclude the other? Speaking on the Today show in February, Martin Scorsese expressed doubt about films that use «bouncing chairs», «certain scents», etc., and wondered whether they were worth watching without them.
And on the surface, 4DX certainly sounds like a 21st-century take on the flashy tricks that directors like William Castle used to sell unmemorable B-movies in the 1950s and 1960s. Castle was a journeyman director but a showman par excellence, enticing audiences with such novelties as the Emergo (a plastic skeleton with glowing eyes that was dropped from the ceiling on a rope) and the Percepto (a motorized buzzer built into a seat cushion that his company made from repurposed aircraft wing de-icers).
But each of Castle's gimmicks was tied to a specific picture and died on the whims of the box office: 4DX, on the other hand, turns out to be quite long-lived. After launching in South Korea with the release of the original Avatar, then spreading around the world — first in Latin America and arriving in the UK in 2015 via Milton Keynes — the technology is about to celebrate its 15th anniversary and is in enviable commercial shape. .
4DX first launched in 2009 with James Cameron's avatar
There are currently 35 4DX screens operating in the UK — all affiliated with Cineworld, which has exclusive rights to the format here — and almost 800 worldwide. In the first half of last year, ticket sales for the format reached £189 million: 70 percent higher than the same period in 2022 and 33 percent higher than before the pandemic.
In the UK, around 40 films a year are available in 4DX, and those that are still make much more money from regular screenings. (The most popular release of 2023 was the animated film Super Mario Bros, but here 4DX showings accounted for only four percent of total grosses.)
However, with a higher entry fee — £56 for a family of four in Greenwich, compared to £32 for the standard version — the fees for a single screen could be hefty. And for those looking for a laugh and a splash, 4DX is another good reason to see the film on its first theatrical release: It's no surprise that Hollywood has been kind to the format. Recent market research shows that customers are willing to travel twice as far for one of these extended screenings as for a regular movie trip. No matter how wide your TV may be or how loud your hi-fi may be, this is an area where home viewing — and cinema's nemesis, Netflix — will never be able to compete.
The 4DX audience is doused with water. Photo: Alamy
But which films are selected for 4DX processing? “We used to look at release schedules, decide which games would be best suited to the format, and then pitch them to the studios,” explains Bobby Andrews, managing director of 4DX UK. “But because they have realized the added value it can bring – both from a commercial point of view and in terms of customer delight – we have found that they now turn to us just as often.”
When programming, the company «tends to stay on its own path,» Andrews says. «It's usually pretty obvious which films will work and which won't.» Among the year's biggest hits so far is Dune: Part Two — perhaps an incredibly bleak candidate for the 4DX cure, especially considering the desert planet of Arrakis with its famous lack of H2O.
But the company's programmers made it work for them, using seat vibrations that echoed the rhythmic clatter of the Fremen's thumpers—the cylindrical contraptions used to summon sandworms—and the soul-shattering sounds of «The Voice,» the signature intelligence of the Bene Gesserit. -control technology. Elsewhere, clouds of dry ice rose up during sandstorms and seats rocked and tilted in sync with Timothée Chalamet's first-person sandworm ride and various hovering camera maneuvers high above the sand.
More light-hearted upcoming entertainment includes the action-comedy Fall Guy, starring Ryan Gosling as a stuntman who becomes embroiled in a criminal conspiracy (get ready to burn some rubber), and July Tornadoes, a sequel to 1996's Tornado Hunters ( cagul packaging).
“Children's cartoons are also a strong seller for us, as well as horror films that have a lot of jump scares,” adds Andrews. “Our forte is anything that feeds off the collective, momentary delight of the audience.” Although the technology has nothing to do with it, most 4DX films are also shown in 3D: if that's not the case, Andrews says, «clients sometimes feel like they're missing the D.»
But how do you get the relatively reticent British cinema-going public to give it a try? The breakthrough, Andrews says, came with the rise of online influencer culture. «You can tell people what happens while watching a 4DX movie, but they're much more likely to be tempted to try it after they see their favorite TikTokker enjoying it.»
Timothée Chalamet and Austin Butler in the 4DX hit Dune: Part Two Photo: AP
There's another unique selling point that can't be touted without offending customers: 4DX can turn a bad or boring movie into a scandal. My own kids were barely moved by Kung Fu Panda 4, but they spent a lot of time watching it two weeks later with the smell and the clatter and the shaking in their eyes, and even then noticed how much more the whole audience laughed.
An (adult) friend who enjoys this format feels the same way. “I almost never watch ‘good’ movies in 4DX,” he writes. “What a terrible idea that would be.” His favorite at the moment? «Super Mario Bros.» We were all crying with laughter during the big Mario Kart episode.»The most unlikely 4DX release to date, according to Andrews, was probably Alex Garland's Civil War earlier this month — an action thriller, yes, but an unusually intelligent and thorough one. We watch a clip and the technology is applied to impressively subtle effect: the seats tilt smoothly forward and back, simulating the changes in speed of Kirsten Dunst's car as it stops at a roadblock in a blast of cold air. when the driver's window is down, and vibration shift when the tires move off the paved road. This is, of course, different from the first scene of Godzilla x Kong, where in 4DX it feels like you're being kicked in a car wash.
Civil War by Alex Garland. Photo: A24
Taste has always been a deciding factor, and rightly so: the blood freezes at the thought of, say, Schindler's List 4DX. That's why the company quickly decided not to ask Universal if they could release an improved version of Oppenheimer, even when it became clear that it would be one of the biggest films of last year. But even Christopher Nolan, a well-known proponent of a pure theatrical experience, is not against this technology as such: it was used in a number of his early works, from the Dark Knight trilogy to Tenet.
About 100 films are converted to 4DX each year, a process that takes about two or three weeks at their South Korean headquarters. (The company is a subsidiary of CJ Group, a huge conglomerate headquartered in Seoul that spun off from Samsung in the 1990s.) They usually work in consultation with a producer or editor, but usually the director, and sometimes the star, signs the contract. for the finished product. (The final level of quality control on Mission: Impossible: Deadly Reckoning Part One was Tom Cruise.)
The project involves two teams, both working on the finished digital version of the film: the hardest part of getting the studios on board, Andrews explains, was convincing them that the company's anti-piracy firewalls were secure. One team handles the effects, dragging triggers for water, smells, fog, etc. onto a digital timeline synchronized with the finished film. And the second one works on the movement, planning and synchronizing the various movements and vibrations of the seat. Over the past decade and a half, a vast library of vibrations has been compiled—there are four shaking patterns for airplane cockpits alone—but they can also be customized as needed.
“It's like engineering, but we call them artists,” says Andrews, “because when you see them at work, there is no doubt that what they do is art.”
Instead of introducing the 22nd effect—perhaps ice cubes in your neck—the future of 4DX lies in yet another technological advancement from the CJ Group. ScreenX, created in 2012, is another innovative format that uses additional screens on the left and right walls of the theater to obscure the audience's peripheral vision. ScreenX versions of films take up to three months to create, which is significantly more work than 4DX versions.
The company has an in-house visual effects team that creates peripheral footage from scratch using elements taken from the finished film, a larger cache of studio VFX data, and (in rare cases such as Top Gun: Maverick) additional live-action footage. combat footage captured during filming. It takes a few minutes to acclimatize—at first, it feels like you’re watching a movie from inside a giant herbilarium. But once the initial distraction subsides, there's almost the same sense of presence within the image as in Imax: in Dune: Part II, the wide-open desert expanses truly do seem endless.
The first Ultra 4DX screen, combining 4DX and ScreenX technologies, opened in South Korea in 2017, and the technology is being adopted, albeit slowly, with four screens currently operating in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
The closest one is in Paris if you want to make the trip. Devotees are known to go on pilgrimages. “Last week we heard about a guy in Germany who drove two and a half hours from Leipzig to Kassel just to watch the 4DX version of Dune: Part Two, when the regular version showed minutes from his house,” says Andrews.
“But what I love about this format is that it always rewards the trip — it's a special shared experience that you can't get anywhere else.” In the post-Covid war between cinema and the sofa and the smartphone, it is a shot in the hand – or, rather, a splash in the face – that the industry needs.
Свежие комментарии