Driven by Technology
Hollywood Reinvents Itself with Sound
1927 was the year that Hollywood reinvented itself with the release of Warner Brothers bold experimentation with “The Jazz Singer,” the first feature-length sound movie created and promoted in the US. This great change enabled theaters to grow, new movie genres to be made (horror and monster movies), bigger stars to appear on the silver screen, and expensive productions to enable the creation of movies that challenged the impossible.
1927 was the year that Hollywood reinvented itself with the release of Warner Brothers bold experimentation with “The Jazz Singer,” the first feature-length sound movie created and promoted in the US. This great change enabled theaters to grow, new movie genres to be made (horror and monster movies), bigger stars to appear on the silver screen, and expensive productions to enable the creation of movies that challenged the impossible.
The Tivoli Theater:
A Piece of American Movie History
Of historic significance to those of us who call the Chicago area home, The Tivoli Theater in Downers Grove, IL was only the second theater in America to show this full-length movie with sound. Originally opened in 1928 by the burgeoning Chicago-based theater-owning behemoth Balaban & Katz, the Tivoli survives to this day as a single-screen movie palace and continues to carry the torch for this meaningful and deeply nostalgic part of American movie history.
From Surround Sound to Dolby Atmos:
The Evolution of Movie Sound
In 1940, Walt Disney’s release of Fantasia is credited with being the first use of something called surround sound. It was 39 years later, in 1979, when Francis Ford Coppola’s legendary Apocalypse Now became the first widely released movie with both front and rear audio channels, and marked what would be the beginning of the 5.1 surround sound format, which still exists today, and is the entry point for small residential multi-channel systems.
In 1940, Walt Disney’s release of Fantasia is credited with being the first use of something called surround sound. It was 39 years later, in 1979, when Francis Ford Coppola’s legendary Apocalypse Now became the first widely released movie with both front and rear audio channels, and marked what would be the beginning of the 5.1 surround sound format, which still exists today, and is the entry point for small residential multi-channel systems.
Dolby Atmos: Revolutionizing the Movie-Going and Home Cinema Experience
First introduced in the commercial cinema in 2013, and to consumer devices in 2016, Dolby Atmos is currently the most sophisticated form of movie soundtrack audio decoding and has been nothing short of revolutionary in what it has brought to the movie-going experience, both in the theater and perhaps even more so with what it has done to spectacularly alter the home cinema experience.
