It's officially Oscar weekend, and in less than 60 hours the ceremony will get underway at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, on Sunday February 22nd. I'll be there in person and wearing my nicest tuxedo (okay, okay, it's a rental), to give you my full report. But before the doors open and we walk that red carpet, there are still many preparations to be made. Hollywood Boulevard has already been shut down for blocks this week, while crews work day and night setting everything up for the star-studded event. I went behind the scenes to get an up-close look at these preparations, and to speak with Dolby about how they're transforming the theatre as well as transforming how you're going to experience the show at home.
Formerly the Kodak Theater, the Dolby Theatre has hosted the Academy Awards since 2002. When Eastman Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012, the company ceased naming the theater, and three months later Dolby Laboratories took over naming rights to the theater, and with it the job of hosting the Oscar ceremony. The theatre has a stunning 3,400 seats and more than 200 speakers, not to mention an impressive 60 ft x 32 ft movie screen.
The Dolby Theatre and Hollywood Boulevard undergo preparations for the 87th Academy Awards on... [+]
Was it intimidating the first time they hosted the awards? "I don’t know about intimidating," said Curt Belmher, senior vice president of content solutions at Dolby. "I think it was really exciting. We know theaters and we know how to make stuff sound good, and I think coming into a venue with this kind of past and being able to optimize it for the Academy Awards was an exciting opportunity. So that was fun." Gary Epstein, Dolby product marketing manager, agreed, saying, "Dolby’s been a part of the cinema world for decades. It seemed like a perfect fit. The naming rights to this theatre came up, and it seemed like something we really would love to do, to be a more integral part of the entertainment world seemed like something that was right for us, and we pursued it."
Vice President of Global Services and Industry Relations David Gray, pointed out Dolby had good reason for wanting the naming rights to the theatre. "Not only is it a spectacular branding exercise, and having the brand be out in front of the public more," Gray noted, "but at that particular time there was a lot of speculation around the industry that our commitment to the cinema industry wasn’t as strong and that we were only interested in the consumer side of things. So it really made a big statement that we were really committed to the film industry. It also allowed us to showcase at the time our just about to come out sound format Atmos, in an absolutely grand and spectacular fashion, doing premieres. At the moment we seat about 2,000 people for premieres."
Gary Epstein, left, speaks with Mark Hughes about preparations for the 87th Academy Awards.
However, Gray points out that the Oscars weren't the first thing on Dolby's mind. "Initially we weren’t even thinking about the Oscars, our first thing was we needed to figure out a way to put Atmos in here and show movies in here, because we wanted to do Brave," he said, "which was our first Atmos release. So the focus initially was doing film presentations in here, with a look forward to what we put in, what we could use for the Oscars."
What they could put in was something the awards show had never had before. "Sound into the auditorium for the Oscars had always been stereo or mono," Gray recalled, "although the broadcast had been doing it in 5.1 [six channel surround sound multichannel audio] for many years. So what we wanted to do was to put surround sound into the audience during the show." After Dolby finished with their work on the release of Brave, they turned attention to Oscar preparations that were largely a case of logistics, with so much equipment and a need to place speakers out of the way of other aspects of the production.
On the technical side of things, Gary explained what Dolby envisioned for the theatre and for viewers at home: "We wanted to up the ante, so to speak, in what’s delivered both to the high profile audience who sit in the theater… but also convey that energy to the consumers at home worldwide. So we started pushing for any of the film clips that are nominees to be delivered in surround sound, so we can play it in the theatre and send it to the home." The goal, he says, is to create a unified experience that's as much like being in the theater as possible. "We start early," Gary continued, "We help the Academy with asking for soundtracks to be delivered so we can have a multichannel experience. Then the infrastructure to make sure it leaves here and gets where it needs to go in a multichannel environment, and also play that same experience back in the theatre as close to as possible how it was when you went and saw it in your own home theater."
Hollywood Boulevard is transformed into part of the Oscar ceremony where the red carpet will soon be... [+]
The most recent "big thing" in audio technology for the company has been Dolby Atmos surround sound. Having experienced the Dolby Atmos system firsthand when I attended the LA premiere of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, I can attest to the fact there's just no other sound experience like it. Indeed, half of this year's nominees for Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing were released in Dolby Atmos. And Dolby's record at the Oscars is solid -- every single film nominated for Sound Editing or Sound Mixing since 1976 were released with Dolby audio technologies.
What's Dolby's goal for maximizing the potential for their superior audio at the Academy Awards ceremony?
"We’ve certainly improved the quality of the audio for in-house experience as well as what goes out over broadcast over the last several years," replied Curt. "So for the in-house experience, there are a lot more speakers. David [Gray] is the expert in that area, and he’s been responsible for outfitting the theatre." As the company improved the sound in the theater for the entire audience, viewers watching from home likewise got superior sound quality via 5.1 stereo surround. The newer technologies on hand have improved the sound of the orchestra, which now resides one mile away at Capitol Records on Vine. "They remote that," Curt said, "and they’re in video communication with the award show, so the orchestra performs live but it’s actually done off-site."
Turning to this week's Oscar preparations, I asked what Dolby's attention was most focused on right now. "At this point, all the equipment that’s necessary is being placed, wired, and tested," Gary responded. "Right now as a matter of fact, in the broadcast control area, speakers are being put in and aligned. This will go on for the next couple of days, depending on the needs of the production." The deadline? "We’re aiming toward rehearsal," he said, "because we know when rehearsal has to start. So we’re back time from that to make sure things are ready and tested, giving us a little bit of time in case something isn’t quite right, to remedy that situation."
Inside the Dolby Theatre.
David explained a particularly important mission on the day I visited the Oscar preparations, saying, "Our focus today was to get the feeds from the console in the house, so we can get the feeds for the clips so they will play in surround. That needed to be physically put in place, and then we calibrated and aligned the system this morning." He continued, "At this point, what we need now is actual clips to start playing with and find levels, to make sure all the clips are roughly the same, and if they’re not then for the mixer to get levels so he knows if on this one he has to push it up a little bit or take it down."
"There’s a lot of equipment that has to be set up," Gary remarked. "Pretty much everything, aside for what goes on in the theatre, has to be brought here." It's an immense, labor-intensive undertaking, and it involves a large number of vehicles, as Gary explained to me. "There are production vehicles behind the stage, there are production vehicles up in the parking lot with satellite fibre that connect to the outside world, there’s an entire international broadcast parking lot where there are additional TV trucks — pretty much every TV truck that’s within 100 or 200 miles are brought in. It just takes a lot of infrastructure to make this work."
The planning even includes a backup generator just in case. "We’re using both house power and generator power," Gary reveals. "If there’s a power failure, this show has to go on, because the rest of the world is watching."
With so many microphones and speakers everywhere, great care must be taken to ensure the wrong sounds don't sneak into the broadcast. Gary described one particular part of this planning to me: "There’s ability for the mixers to hear not only in a surround environment — so they have to have a 5.1 speaker system in the truck, which is no small feat when you consider the size of these trucks that these engineers and mixers have to do their work in — but there’s also a group of people who listen just on TVs with two speakers." These other mixers' job is to confirm the quality of the sound in stereo and in multichannel. "We make broadcast equipment that allows the mixers to switch back and forth, Gary asserts, "and make sure they can modify their mix to make sure it sounds perfect in both formats. And then that mix is sent out to the world, some of it using Dolby E technology, which is a codec we make equipment for that gets that multichannel audio to multiple places in the world. It’s our technology that allows the mixers to hear that and work within the stereo and multichannel speaker systems, which is how the consumers will hear it at home."
And when consumers listen at home, they won't be hearing the levels jump every time the Oscars goes to commercial. "More and more, broadcasters are making sure they control their levels. That’s a big concern," he tells me. "The broadcast industry and FCC have demanded that the levels between commercials and shows, and from channel to channel, are standardized. So we make technology for the mixers to be able to watch and listen to see how loud their show is mixed, and conform to that."
Mark Hughes with an Oscar statuette at the Dolby Theatre.
The theatre is an important part of Hollywood's modern history, and now represents a significant statement about Dolby’s presence in the industry. Has this new status changed how Dolby Laboratories perceives itself and its place in Hollywood? With a shrug, David said, "I don’t know that we think of ourselves that much differently. The combination of the naming rights here and Ray Dolby’s star is sort of a validation of something that we and the people who work in that side of things have felt for years." But then he added, "From a public perception and an industry perception, it sort of stepped up our presence in Hollywood and the fact we’re totally committed. ... So internally, it hasn’t really changed much. It was just sort of a validation and taking that next step further."
David Gray at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.
David himself is actually a proud owner of an Oscar statuette. This month, he received the Gordon E. Sawyer Award, which is awarded to "an individual in the motion picture industry whose technological contributions have brought credit to the industry."
Join me again later this weekend as I visit the broadcast trucks, then I go back to the Greenroom to see this year's new design, and I take the winner's walk from the stage. Check back here at my blog space for that full report!
Photographs by Thom Brekke.
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