Hello all!
I managed to catch a screening of the 3D HFR ATMOS version of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug last night at GSC One Utama. GSC OU (specifically Hall #3) is the only cinema hall in Malaysia that currently offers the Dolby Atmos experience.
What is this Dolby Atmos anyway? Feel free to click here to learn more about it. A probably easy to spot difference between the current conventional speaker system with this Atmos system is that there are now speakers located above the audience in the theatre! In a nutshell, Dolby Atmos endeavours to give the audience an ever more immersive movie-going experience.
Interested? So now you know what it is, and where you can catch a movie using this particular sound system, but what's the cost? I do not believe that GSC offers the Dolby Atmos experience at a premium over the conventional 2D experience, currently. I paid RM19 to watch the 3D HFR ATMOS version last night, and you would have to pay RM14 (which is essentially minus the RM5 cost of renting the 3D specs) for the 2D ATMOS version. These prices are only from GSC, mind you. If you want to compare prices between GSC and other cinemas, by all means, go ahead, but as I highlighted earlier, the HFR (feel free to read up on my experience of an HFR screening here) and ATMOS experience is currently only available at GSC. Kudos GSC :)
With the logistics out of the way, what was the Dolby Atmos experience like? It was an "ear opening" experience, by all means. Of course just before the feature presentation, Dolby had to show off its Dolby Atmos demo showcase so that the audience is made aware of the impending new experience. This demo will pan the sound not just around the audience (considered so 'yesterday' now) but above them and across them as well. The demo essentially thrusts the audience in the middle of a maple (?) tree in the autumn season, so as you are moving in the tree, you hear the rustling of the leaves as the fall off the tree. I thought it was a good showcase but I was left thinking perhaps they could have done better; what better super surround sound experience would you like to hear? Sound off in the comments, please. Personally, I thought maybe being in a water element might be more realistic. Perhaps standing in the rain in a city with the various cityscape sounds going off around you?
Anyway, on to the feature presentation; The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and its Dolby Atmos experience. I recall very clearly a scene where the camera was looking down on one of the movie's protagonists and this camera was actually offering a viewpoint of an assailant (think Orc). So in this scene, the protagonist (perhaps it was Legolas?) would we looking up ready to fight the Orc which was going to jump right onto him. Since we were the audience, and we were looking at the protagonist, the sound of the Orc's battle cry would rightfully, in conventional cinemas, come from behind the audience, but instead, the film makers are now able to project the sound from the speakers located above the audience, which more accurately places the sound versus a conventional sound system. It makes sense, right?
Other than the above standout scene, I had trouble pinning down any more benefits from the Dolby Atmos system. Could it be that the movie simply did not take full advantange of the hugely improved soundscape potential? Or perhaps I was too engrossed in the story of the movie to actually notice what was going on sound-wise?
Feel free to watch a Dolby Atmos screening of a movie; Hobbit or otherwise and leave your comments on how it sounded to you!
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