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If 5G Is Good, How About 8D?
by Claudia Schergna
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A young man from Xavier Dolan’s film 'Mommy' (2014). photo: X. DolanIT HAPPENED TO ALMOST EVERYONE ON
WhatsApp in the past few weeks. They received messages with links to songs in what is called 8D, with the recommendation to use headphones to fully enjoy the experience.
Enjoy? In fact, it might be frightening, given to how real it sounds!
The one I heard put me on a busy street amid many sounds, from people's voices to the cars, the music in the background, a noise erupting to the right, someone screaming on my left, a siren in the distance—sounding so real, how is that even possible?
8D is a very strange denomination.
As we learned in school, we can only perceive three spatial dimensions: width, length and height. 8D is a paradoxical name, given it wants to describe the 360° spatial experience it creates. In reality, there isn’t eight of anything and it uses panning, which originated with stereo, to achieve its effect.
Panning is the distribution of sound through two audio channels: left and right. In early stereo, songs were split into several tracks allocated to those two channels. If you raised the volume on the left, for example, you’d heard the guitar and drums, doing the opposite, bass and voice.
Using this principle, 8D is able to mix panning percentages and place sounds on the left, the right or anywhere in between. It's nothing new. Some early versions of Windows had a sound test, which used precisely this effect. See "Windows Audio Test" or "Left and Right Stereo Audio Test".
But why is this trending now? Didn't we see its potential the first time? Is it just another temporary trend? Or will it be the revolution of the 20s?
Scene from 'The Jazz Singer', the first sound film, 1927. photo: courtesy Warner BrosI've been studying 8D technology in music and find it breathtaking, but I noticed not many publications have been talking about its possible applications elsewhere, such as cinema, art, theatre and performance. I believe the time has come to talk about it and I will focus on its potential for sound design in cinema.
The big innovation in cinema audio, 5.1 Surround Sound, was developed by Dolby in the 1980s and refers to two left speakers (fore and aft), two right and one in front, providing dialogue. While it standard to our theater-viewing experience, others have come and gone.
For example 3D cinema. Its forerunner arrived in 1833, long before cinema was invented in the form of so-called stroboscopic animation, done with carousel spinning a series of images. It was experimented on in different areas of art and photography by artists like Antoine Claudet and Eadward Muybridge.
Then actual film was invented in the 1890s and Hollywood exploded twenty years later. While the silents saw a golden era in the ‘20s, the 1940s and ’50 was when cinema became king. And that was when every big production company, from Colombia to Universal and even Disney, wanted to do 3D.
But it wasn’t that great and 3D died soon afterwards—until IMAX started producing 3D films in the mid-‘80s. It had another wave in the first decade of 2000, with a peak in 2009 when “Avatar” was screened in 3D, but then it decreased again.
Let’s also think about the 7D cinema, 3D plus a motion chair, special effects and “interaction gun.” While watching a movie, spectators might suddenly have their chair shake, be sprayed with water or feel cold if there's a scene showing a subway, a waterfall or Antarctica.
7D can be exciting, for sure, but how pleasant or expandable?
If the final aim of cinema is taking its audience to another dimension, to experience a dream or outer space, do these technologies really help? Will 8D succeed where 3D and 7D failed? Or will it break the fourth wall and make the viewers realize what they are seeing is unreal?
Many massive innovations in cinema were not accepted in their beginnings and took a while to take. Let's think about the introduction of sound. As Louella Parsons, the famous columnist, wrote in the late-1920s: "I have no fear that the screeching sound film will ever disturb our theatres."
A prototype for 5.1 Surround Sound debuted in the 1975 film 'Tommy', by Ken Russell and starring members of The Who, notably lead singer Roger Daltrey. photo: courtesy The WhoAfter years of experiment, the first film with synchronized sound dialogue and music was produced in 1927 by Warner Bros: “The Jazz Singer”. Although it was a great success, productions only started using audio equipment en masse at the beginning of the ‘30s.
The same happened with color. The first version of Technicolor is dated 1916, but the first color film released? In 1939, “The Wizard of Oz”.
What do these technologies have in common? What does a new technology need to revolutionize cinema?
Timing is key. All those technologies came at the right time in the history of cinema and fulfilled a need for change. Is now the right time for 8D?
As it happens with many new technologies and special effects, the first application would be in horror movies.
Let's imagine the surprise induced by Hitchcock's “Psycho”, when Marion gets stabbed in the shower, or the demoniac voices in Kubrick's “The Shining”, the mechanic doll in Argento's “Deep Red”, the witches' voices in “Suspiria”, coming from all over the theater.
Would that work in 8G? Would it be, perhaps, too scary?
Over its history, cinema has tried to become more and more life-like, to create the illusion of another dimension. Innovations like sound and color have helped films become more “real”.
Does 8D have the potential to add sensorial experience? Will the film industry catch this opportunity.
Or will we forget about 8D as soon as our friends stop sending us those strange WhatsApp files?
Claudia Schergna is a student journalist, film lover and regular reader of cineSOURCE living in England, and can be reached . Posted on Apr 11, 2020 - 07:18 AM
by Claudia Schergna
Please support our stories by liking articles—thanks!
A young man from Xavier Dolan’s film 'Mommy' (2014). photo: X. DolanWhatsApp in the past few weeks. They received messages with links to songs in what is called 8D, with the recommendation to use headphones to fully enjoy the experience.
Enjoy? In fact, it might be frightening, given to how real it sounds!
The one I heard put me on a busy street amid many sounds, from people's voices to the cars, the music in the background, a noise erupting to the right, someone screaming on my left, a siren in the distance—sounding so real, how is that even possible?
8D is a very strange denomination.
As we learned in school, we can only perceive three spatial dimensions: width, length and height. 8D is a paradoxical name, given it wants to describe the 360° spatial experience it creates. In reality, there isn’t eight of anything and it uses panning, which originated with stereo, to achieve its effect.
Panning is the distribution of sound through two audio channels: left and right. In early stereo, songs were split into several tracks allocated to those two channels. If you raised the volume on the left, for example, you’d heard the guitar and drums, doing the opposite, bass and voice.
Using this principle, 8D is able to mix panning percentages and place sounds on the left, the right or anywhere in between. It's nothing new. Some early versions of Windows had a sound test, which used precisely this effect. See "Windows Audio Test" or "Left and Right Stereo Audio Test".
But why is this trending now? Didn't we see its potential the first time? Is it just another temporary trend? Or will it be the revolution of the 20s?
Scene from 'The Jazz Singer', the first sound film, 1927. photo: courtesy Warner BrosThe big innovation in cinema audio, 5.1 Surround Sound, was developed by Dolby in the 1980s and refers to two left speakers (fore and aft), two right and one in front, providing dialogue. While it standard to our theater-viewing experience, others have come and gone.
For example 3D cinema. Its forerunner arrived in 1833, long before cinema was invented in the form of so-called stroboscopic animation, done with carousel spinning a series of images. It was experimented on in different areas of art and photography by artists like Antoine Claudet and Eadward Muybridge.
Then actual film was invented in the 1890s and Hollywood exploded twenty years later. While the silents saw a golden era in the ‘20s, the 1940s and ’50 was when cinema became king. And that was when every big production company, from Colombia to Universal and even Disney, wanted to do 3D.
But it wasn’t that great and 3D died soon afterwards—until IMAX started producing 3D films in the mid-‘80s. It had another wave in the first decade of 2000, with a peak in 2009 when “Avatar” was screened in 3D, but then it decreased again.
Let’s also think about the 7D cinema, 3D plus a motion chair, special effects and “interaction gun.” While watching a movie, spectators might suddenly have their chair shake, be sprayed with water or feel cold if there's a scene showing a subway, a waterfall or Antarctica.
7D can be exciting, for sure, but how pleasant or expandable?
If the final aim of cinema is taking its audience to another dimension, to experience a dream or outer space, do these technologies really help? Will 8D succeed where 3D and 7D failed? Or will it break the fourth wall and make the viewers realize what they are seeing is unreal?
Many massive innovations in cinema were not accepted in their beginnings and took a while to take. Let's think about the introduction of sound. As Louella Parsons, the famous columnist, wrote in the late-1920s: "I have no fear that the screeching sound film will ever disturb our theatres."
A prototype for 5.1 Surround Sound debuted in the 1975 film 'Tommy', by Ken Russell and starring members of The Who, notably lead singer Roger Daltrey. photo: courtesy The WhoThe same happened with color. The first version of Technicolor is dated 1916, but the first color film released? In 1939, “The Wizard of Oz”.
What do these technologies have in common? What does a new technology need to revolutionize cinema?
Timing is key. All those technologies came at the right time in the history of cinema and fulfilled a need for change. Is now the right time for 8D?
As it happens with many new technologies and special effects, the first application would be in horror movies.
Let's imagine the surprise induced by Hitchcock's “Psycho”, when Marion gets stabbed in the shower, or the demoniac voices in Kubrick's “The Shining”, the mechanic doll in Argento's “Deep Red”, the witches' voices in “Suspiria”, coming from all over the theater.
Would that work in 8G? Would it be, perhaps, too scary?
Over its history, cinema has tried to become more and more life-like, to create the illusion of another dimension. Innovations like sound and color have helped films become more “real”.
Does 8D have the potential to add sensorial experience? Will the film industry catch this opportunity.
Or will we forget about 8D as soon as our friends stop sending us those strange WhatsApp files?
Claudia Schergna is a student journalist, film lover and regular reader of cineSOURCE living in England, and can be reached . Posted on Apr 11, 2020 - 07:18 AM
