Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2014/06/23/almeida_theatre_ghosts_cinema_presentation_with_dolby_atmos/

For one night only – Ibsen classic gets the Dolby Atmos treatment

Immersive surround sound tech has its theatrical debut

By Bob Dormon

Posted in Legal, 23rd June 2014 08:32 GMT

The last time I sat in Dolby’s private Atmos theatre in London, I was treated to the audiovisual feast that is X-Men: Days of Future Past. This time around, the production values are very different.

Photo by Hugo Glendinning: Ibsen's Ghosts – Almeida Theatre Production

Lesley Manville (Helene Alving) and Jack Lowden (Oswald Alving)
Photo courtesy of Hugo Glendinning

In fact, nothing could be further from the sci-fi action flick than this five-camera shoot of the Almeida Theatre's award winning London stage production of Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts.

This is a romp of a very different sort: a Victorian era social commentary with various ingredients including secrets and lies, philandering and unrequited love, a bit of the old incestuous allusions and, of course, a healthy dose of syphilis.

Although it was written in 1892 and performed the following year, all assembled in June 2014 were to witness a first of a first. Namely, the very first showing of the first theatrical production to be screened with accompanying Dolby Atmos audio – a full-range, multi-speaker cinema sound array, which, by featuring height information in its spatial positioning recreates a three-dimensional sonic environment.

From 26 June, Ghosts is playing for one night only in 250 cinemas around the UK and Ireland with or without Dolby Atmos. And if you’re in Oz, there are viewings on 28 and 29 June. This event has been co-ordinated by content distributor CinemaLive with some screenings happening later, a case in point being the 10 July presentation at the Olympic, the Atmos cinema in Barnes, London.

Dolby Atmos suggested speaker layout

Typical Dolby Atmos configuration for a cinema upgrade

Since its launch in 2009, Digital Theatre has been busy creating cinematic productions of acclaimed stage shows – besides West End and Shakespearean theatre, opera and ballet have proved immensely popular. It even collaborates with the British Library.

Much like recording a band playing a gig, the concept is that theatre-goers can relive the experience they enjoyed and those further afield (or with not-so-deep pockets) can get an idea of what the fuss was all about. You don't have to rely on a cinema either, as Digital Theatre productions can be purchased or rented on-line.

The marriage of a Dolby Atmos soundtrack with the screening of Ghosts seems more experimental than a must-have enhancement, but the idea is to deliver an immersive experience. The old adage goes along the lines of: if you didn’t notice the sound in a film production, then that’s a good sign. After all, if you’re not distracted by it, then it must be convincing and suggests there’s nothing wrong with the mix.

Photo by Hugo Glendinning: Ibsen's Ghosts – Almeida Theatre Production

Best seat in the house? The set doesn't change but the camera angles do
Charlene McKenna (Regina Engstrand) and Brian McCardie (Jacob Engstrand)
Photo courtesy of Hugo Glendinning

Sitting there, I was more distracted by how little the sound designers had to work with – five actors and a static set. The camerawork does add alternative positions though. The picture itself is not just one camera pointed from the best seat in the house towards the stage. Five cameras were in use and so you’ve shots from different points of view in the edit. Not quite cinema and not quite the stage either. What to call this mix of film and theatre? Filtre? Cineatre? Theature?

Those different viewpoints do at least offer some creative mixing opportunities. Each actor had a radio mic hidden in their hair or behind the ear and there were 16 mics on stage plus "snoop" mics here and there to pick up actors’ movements and prop interactions.

The show must go on

Mixing on Dolby Atmos treats the sounds sources as objects that are then positioned in a 3D soundspace which can be rendered back onto any Atmos cinema regardless of its size or whether it has an array of 30, 60 or 120 loudspeakers or more.

Besides a huge step up in clarity – Atmos doesn’t bear the compromises in frequency response found in earlier surround formats – what you also get is the ability to accurately position sound sources. In the case of Ghosts, there wasn’t anything in particular to notice, apart from its impression of realism.

Photo by Hugo Glendinning: Ibsen's Ghosts – Almeida Theatre Production

Sound positioning matches the spatial location of the actors
Photo courtesy of Hugo Glendinning

Rather than sound being a matter of panning across the stage to follow movement, more subtle positioning of front and behind, when the actors were engaged in dialogue, was apparent. Still, you had to listen out for it as these are mixing nuances that are designed to sound natural. Indeed, the off-stage noises of footsteps down the stairs and then out of the front door were presented with gratuitous spatial authenticity.

Authenticity presents itself in other ways too, as there’s no director shouting “Cut” if a shot wasn’t perfect. That said, three performances were recorded all in front of live audiences at Trafalgar Studios, which is actually a theatre, not a TV soundstage. You’d even hear the audience laugh in places, which was like being amongst ghosts of a different sort. It was perhaps the most unreal aspect, especially as I didn’t hear any coughing.

Photo by Hugo Glendinning: Ibsen's Ghosts – Almeida Theatre Production

Charlene McKenna (Regina Engstrand) and Brian McCardie (Jacob Engstrand)
Photo courtesy of Hugo Glendinning

What you could hear from time to time was some low-level hiss from the microphones. Removing or "gating" noise in silent passages with a now you hear it, now you don’t approach, can be more noticeable than simply leaving it in there. The prevailing wisdom on this production was to let it be, as it’s not especially obvious. The audio itself was fed through an Allen and Heath iLive console and captured on a SADiE multitrack audio recorder.

The video recording included three 4K cameras although Ghosts is only a full HD release. The stage lighting appears to have been presented unaltered and this did lead to some burn out on features such as foreheads and hands. A somewhat dark and dour set, with costumes to match, evidently proved to be a dynamic range challenge for this 1080p presentation.

Ibsen's Ghosts – Almeida Theatre Production

Yet what lingers most in the memory of this stage and screen experience is the play itself and the performances of the cast. Ghosts will never have an audience rolling in the aisles, but as a bold statement of its time, it does make a lasting impression. That’s more than can be said for many movie I’ve seen lately.

Admittedly, it's no substitute for the smell of the greasepaint and the roar of the crowd, but if cinemas are willing to make space for one-night-only presentations of theatreland’s finest hours, surely that can only be a good thing, both artistically and culturally. ®