Cinescope ipa movie#
Every few minutes the video would pause and viewers had 10 seconds to vote on one of three choices for the story path.Įven though the movie was only 20 minutes long, it required 90 minutes of footage stored on four laserdisc players to accommodate the 68 story variations. Armrests were outfitted with three-button joysticks. It was something like a “ Choose Your Own Adventure” book brought to the big screen, courtesy of then cutting-edge LaserDisc technology. Sure enough, as soon as the show started, almost every member of the packed audience pulled out their treasured scratch-and-sniff cards.Įven though adding odors to movies never took off, at least the connection between smell and memory remained strong.Īrtists have long sought to erase the boundary between a film and its viewers, and Alejandro Iñárritu’s 2017 Oscar-winning virtual reality installation “ Carne y Arena” has come close.īut the dream of putting audiences in the picture has fueled a number of film fiascoes, including an early 1990s debacle called Interfilm.īilled as a “quantum leap into the future,” Interfilm premiered in December 1992 at the Loews New York multiplex with the short “ I’m Your Man,” written and directed by inventor Bob Bejan. Some years later the Los Angeles County Museum had an anniversary showing of “Polyester.” My wife and I had small roles in the film, so we went along. But to me they all vaguely approximated the aroma of oregano. The 10 smells – which included roses (#1), farts (#2) and pizza (#4) – tried valiantly to be distinct. Waters sidestepped the expensive scent distribution systems of his predecessors by creating a simple scratch-and-sniff card that would be cued by numbers on screen. In 1981, filmmaker John Waters satirically revived the technique for his film “ Polyester,” dubbing it “Odorama.”
Instead of enhancing the cinematic experience, the smells ended up supplying something briefly weird and not very interesting, no different from a noisy special effect. I saw AromaRama’s “ Behind the Great Wall” and Smell-O-Vision’s “ The Scent of Mystery” during their brief runs in New York, and the only scents I can recall are the pungent smell of an orange being sliced and the dank odor of a Chinese bay. First they moved, then they talked, now they … smell?įor budding smell entrepreneurs, the reviews couldn’t have been encouraging.Īfter New York Times film reviewer Bosley Crowther emerged from his first AromaRama experience, he wrote that he “happily filled his lungs with that lovely fume-laden New York ozone. But the orchestration of smell in a “smell story” or “smell movie” is another matter.ĪromaRama involved pumping scents through an air-conditioning system, while Smell-O-Vision’s 30 odors were released from vents placed underneath the seats. In this context, two 1959 olfactory innovations – AromaRama and Smell-O-Vision – emerged.īoth psychology and neurology have shown how closely smell is related to memory and emotion. In the 1950s, the popularity of television exploded, and the film industry started experimenting with technologies to lure audiences back into movie theaters. Leo Braudy, University of Southern California But others are probably best relegated to the dustbin of history. Some ideas were on the right track and would eventually be realized in one form or another. We asked four film experts to each write about a different flop. But there’s no (dis)honor for film innovations that backfired. But what about film inventions that never took off? When will they get their due? Sure, there are the Razzies, which honor the worst acting performances and directing jobs. By: Leo Braudy Scott Higgins Stephen Groening, and Thomas Delapa.Įditor’s note: IMAX is hugely popular, while virtual reality movies are gaining steam.
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