Dolby wants to end the 3D "dark ages" and build the country's best theater, IMAX status is challenged

Three months ago, Yaolai Jackie Chan International Studios in Wukesong, Beijing began a secret theater renovation project. The operation has an ambitious goal: to build one of the best movie halls in the country and save audiences from the dark 3D movie viewing experience of the past.

Original title: Dolby brings the "next generation of cinema," which is most likely to become a challenger to IMAX in China.

Three months ago, the Yolai Jackie Chan International Studios in Wukesong, Beijing began a secret theater renovation project. The operation has an ambitious goal: to build one of the best movie halls in the country and save audiences from the dark 3D movie viewing experience of the past.

The team responsible for theater design comes from the famous Dolby, and most of the Hollywood blockbusters introduced to China every year use their sound technology. Now they are bringing Dolby Cinema, a cinema solution that combines Dolby's research and development of sound and imaging technology, to China.

Although the mainland's first Dolby Cinema opened at Wanda Studios in Kaide Peace Plaza in Dalian last month, this Yolai Jackie Chan Dolby Cinema project in Beijing's West Third Ring Road is even more eye-catching. Because this studio with 17 cinemas has ranked first in the country in the box office for five consecutive years, its largest cinemas will now be closed for three months, and everyone is very curious.

This project is costly. The new laser projector, nearly 600 seats, giant screens, and 50 stereos alone cost more than 10 million yuan in hardware. From seat curvature to aisle lighting, from speaker position to wall light-absorbing material selection, Dolby Labs uniformly designs and selects suppliers to ensure the "all-round ecstasy" that Dolby Cinema wants to give to the audience.

"It takes a lot of determination to renovate such a large hall." Zhao Xiaodong, president of Yaolai Cultural Industry Co., Ltd., told reporters. According to Zhao Xiaodong, the two sides started contacting and negotiating about a year ago and spent a lot of time determining technical and engineering details. By the time the plan was confirmed and entered the engineering stage, all the technicians flew from Dolby headquarters in San Francisco to Beijing, including passing special materials and even looking for translations to understand technical terms, which took a lot of time.

The core of Dolby Cinema includes Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision. Both technologies were launched in 2012, but compared with the well-known sound technology, Dolby's breakthrough in imaging in recent years, namely "Dolby Vision", is the key to allowing Dolby to join the theater upgrade battle as a rising star.

"We started developing imaging technology about a decade ago, with the goal of understanding which image enhancement technologies have the greatest impact on the visual experience." Doug Darrow, senior vice president of Dolby Labs Film Business, told Tencent Technology,"We have found that improving picture contrast and brightness can greatly improve the visual experience."

Under current conditions, the standard for 2D cinema projection is 14fL (Ford Lambert), which is also the highest brightness that can be achieved by ordinary format 2D films. If it is converted to 3D format, the brightness of the film will be reduced by half after the audience wears those uncomfortable 3D glasses. On average, it is only 3.5-7fL. This is not to mention the theater's deliberate light bulb dimming to extend the xenon lamp projector.

The first thing Dolby Cinema wants to eliminate (and its biggest publicity gimmick) is "low brightness", the biggest obstacle to the 3D experience. With the help of increasingly mature laser projection technology, Dolby Vision has increased the maximum brightness of 3D projection to 14fL, which means that even with glasses, viewers can watch 3D movies under the brightness of current 2D movies; while the maximum brightness of 2D movies can reach 31fL, more than double.

"Ultra-high contrast" is another advantage that Dolby constantly emphasizes when promoting its own theaters. If you look at the data alone, this improvement in contrast is indeed astonishing. Currently, the contrast ratio of cinema films using xenon lamp digital projectors is 2000:1, while Dolby Cinema claims that the contrast ratio of its laser projectors reaches 1000000:1, which is 500 times the existing contrast ratio.

This huge increase in contrast is actually just to solve some long-ignored but important "small" problems: for example, how to display "pure black" on the screen.

In order to allow the media and guests to more intuitively understand the differences, Dolby specially arranged an interesting demonstration at the opening ceremony of the theater on July 16: there is a white point in the center of the huge screen. When all lights in the theater are turned off, the black around the white point turns into a kind of "gray"-the figure of the presenter in front of the screen is clearly visible; Then, the presenter switched to Dolby Cinema's high-contrast, the "gray" instantly turned into the familiar "black", and the demonstrator's figure disappeared from the screen-the audience below let out a burst of exclamations.

Another demonstration video played live combined the "high brightness" and "high contrast" emphasized by Dolby Cinema. This is the plot of "The Wilderness Hunter" when friends in the camp set out to find the protagonist Hugh Glass in the forest (Leonardo DiCaprio). Night fell quickly after the large group set off, and the torch became the only light source. Dolby's demonstrator specifically reminded the audience to pay attention to the details of the faces around the torch."I feel scared every time I watch this paragraph," he even added.

"Artists can maintain various dark details of the background while realizing bright blue skies and white clouds as well as a bright moon on the screen. The "dark ages" of 3D are finally behind us." Doug Darrow told reporters.

Dolby believes that its cinema technology can end the "dark ages" of 3D, and in order to achieve this goal, they need to create a more "dark" movie-viewing environment.

Walking into Dolby Theater for the first time is like entering a Star Trek warship. First of all, you need to pass through a 5-meter-long cylindrical dynamic video hall corridor. The curved wall of the corridor will play scenes corresponding to the movie (we watched "The Return of Mount Tai" that day, so it is surrounded by virgin forest). The theater is painted black from all around to the seats. Two light blue lights extend from bottom to top on both sides of the wall, and safety indicators of the same color are left on the steps.

In order not to be disturbed by light sources outside the screen during the viewing process, the surrounding walls were painted with matte black anti-reflective material, and the 50 speakers on the top were also "hidden" behind the ceiling. Doug Darrow said that the purpose of this design is to create a "movie atmosphere" from the moment the audience enters the theater and help the audience enter the "plot."

"All materials need to be imported from Canada, and the position of every nail is particular." Zhao Xiaodong told reporters. He believes that although Wukesong's Yaolai Jackie Chan Studios has ranked first in the box office for five consecutive years, it will enter a bottleneck period in the next one or two years, and it will be difficult to catch up with the annual growth of 20%-30%.

"You are not just competing with other theaters, you are also competing with forms of entertainment such as the Internet. You need to give the audience a reason to come to the movie theater." Zhao Xiaodong said. This is also the most important reason why Yolai needs to introduce Dolby Cinema. In the next few years, Yaolai will open nearly 30 more theaters every year, including 10 "Dolby Cinema". These theaters will become the best signboards of the studio.

The effectiveness of this cooperation model has been well verified by the mainland market in the past few years. By introducing IMAX cinemas, Wanda has successfully shaped its image as a "high-end cinema experience." With orders from more than 200 IMAX cinemas from Wanda, a major customer, China has become IMAX's fastest-growing and most important market in the world.

Dolby hopes to replicate this success. As a latecomer, it is even willing to bear more costs for theaters. Unlike IMAX renting equipment directly to theaters, Dolby is responsible for providing hardware equipment to theaters. The theater only needs to bear the cost of building (renovating) the theater, and then recovers the investment through the box office sharing model.

"We only use one cooperation model around the world, and we are very satisfied with our existing model." Doug Darrow said. At present, in addition to Yaolai as a partner, Wanda Studios has signed a purchase agreement with Dolby for 100 theaters, which means that there will be more than 100 Dolby theaters in China in the next five years.

This number may not shake IMAX's leading position in China, but it is enough to put Duby at the table and add some variables to future movie theater competition.

Editor: Nancy