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Only a few theater's in my country have SDDS, i wonder why

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The EX matrix is derived from a digital source, so it is a tad more accurate than its analog counterpart. The first DTS recordings were LT/RT decoded from a matrix. They basically fed two digital tracks into an analog processor.

EX also has a "spare" channel which I assume is reserved for future use. The real question is: "Where do we put that one?" <g>

Russ

I tend not to think so, because they were doing panned dialog years before home theater (although that may be the reason they will keep doing it.)

I think that the reason then and now is cost. Who wants to pay for the set up of mulitple microphones? And if there is more than one camera filming the take, additional microphones would have to be set up, so the sound is correctly localized for each camera angle if that footage is used. Simply panning the dialog is so much easier, it was probably one of the first cost-cutting measures studios thought of.

I'm not saying I agree with it....

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Gladiator certainly wasn't a phenomenal EX mix by any means, but Toy Story 2 sure was.

John-
I think you missed my point. Of course they panned dialog way before home theatre. But when home theatre started to become really popular, directors got concerned about the transfer. So they just kept all of the dialog in the center (by the TV in most cases) so it would come off better at home.

As for panned dialog, there's a certain philosophy that panned dialog tends to be a distraction to most viewers. I mean, imagine if every time they changed camera angles in the middle of someone's line, the dialog hopped to another location as the cut was made. Or what if the dialog wasn't panned at those moments but was panned in others? It tends to take the viewer out of the moment and remind him that it's just a movie.

Remember that in "the era of panned dialog" they used a different shooting and editing style for the visual portion of the movies too. There are no rapid-fire cuts in Oklahoma!. I mean, they'll leave the same shot on the screen for 3 minutes or more if someone's singing a slow song. Imagine 3 minutes without any visual edits! (Or just watch some of those old movies and you won't have to imagine it anymore.) In a movie which was shot for it, panned dialog works fine. But would today's directors and editors give up their rapid-cut style for the sake of accommodating panned dialog?

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I see your point but don't agree. Panned dialog does not mean you can have rapid fire cuts. In fact, it is more distracting to have the dialog stay still whilst the cuts have the people jumping all about (over the shoulder shots).

There would also be a learning period where what works and what doesn't in panned dialog...just like the 180deg. rule exists for filming.

An example of this is in 2001:A Space Odyssey...the scene where Dr. Floyd is in the videophone booth...when the actors are VISABLE the dialog matches their location...if, on the other hand, they are not, the dialog does not move from their last location...eg Dr. Floyd is sitting at Left-Center position and the video phone is at Right....the edit places the videophone at center...his daughter's voice moves to Center but Dr. Floyd's stays at Left-Center....where as Left would have been more intuitive. The directionality of Dr. Floyd is conveyed without having you look for his disembodied voice. The next cut once again has Dr. Floyd at Left-Center and his daughter at Right...If you didn't watch the film dozens of times analyzing the sound aspects (as I did in college) you might not pick the trick off.

Panned dialog is sorely needed now that auditorium depths are shallow while screens are proportionally larger...having a voice clearly 20 or more feet away from the person is VERY distracting and annoying.

One problem I have found is that it really does take a minimum of 5-screen channels to properly pull off panned dialog. Two and three shots have the actors right on Left-Center and Right Center...you just can't phantom voices like you can music...voices are supposed to be point-sources.

Steve

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I sort of mixed up my thoughts with several previous posts and got confused....

I just meant that the studio's used to record several discrete channels (like Cinerama) but dropped that (around 1964 or so) to save money. Then, they panned dialog until 1975 or so, but dropped that too, because (supposedly) theaters weren't keeping up the equipment.

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