posted 05-25-2008 03:14 PM                    

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'Soldiers' returns with state-of-art sound system

By Bill Muller
The Arizona Republic
Sept. 17, 2002

A state-of-the-art theatrical sound system makes its national debut in Tempe this week, with the re-release of the Mel Gibson Vietnam war saga We Were Soldiers.

Sonic Whole Overhead Sound was designed at the urging of We Were Soldiers director Randall Wallace, who wanted audiences to experience the full impact of his film's sweeping battle scenes.

"When the jets scream over . . . audibly it's exactly what happened," says Wallace, who worked with Paramount Pictures, sound designer Lon Bender and Dolby Laboratories to create the effect.

"The sound in this story surrounded these soldiers, and I wanted the experience of the film to be subjective," he says.

For the special engagement, which begins Friday at the Harkins Centerpoint 11, a theater will be outfitted with four speakers on the ceiling, integrated into the existing Dolby EX surround-sound system.

Wallace predicts that in 10 years, "every significant theater in the country will have this kind of presentation."

The film offered a great opportunity to showcase overhead sound, says David Gray, vice president of Hollywood film production for Dolby, which won't hesitate to look for future applications.

"We Were Soldiers was fabulous," Gray says, "because of all the helicopters and the mortar shells and the sort of huge battle landscapes where you have lots of sounds and lots of depth and lots of dimension."

The movie initially opened in March. The reviews were so good and the audience reaction so strong, that Paramount decided to re-release the film closer to Oscar time. That gave Wallace the opportunity to push for the new sound system.

Gray says the technique allows the sound mixers to reproduce effects that were never possible before, such as the whirling rotor blades of a helicopter directly overhead.

"The whole thing of feeling engulfed improves," he says. "Because now you have the third plane."

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