The Las Vegas Sphere opened its doors and Darren Aronofsky’s spectacular latest project, “Postcard from Earth,” became the first film to be presented there.
After its launch on September 29 with U2 concerts, the Las Vegas Sphere presented its very first film in preview on Friday: Darren Aronofsky’s documentary story, Postcard from Earth.
The 112 meter high spherical arena contains a 16K resolution wraparound auditorium that extends beyond the audience’s peripheral vision, above and behind their heads.
With its speakers featuring beamforming technologies and a spatial audio system (both the largest of their kind on the planet), the Sphere delivers a spectacular 4D cinematic experience supported by moving seats and environmental effects (like wind).
Filmed to be projected only in this “room”, the documentary immerses its viewer in various experiences that seem larger than life, such as walking alongside elephants during a safari, swimming with sharks or observing the Earth from a distant planet.
The feature film also demonstrates the potential of this new canvas for filmmakers. “I’m still realizing”, the Oscar-nominated director of Black Swan and The Whale told The Hollywood Reporter.
“It’s truly a different medium because of the immersive nature of all the images you create and how they translate to the viewer”, explains Aronofsky, who, when making the film, remembered the Lumière brothers’ 1895 short film, L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat, known for surprising audiences who believed as a moving train actually approached.
“That kind of influenced the opening of the Sphere… That moment when the expectations of what you’re looking at suddenly change.”
A NEW PAGE IN CINEMA HISTORY?
As in the early days of cinema, the production tools developed as the film was shot. “We started with nine red cameras soldered together to try to get the resolution we needed to create an image for the Sphere“, remember Darren Aronofskywhich subsequently received the first prototype of the custom Big Sky 18K camera, invented to create content specifically for the Sphere.
The hour-long film is a wraparound world tour – with the team having traveled to no fewer than 26 countries to capture these images – complete with a story set in space that begins when two humans arrive on Saturn.
And no detail has been left to chance, right down to the little spider on the ceiling of a cave. One of these creatures actually caused a big reaction by jumping towards the audience.
Among the astonishing shots, that of a giraffe leaning towards the public – images obtained by leaving the camera alone with the animals – or even elephants walking near the public.
“There are a few tricks in there that I won’t reveal, but the elephant almost stepped on a million dollar camera”, admits the director. To do this, they called on a team of natural history photographers.
TEST THE RESULT… ONE MONTH BEFORE THE FILM STARTS
Broadcast Postcard from Earth at the Sphere (at full capacity with standing room, it can accommodate up to 20,000 people, but in the case of the film, not all seats will be used) led to a tight production schedule involving a large quantity of inventions as well as complex production and post-production.
“The image being 270 degrees, the sounds must be in the right place. But you can’t really mix it on a normal cinema screen because you don’t know exactly where it’s going.”
So the team had to imagine what it might look like before they could get into the room and test the final result only in early September. Darren Aronofsky also specified that the film included half a petabyte of data.
Even then, the work had to continue: testing and preparing the final elements, such as the wind effects, which come from the front of the room. “It takes about 30 seconds for some of the wind to hit you, and so we had to time how the wind gets to the first and last row”, he explains.
“They put these plastic cups with fairy lights on them so we could know when different areas were getting wind. …It’s been a tight month.”
Postcard from Earth can be discovered at the Sphere during your next trip to Las Vegas.