Dolby Surround 7.1 is the better half of cutting-edge cinema formats suchas high-definition and 3D. Go Tech decodes the latest sound experience
The whole country seems to be swooning to the tunes of A R Rahman’s music in Rockstar. By now, we all know that the film, based on a singer’s life directed by Imtiaz Ali and featuring Ranbir Kapoor, has music as its backbone. So what it needed was a competent sound system so that music director Rahman’s melodies could be translated into a quality experience at the movie halls too.
Enter Dolby Surround 7.1. This technology is to sound what high-definition is to picture quality and it gives filmmakers greater control over the definition and placement of sounds in a cinema hall. The technology made sure the audio for the film was engineered seamlessly across Dolby cinemas so that the audience could enjoy the music of a film to the hilt.
Dolby came to India more than a decade ago and started off with the technology of 5.1 digital Dolby surround sound. The first local film in India that came about in digital Dolby was 1942 A Love Story. While Hollywood content does have a market in India, the local language content has a more dominant market. We work on surround sound on more than 300 films (Hindi and regional) a year on an average. It is installed in over 3,000 cinemas in India and that number is growing.
It may be recalled that Ramesh Sippy’s Dum Maaro Dum was the first Hindi movie with Dolby Surround 7.1. Soon after, the audience was treated to one on- one fist-fight sequences in Salman Khan’s action flick Bodyguard, which enhanced its sound quality by using the 7.1 technology. And thereafter, Shah Rukh Khan’s mega budget RA.One also went all out to use the best filmmaking techniques be it the lavish visual effects or the quality 7.1 surround sound. Now we also hear that Hrithik Roshan starrer Agneepath is also being shot in 7.1.
The evolution of sound is mapped in a similar manner to how it happened in the rest of the world. Cinema sound is quite different from that of broadcast or the mobile medium. A cinema is the only medium where the playback medium is set up in the exact same way as the mixing studio is set up. So it’s a controlled environment. In a home you cannot control the acoustics, environment and the background noise.
That is mainly why cinema offers the best experience to consume a film as the sound can be controlled. Cinema also offers a captive experience to the audience so they can consume and enjoy a film without any other distractions. So sound plays a very important role in engaging the audience.
Pankaj Kedia, Country Head – Dolby India says, “When we came to India, films were mainly being shown on 35 mm prints. Dolby has a technology where we are able to put the digital soundtrack on the film itself, so that there is no need to circulate a separate CD. It’s all on one film. If any theatre does not have the Dolby playback system, the film will be played on mono sound. And that option is quite interesting.”
The digital soundtrack is placed between the sprockets (between the grooves on a film). That is considered to be the strongest part of the film and never breaks or wears and tears. A three step process is carried out where the company first works with the mixing studio, filmmakers would go there and buy a Dolby license, which lets them create the content in Dolby-compatible format. This is done by Dolby-certified engineers so that the reproduction is the exact way as the filmmaker desired it to be. So what they hear in the mixing room is exactly heard in the theatres. If a dialogue is to be heard at a certain level or the music is mixed in a certain way, creative intent of the director is very important and the company guarantees that.
Then they work with the laboratories which is the distribution side. To put that soundtrack on to the film or now create a digital master of it. Since the industry is going digital. And lastly they work with the theatres. In the cinema halls Dolby provides the playback equipments called the Dolby processors, using these they playback the sound and they help in calibrating and aligning the audio in the cinema theatre to match what is played in the mixing studio.
This is mainly done as there are multiple speakers used in the cinema halls. So for a 5.1 channel there are probably 40 to 50 speakers that are required. Thus calibration and alignment is very important if not, it will sound very different. It’s almost dramatic. Even a layman can understand the difference, it is that evident. So by being an integral part of all the stages in which a film is made, the consumer is guaranteed to have a unique experience on the audio side while watching a film. Filmmakers also get the exact same audio output in cinema halls that they had at the mixing studio.
But Dolby may not be the only format available in the country as far as quality sound is concerned. DTS is a format that is popular in the South Indian film industry. SDDS is popular abroad. Globally, Dolby has an 80 to 90 per cent market share in cinema globally. In India, however, it used to be 60 per cent. But now with the change in the cinema industry towards the digital formats, Dolby may have captured a slightly higher market share of 65 per cent.
There are a total of around 10,000 cinemas in India out of which Dolby is present in 300 and with the digital transition; very soon Dolby plans to add more cinema halls to its share.
“There are a lot of digital conversions happening in cinemas across smaller towns and cities and we plan to tap those. We are in the planning stages to go to these halls as well,” mentions Kedia.
He further adds, “You have the left, centre and right speakers with the left surround and the right surround. These make up the five channels and the .1 signifies the sub woofer. All these components make up what is called a 5.1 Dolby Surround sound.”
In a 7.1 set up, instead of having two channels at the back of a cinema hall there are four channels at the back. This proves to be more efficient as it covers all the corners of a cinema hall. These formats only work in the DCI complaint 2K cinema halls and not the E cinemas.
Kedia reveals, “Disney came to us last year when they were to release Toy Story3 in India and they wanted to do a new sound format. So we came up with 7.1. So instead of two surrounds we came up with four surround speakers. This really enhanced the sound experience of the film. There is also more creative freedom for the mixing engineer during the sound design stages with 7.1.”
Dolby did 45 films globally and 2,500 screens in 7.1 surround post the release of Toy Story 3 in India. This is the only sound format that has been adopted by filmmakers. So it might not be the most predominant format but is getting adopted very quickly.
Four-Screen Strategy
Dolby is now looking beyond cinema. And they are calling it the four-screen strategy. Cinema is one screen while the others relevant to Dolby and consumers are the television screen, the PC/laptop screen and the mobile screen. Today, all these screens are being used to consume entertainment in different forms at different places. And Dolby has a value proposition for all of them.
