A thought came into my head the other day. Before VHS cassettes emerged in the late 1970’s, how did people watch movies after their theatrical runs? Unless they were featured on television or playing at a revival theater, the answer is they didn’t. For decades, many films were left inaccessible to the general public, including a great number of classics. Which makes one realize how much we take modern home entertainment for granted.
In a Nutshell…
After emerging as the victor of the VHS/Betamax format war of the mid-70’s, VHS tapes revolutionized the entertainment industry from top to bottom. A myriad of newly resurrected films could now be easily accessed, viewed at leisure, and most importantly, preserved. Surviving the debuts of various other formats, including the infamous Laserdisc bomb of the 80’s, VHS dominated home entertainment until the DVD was introduced in the 90’s. If VHS was the reefer of home entertainment, then DVD was the crack-cocaine. It revolutionized movie watching even further, offering better clarity, sound and video options like subtitles and language tracks, and a variety of other goodies such as trailers, behind-the-scenes featurettes, and audio commentary tracks. In the past couple of years we’ve witnessed the advent of a new generation: Blu-ray (the victor of yet another format war, beating out HD DVDs in early 2008), which currently stands as the capstone of home entertainment.
Anyone with a 72-inch 1080p television with a surround sound system and Blu-ray player will tell you that when it comes home entertainment, there really isn’t much more that needs to be improved. But technology doesn’t just stand still. The next bigger-and-better thing eventually comes around (digital downloads may already be making discs obsolete).
So where do we go from here?
Phase One: 3-D
The logical next step for home entertainment is in fact currently being developed by media companies. Although 3-D film technology was adapted even before its initial boom in the 1950’s, its popularity has since ebbed and flowed, never really gaining a firm grip with the moviegoing public. But with the evolution of CGI at last approaching its pinnacle (or so it seems, at least), and confirmed by the unprecedented success of James Cameron’s 3-D Avatar, it certainly appears that this time around, the technology is here to stay. Time to Consummation: 3-5 years.
In John Carpenter's "They Live," Roddy Piper is able to see subliminal messages created by an alien-run government whenever he puts on special sunglasses.
Phase Two: Choose-Your-Own-Adventure
You know those books where you get to choose what the characters do at the end of the page? Imagine that concept applied to films. You’re watching Saw 23. Jigsaw’s latest captive is hobbling through a labyrinthine warehouse armed with a meat cleaver and comes upon a bleeding man – a known antagonist – chained to a water heater about to burst and crying out for help, when suddenly the screen freezes and a menu pops up with three choices: 1) try to free the man, 2) get out of there and let him boil, 3) hack him to bloody pulp with the meat cleaver. This would be a nightmare for filmmakers, who would have to shoot several times more footage than usual, and cinema purists might complain that it compromises the integrity of storytelling. But this new media form allows for a lot of fun new possibilities. The concept could be expanded to create video game/movie hybrids (many video games already feature extensive cinematic sequences, and a few, such as Enter the Matrix, even incorporate live-action scenes shot specifically for the game). Small indications of this technology have already surfaced on DVDs, with multi-angle features, alternate endings, etc. Time to Consummation: 15-20 years.
Phase Three: 4-D… and Beyond
Where do you go from 3-D? Really, how much more do we need to be immersed in the world of a film? Well, you know, people have other senses besides vision and hearing. Imagine… When the Tyrannosaurus Rex first approaches the idle vehicles in Jurassic Park, the ground literally shakes. When the Doomsday device is activated at the end of Dr. Strangelove, a wave of heat washes over your body. When the cowboys around the campfire toot bean-music out of their asses in Blazing Saddles… well, you get the idea. Some theme parks already have theater-style attractions with little quirks like these. Jerking seats when there is a tumult, a spray of mist when someone sneezes… Retrofitting theaters for this kind of mass sensory-immersion would be daunting, but feasible. And the creative possibilities are virtually endless. However, applying this kind of technology to consumer home theater systems is, at this point, rather outlandish. The most likely result if this ever comes to fruition would be a customized La-Z-Boy recliner that wirelessly syncs to your TV/media player and perform various sensory functions on cue, based on whatever film you may be watching. Don’t look for this to be available any time soon. Time to Consummation: 30-35 years.
Phase Four: Full Immersion
At this point, we’re pretty much in the Matrix. Virtual reality to the nth degree. There is little noticeable difference between the real world and the entertainment world. Life doesn’t imitate art or vice-versa because they are literally one and the same. Time to Consummation: 100+ years.
This is just some food for thought. Please post any other ideas of what you think the future of home entertainment might have in store.
Zach Copeland is a Senior Writer for The Film Crusade.
Great article! I can imagine those choose-those-own-adventure movies being a big hit, especially if they rig the theaters to accept votes from the seats. The main catch would be that audiences probably lean towards the same general decisions every time, so any one who goes in for a repeat viewing hoping for a different movie, would probably keep getting the same one (I’m willing to bet the “killing spree” ending would win every time.) It would be good for marketing and research purposes, though.
Personally, I’m holding out for Wonka-Vision.
Phase 3 is already sorta here, there’s a system called D-box in some DVDs/Blu-rays that are basically seat shakers, so the move can send motion commands to special devices in the seats to allow a little extra immersion…
as to choose your own adventure, it was tried to an extent with “Clue”, the movie, but not like what it could be.
Interesting article, though I’m going to debate your points it certainly provoked my thoughts about the matter.
The “choose your own adventure” products actually came and went over fifteen years ago – there were a number produced for game consoles of that era. They failed utterly, perhaps partly because the video was pretty rough, and the writing even rougher. But the biggest problem (and this was shared by “Clue”) is that the audience doesn’t want the story to be interrupted in order to make them decide.
If you want an interactive experience, we have that now in the form of high-end video games. I’d suggest taking a look at “Mass Effect” for example. If there’s a prediction to be made it’s that interactive games will become even more story-like and accessible, attracting a much larger non-gamer audience. Time frame for that is probably within five years.
The 4D experience is likewise old hat, particularly with theme park ride movies coupled with flight simulator technology that have been doing plenty of business for over two decades. It’s unlikely to ever become widely used because it’s simply too expensive to maintain on a large scale and anything that exposes an audience to random motion, chemical smells and whatnot is potentially a liability nightmare (take a look at the history of Smell-O-Vision). Home novelty devices like the one mentioned above will probably continue to be readily available and it’s quite probably that a “standard control system” may be adopted. This will either happen in the next five years or it won’t happen at all.
Finally, jacking into the matrix is either completely impossible or we’ll have figured out how to do it in the next twenty or thirty years, tops.
You’re probably pretty spot on about 3D TV, though I think if “Avatar” is released with a consumer priced BluRay 3D player, TV and glasses it may become the most quickly adopted entertainment tech ever. The newest generation of hi-def flat screens already include a number that are 3D-ready.
Don’t say I didn’t warn ya