Hidden behind two passcode-protected doorways in a nondescript workplace advanced simply outdoors of La Rochelle, France, sits the Bunker – ICE Theaters’ state-of-the-art, extremely protected facility the place visible magic will get made.
Since 2017, 5 post-production whizzes have manned the studio’s 15 screens and numerous processors – all of them unconnected to at least one one other and to the broader internet in considered one of many safety measures – encoding blockbusters body by body to construct out an ever-growing library of ICE embellished options.
Working for the premium offshoot of French exhibitor CGR Cinemas, ICE technicians work on 30 Hollywood productions per 12 months, mining visible data from the furthest reaches of every anamorphic body in an effort to design bespoke mild exhibits that play out on the 2 rows of LED screens constructed into each ICE immersive theater.
“Our course of and precept is to interact,” says ICE exec Alexandre Brouillat. “Our job is – and at all times might be – to plunge the spectator into the guts of the movie and to by no means allow them to depart. Like goldsmiths, our crew works with precision to nourish the viewers’ peripheral imaginative and prescient with new data.”
As it builds off the far edges of any given body, extending motion and motion onto the ten panels that line the ICE Theater wall, this new visible data should above all plunge the viewer again into the movie – honing the viewer’s deal with the filmmaker’s selections moderately than pulling that focus away. In sensible phrases, meaning aligning the visible reverberations to the rhythms of the supply textual content.
“We consider motion pictures like roller-coasters,” Brouillat explains. “We could make a propulsive narrative explode by including further layers, accompanying motion scenes with additional particulars and lighting results whereas augmenting and enlarging the setting [once things slow down].”
Calling themselves “conductors of immersion,” the ICE tech crew had a subject day with lush and visually exuberant titles like final 12 months’s “Avatar: The Way of Water” and the latest “Super Mario Bros. Movie,” whereas confronting totally different artistic challenges when working in an entirely totally different style.
Courtesy of CGR Cinemas
“Horror movies thrive at the hours of darkness,” says creation and post-production VP Thomas Tafforeau. “In such instances we attempt to hold our facet panels as discreet as doable, to have them work in accordance with the shot. We can dim the panels as if in a cave lit solely by a lamp, after which we will take small liberties to intensify the dread and worry. With soar scares or sudden violence, we will use the sunshine to intensify the music – to mark the emotion, shock and horror with sudden flashes of crimson, for instance.”
Some filmic selections show extra daunting than others, as ICE technicians favor to work on movies formatted in scope moderately than 16:9 or academy ratios, whereas the normal shot-reverse-shot enhancing method has pressured a unique set of options.
“In order to keep away from a ping pong impact in such situations, we as a substitute attempt deal with the ambiance,” says Tafforeau. “If two characters are talking with each other in an orange room, we will construct on that colour code, as there are tens of millions of shades of orange. Rather than switching up the panel patterns for every shot, we will make the viewers really feel like they’re within the room with the characters throughout dialogue heavy scenes.”
While ICE’s primary bunker encodes roughly 30 studio titles per 12 months, a second, smaller studio is about to go dwell. Just down the corridor from the bigger facility within the firm’s La Rochelle headquarters, the bunker-annex will deal with one other 20 Bollywood initiatives. Once totally encoded (and despatched again to the producers for validation), every ICE embellished movie is prepared for launch in affiliated theaters.
And because the tech crew cuts via a workload practically 50 movies sturdy, they’ve additionally taken a glance backwards, toying with the concept of encoding basic movies and ever-popular repertory titles. If given free rein, and the keys to the locked-down bunker, the ICE artistic brass would like to get their palms across the authentic “Star Wars” trilogy, so as to add the trendy blockbuster’s foundational textual content to a rising ICE Theater catalog.
