This summer, Dorothy and Toto will skip the yellow brick road in the same cutting-edge Las Vegas Arena, which hosts everything from Phish and Backstreet Boys concerts to MMA battles. Yes, one of Hollywood's most popular movies, "The Wizard of Oz", is about to enter the orb.
But the massive 16K resolution internal LED screen updates that bring the movie classics to the venue require more than a dozen visual effects to the house, researchers and the team of archives, and superstar producer Jane Rosenthal behind the Irishman, and need "Irishman" and "Meet with Parents".
As part of this week type The story of the cover, Rosenthal first explored the secret projects before the Wizard of Oz before opening on August 28.
1.) Yes, it uses AI
The 1939 version of The Wizard of Oz was made much smaller than the 160,000-foot screen that the orb had. This means that the producers of the new film need to "cover" all images so that they can fill the sponge-like space with AI and add characters and backgrounds that are not included in the original scene.
"When you see Dorothy running on that opening shot and running towards Gale's Farm, you can also see the entire landscape and where the house is," Rosenthal said. "The same thing about the props - Professor Marvel's caravan, you'll only see this small part of it. But if you expand, you'll see all this crazy stuff he has there, like the skull and his magical act."
To this end, Rosenthal and her team conducted archaeological excavations, which carried them through building blocks, museums and studio repositories.
"We went to the original shooting list that photographers used," Rosenthal said. "We browsed all the production designer drawings. We looked at all the props in the Warner Bros. Archives and Academy archives."
The result is the emerald city, Munchkinland and an evil witch castle, and if they had only a larger canvas, the original filmmakers would be able to create it.
2.) But it uses AI “ethically”
The creative community in Hollywood believes that AI is an existential threat. However, Rosenthal said people need to find a way to use groundbreaking techniques in moral parameters. On "The Wizard of Oz of the Sphere", technicians trained AI specifically for the characters and images of the original movie, without doing anything. They did it with the full involvement of Warner Bros., a studio that owns the original movie.
“Whenever we make a change, we talk to them,” Rosenthal said.
3.) It takes less time to reach the wizard!
"Wife of Oz" clocks in 102 minutes. The open version in Las Vegas will run at a brisk pace. "It's shorter, but also shorter on TV because there's a commercial break," Rosenthal said.
Rosenthal resists the temptation to go back and includes the deleted scene. “There is no original content in it,” she said.
One thing they added is some immersive elements. However, Rosenthal will only offer some different hints about this ounce. She laughed, “There are ruby slippers in this movie.”
Get ready to click on those high heels!
4.) They are still arguing about repairing the lion's mane
Film production has appeared in the 85 years since the production of "The Wizard of Oz". Special effects and makeup are improved through leaps and boundaries, and CGI makes it easier to clean up bugs in the editing room. Then there's the fact that four directors (King Vidor, George Cukor, Victor Fleming and Richard Thorpe) work on different points of their messy production, and you have some huge mistake secrets.
"When you watch this movie at high resolution, it shows something interesting," Rosenthal said. "They don't have the same continuity control as we have now. There are ways to put on makeup. Like the way they stick to the lion's mane, you can see it. Did you change that, or just leave it?"
It's still unclear which direction the team will tilt.
“We are still debating,” Rosenthal said. "There are a few shots that you want to know if it's fixed or use it as a quaint thing about the Wizard of Oz."
5.) More classic movies may go to Sin City
If The Wizard of Oz is successful, Rosenthal predicts that other classic movies may be experienced on the orb.
"This is a template for our industry," Rosenthal said. "It's not how Marty Scorsese's film association restores movies, but a way we can see movies through the eyes of the director and the time of production. We want to do other movies, but we don't know what that is."
She is not saying whether these include the greatest movies in history (such as "Casablanca" or "The Godfather") or more popular successes like "Star Wars" and "Avengers", but she has some very strong insights into what's and doesn't work.
"You don't want to do something ubiquitous and put 'Harry Potter' on the sphere," Rosenthal said. Instead, she thinks the best movie for the sphere is "immersive with the audience of the fourth quarter."
In other words, something the whole family will love.