A few weeks ago I left a screening tornado In 4DX (A multi-sensory experience where your seat moves, water sprays in your face, wind blows in your hair, and flashing lights mimic lightning) It felt like I had just ridden the craziest roller coaster at Six Flags. I had a dazzling smile on my face for hours after the movie ended, and I immediately sat down to write about it. I also bought tickets The original film will be released soon. tornadothe format is the same.
I’m not the only one who fell in love with this form of drama: tornado Its impressive box office performance is powered by 4DX viewing – a technology that, while more than 15 years old, is perfect for tornado movies, according to type“Inaugural ticket sales… were approximately $2.1 million…30% higher than the event’s previous opening weekend record holder (in 2023) super mario bros movie“. But how are 4DX projections created and programmed? How did this exciting way of watching movies come about? I sat down with Paul Kim, senior vice president of content and production at CJ 4DPLEX, the Seoul-based film technology company that pioneered the medium, to learn more about the technology and the impressive team behind it .
The rise of 4DX
“Movies are an important part of Korean entertainment culture,” Kim said during the video call. “We have a lot of big movie theaters that are open 24 hours a day because people go to the movies at four in the morning. Any new technology, a new way of watching movies, [the Korean audience is] always leads to it. 4DX makes perfect sense.
The first 4DX movie from 2009 was largely forgotten Journey to the Center of the Earthscreening at the CGV Sangam Theater in Seoul, South Korea. But the medium’s popularity has since skyrocketed Avatar It premiered in the same theaters a few months later, and since then, according to Kim, the 4DX team has “written close to 80 movies a year.” Part of the appeal of 4DX viewing (which Kim admits “isn’t for everyone”) is the feeling of being there, but he thinks there are other factors that make it extra special.
The Regal Times Square 4DX Cinema I saw tornado.
“You sit down and there’s always a lot of people who have never seen a 4DX movie, and the first thing or the shock happens and you just hear the whole theater giggling, which is almost cathartic, right? ” He continued, “That’s the point, you’re in the movie theater, you’re enjoying yourself there, and everyone’s looking around and saying ‘Can I laugh? Can I enjoy this?’ But everyone is doing it, and it changes. It became a public matter.
There are currently 678 4DX theaters in 65 countries around the world, and although the United States didn’t get its first theater until 2014, it currently has the largest theater in the world: Regal Times Square, with nearly 300 seats (given how large 4DX is , which is an impressive feat) the chair must be). I told Kim this is where I saw it tornado. “It’s big. Unheard of,” he said with a smile.
How 4DX movie screening works
There are some things I really want to know about 4DX. Ever since I happily walked out of that theater, some confusion has been bothering me: How is the movie programmed? Such a massive global company would certainly utilize the most high-end technology to simplify and speed up the process of converting movies to 4DX format, but Kim assured me that it’s much more customizable than that.
“There’s a misconception that this is an automated process. It’s not. We have a full team of artists, or editors as we like to call them, who work on every 4DX movie,” Kim explains. “We get the final cut of the film, sometimes even a work-in-progress version, weeks before it’s first released. Then our editors will sit in front of their computers, and we have software that works with our equipment, and they Editing will be done scene by scene sometimes when there is a lot of action e.g. tornadothey would go frame by frame if necessary to make sure every little bump in the truck, every lightning strike, was matched and synchronized correctly. I have to give credit to the team because this is a creative process and it’s not just something that happens, it takes a lot of time, work, labor and effort.
Kim outlined the opening ceremony tornado sequence, and how the team designed the 4DX experience for it. “The calm before the storm, you’re introduced to the characters in the truck. As the tornado starts to form, we have to think, ‘Okay, now who are the characters we want to highlight? Is it the truck driving away from the tornado or the tornado?” [itself]? At some point we decided, ‘Okay, we’re going to de-emphasize trucks because now it’s all about the tornadoes,'” he explained. “It’s just which character we want to highlight, as far as characters go, it doesn’t have to be a human character.”
It takes a 4DX editor approximately two weeks to design an experience for a two-hour film. “On average, there are two teams working on this,” King said. “One team is dedicated to the chair, the movement and vibration of the chair. Then there’s another team overlaying effects, water, air, flash, fog, all of that. And then there’s an art director, or what we call a lead producer. They’re like An orchestra conductor watches it all and makes sure that all the pieces fit together and add to the story.
The 4DX team then brought in a filmmaker to watch the final cut and provide suggestions. King said this part of the process always yields incredible results, as Dune: Part 2released earlier this year. “There’s a sequence where there’s a device on the right, a thumper that summons sandworms. When there’s a close-up of the thumper, we added a vibration to the seat. But when it disappears and you can’t see it , we stopped vibrating because one of them is no longer on the screen. dune Editors come in and say, ‘You know what’s really cool? Even if it’s not on the screen, just keep pounding, keep vibrating… it’s in the background, you know it’s happening, there’s the sandworm, you know it’s coming, but it gives a little extra anticipation and suspense. This is the coolest idea ever.
Before our conversation ended, Kim told me another anecdote to demonstrate how much creativity goes into 4DX screenings. “I was in Korea with a team in June and I was sitting down with our lead producer. She’s been coding or editing 4DX movies for 15 years, she’s done over 315 of her own, she knows it all, ” he said. “She told me she bought a gyroscope and accelerometer Godzilla minus onea lot of which takes place on board. She rented a boat and went out with a gyroscope to see how much it wobbled, and she went go-karting with an accelerometer to see how much force was exerted when turning. It’s not just, “Okay, it looks like it’s turning left, so let’s make the chair turn left.” It’s the nuance, the real care that goes into designing 4DX for every movie.
Kim told me tornado In 4DX, it’s a match made in heaven, but the team is still surprised by the hype. “It just appeals to the audience, which makes sense, and like you said, it’s a perfect storm.” But there’s another new movie he thinks is a must-see on 4DX: Alien: Romulus. “I highly recommend you see this in 4DX,” he said with an impish smile.
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