Introduction : stereo front and center -- Widescreens, headphones, and concert halls : film stereo's identity crisis -- Fantasia and failure on a theme by Bell Telephone -- More speakers, more problems : the Cinerama experience -- The triple-track disruption and the CinemaScope solution -- Perspecta, Todd-AO, and the emergence of monocentrism -- Dolby Stereo : the end of an era -- Conclusion : life's the same, movies in stereo.
Summary:
"Surround sound is often mistaken as a relatively new phenomenon in cinemas, one that emerged in the 1970s with the arrival of Dolby. Making Stereo Fit shows how Hollywood studios have instead been implementing surround-sound techniques for the past century and argues that their endurance owes primarily to the long-standing economic tension between stereophonic and monophonic sound. Throughout the book, Eric Dienstfrey analyzes newly discovered archival materials, as well as a myriad of stereo releases from Hell's Angels (1930) to Get Out (2017), to examine how Hollywood's dependence on single-channel sound left filmmakers unable to fully realize the aesthetic potential of surround sound. Though studios initially experimented with stereo's unique affordances, Dienstfrey details how film sound designers eventually codified a conservative set of surround-sound conventions that prevail today, despite the arrival of more immersive technologies"-- Provided by publisher.
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