Latest news with #SphereImmersiveSound
Business Wire
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Business Wire
LIONS, TIGERS, AND SCORES – OH MY! THE ICONIC SOUNDS OF OZ COME TO SPHERE
LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sphere Entertainment Co. (NYSE: SPHR) announced today new details around the sound, score and infrasound haptic seats for The Wizard of Oz at Sphere, a fully immersive experience that will make audiences feel like they have stepped inside the film. Sphere Studios is leveraging Sphere's audio technologies, along with newly discovered archival material, to create an experience that remains true to the filmmakers' intent while layering in technologies that bring it new life. 'There's Dorothy and 'Over the Rainbow' as you heard them before, and there will be Dorothy and 'Over the Rainbow' as you hear them now, with the film's classic music taking on new clarity and immersion through Sphere Immersive Sound,' said Carolyn Blackwood, Head of Sphere Studios. ' The Wizard of Oz at Sphere, heard and felt through our cutting-edge technologies, will create a new emotional connection to The Wizard of Oz that is only possible at Sphere.' To take advantage of Sphere Immersive Sound's 167,000 programmable speakers, and ability to direct sound anywhere in the venue, the original film's mono score was re-recorded to take on new clarity via Sphere Immersive Sound, while preserving the casts' vocal performances. The mono audio had to first be separated into individual stems of vocals, dialogue, and sound effects. This process, a collaboration between Sphere Studios and Warner Bros. Post Production Creative Services, used advanced audio technologies to create the individual components without distortion or artifact. Inside Sphere, the stems are being layered together to create a sound mix that reveals a depth and clarity unheard in the 1939 film. At Sphere, our respect for this Academy Award-winning music extended to re-recording the score on the same scoring stage as the 1930s original – retaining the same acoustic environment. To further maintain the integrity of the original score, the re-recorded score features more than 80 musicians playing in the 1930s style of film music, including techniques such as pizzicato and vibrato that were standard for the era, but are less common in modern scores. Additionally, an ocarina, a small wind instrument used during the original recording session of 'If I Only Had a Brain,' was also used for The Wizard of Oz at Sphere recording, having been passed down through generations of musicians. While re-recording the score, each section of the orchestra was also recorded individually with state-of-the-art miking. Coupled with Sphere Immersive Sound's directional capabilities and the vocal and sound effect stems, it will seem as though sound travels around the venue. For example, as the Tin Man tilts back and forth during his number, the isolated sound of the strings will also oscillate to emphasize his movement in visual and sonic unison. 'We approached the recording and mixing process for The Wizard of Oz at Sphere with a deep reverence for the original music, resulting in a breathtaking blend of legacy and innovation,' said Julianne Jordan, Grammy Award-winning music supervisor of The Wizard of Oz at Sphere. 'Sphere Immersive Sound offers opportunities for sound mixing that go well beyond a traditional theater, and this score will now be heard and felt with a level of clarity and immersion that was previously impossible.' To enhance the immersion in The Wizard of Oz at Sphere, Sphere's infrasound and haptic seat technology is being used for the first time to not only create vibrations, but also emit tones that emphasize moments in the film experience. For example, when the characters enter the haunted forest, an eerie tone will emanate from the seats, bringing the audience into the foursome's perspective and imposing the same ominous feeling. 'This is the first time sound technology has been used in this way in any venue,' said Paul Freeman, Vice President and Principal Audio Artist, Sphere Studios. 'We developed a physical way of delivering sound that allows us to not only vibrate the seats, but also place tone in them that puts you in the film – audiences will literally feel what they are hearing.' The vibrations, infrasound, and Sphere Immersive Sound will come together for maximum impact during key moments of The Wizard of Oz at Sphere. When the main characters visit the Wizard in his throne room, his voice will boom throughout the venue, complemented by tremors and low frequency sounds from the seats. Intentional reverberations will be created within the venue to completely immerse the audience in sound – and anticipation. The Wizard of Oz at Sphere will transport audiences, making them feel like they are in Oz traveling down the yellow brick road alongside Dorothy and her friends on an adventure to the Emerald City. The original film, shot for a 4:3 movie screen in the 1930s, will now fill Sphere's 160,000 sq. ft. interior display plane, which wraps up, over and around the audience to create a fully immersive visual environment. The Wizard of Oz at Sphere will utilize environmental effects and custom scents to make audiences feel as if they are part of the movie and have landed in Kansas and Oz. The sound creative team for The Wizard of Oz at Sphere includes Grammy Award-nominated music producer/sound designer Paul Freeman (Spies); Grammy Award-winning music supervisor Julianne Jordan (A Star Is Born); Academy Award-nominated composer David Newman (Anastasia); and Academy Award-winning sound engineer Shawn Murphy (Jurassic Park). And from Warner Bros. Post Production Creative Services: sound engineer Tony Pilkington (Sinners); Academy Award-winning supervising sound editor/sound designer Richard King (Dune: Part Two); and Cinema Audio Society-nominated re-recording mixer Tim LeBlanc (Superman). The Wizard of Oz at Sphere opens August 28, 2025, with multiple showtimes daily. Tickets start at $104 and are on sale now at For groups of nine or more, please contact 725-258-7775 or groups@ For suites, please contact 725-258-6743 or suites@ Hotel packages are available for a limited time exclusively through The Venetian Resort Las Vegas, the resort connected to Sphere. For more information, visit or call 866-682-6155. For press assets related to sound, please click here. For an embeddable YouTube link to the sound video, please click here. For the complete The Wizard of Oz at Sphere EPK, please click here. About Sphere Immersive Sound Sphere Immersive Sound was specifically developed for Sphere's curved interior. The system includes 167,000 individually amplified loudspeaker drivers. The system's 3D audio-beamforming technology creates unique, highly controlled soundwaves, ensuring that levels and quality remain consistent from point of origin to destination. The system also utilizes wave field synthesis, a spatial audio rendering technique that leverages virtual acoustic environments, allowing sound designers to create a virtual point of origin, which can then be placed in a precise spatial location in the venue. About Sphere Sphere is a next-generation entertainment medium that is redefining the future of live entertainment. A venue where the foremost artists, creators, and technologists create extraordinary experiences that bring storytelling to a new level and take audiences to places both real and imagined. The venue hosts original Sphere Experiences from leading Hollywood directors; concerts and residencies from the world's biggest artists; and premier marquee events. The first Sphere venue opened in Las Vegas in September 2023, and is a new Las Vegas landmark, powered by cutting-edge technologies that ignite the senses and enable audiences to share experiences at a never-before-seen scale. More information is available at
USA Today
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Inside the Las Vegas Sphere's plans to enhance 'The Wizard of Oz' using AI
NEW YORK − The yellow brick road is about to get colossal when it winds through the Las Vegas Sphere. Between the venue's 160,000-square-foot screen display that anchors the visual environment and remastered songs that will play through 167,000 speakers from Sphere Immersive Sound, the enhanced version of 'The Wizard of Oz' will definitely not be in Kansas anymore when it arrives Aug. 28. The intent, says Jennifer Koester, president and COO of the Sphere, is to answer the question, 'What would it feel like to be in Oz?' Through the venue's haptic seats, viewers will feel the swirls of the tornado that whisk Dorothy's house to Munchkinland, smell the poppies as they envelop the room in 16K x 16K LED screen resolution, tremble a little with the Cowardly Lion and maybe make those flying monkeys feel exceptionally realistic. Tickets to the immersive version of "The Wizard of Oz" are on sale now at The film will be shown multiple times daily for an open-ended run. Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle. The ambitious amplification of the iconic movie is possible through a marriage between artificial intelligence and film archives from Warner Bros. and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The dual components allowed creators 'to make things that weren't possible, possible,' Koester says in a sitdown with USA TODAY, while still maintaining the integrity of the original film. Koester uses the example of Dorothy's limbs, which, when filmed for a 4:3 aspect ratio on a standard-size movie screen in 1939, didn't always include full images. 'The original film was shot so you have a picture of Dorothy, but you don't see her hands, you don't see her legs. When you think about (the size of) the (Sphere) screen, you know her hands and legs were there and we want to show them,' Koester says. Working with additional footage that never made it into the film and set designs for the film, 'we trained (AI) models on all of that original footage. So now we can create an arm for Dorothy or fill in her legs from that AI model.' In addition to the visuals, the original songs from the film including treasured favorites 'We're Off to See the Wizard,' 'Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead' and Judy Garland's timeless 'Over the Rainbow,' have been remastered and their orchestrations rerecorded. Koester says an 80-piece orchestra was brought to the original MGM scoring stage near Los Angeles to redo the entire soundtrack, which, when combined with the Sphere's haptics, will augment the immersive experience. 'Imagine the feeling you can evoke because you're coming down the yellow brick road into the spooky forest,' Koester says. 'And to your left you're hearing spooky sounds and then maybe some of the flying monkeys on your right. It's the evocation of feeling that becomes so possible because of the technology that exists in that venue.' The all-encompassing experience will carry a ticket price of $104, which aligns with the current Sphere films 'Postcard from Earth' from filmmaker Darren Aronofsky and 'V-U2,' the startlingly lifelike concert film taken from U2's Sphere-opening residency. As with all things related to the venue, it isn't about the experience you think you know, it's about the unexpected. Koester hints that the immersions will begin as soon as you enter the Sphere and walk into its cavernous atrium that will 'transform you into the world of Kansas" and later, "when you exit the (seats) and you've been through Oz, there's going to be some really innovative and interactive activations.' The venue is promoting its Sphere-icized 'Wizard of Oz' with an outdoor installation suggesting that the venue has landed atop the Wicked Witch of the East, complete with her 50-foot-long legs and 22-foot-tall ruby slippers extended onto the ground. The legs will be on view all the time, but daily photo opportunities on the Sphere campus are subject to times listed at 'It's larger than life,' Koester says, 'and just a hint to what's about to happen inside.'
