Boxoffice-Febuary.1998

tor parent, EI Segundo, Calif.-based Aura Systems
Inc., worked on acoiator technology for
the Star Wars Defense Initiative championed
by President Reagan in the 1980s.
The AVS system uses spinoff technology:
compact 25-watt electromagnetic transducers
that can be hooked up like speakers and that
are designed to reproduce low-frequency
sounds (below 1 00 Hz). The transducers attach
to theatre seats ; AVS takes the film effects track
using any sound system and causes seats to
resonate, which the audience perceives as traditional
bass. This effect is accomplished without
exhibitors risking speaker damage irom
large sound pressure levels and with lessened
worry about sound leakage to adjacent halls.
Although AuraSound has been targeting the
Southern California exhibition market due to
the region's abundance of theatres and its
movie studio presence, the AVS product remains
better known in the special-use market.
In Las Vegas, the Luxor Hotel's "Theater of
Time" attraction and the Riviera Hotel's
"Splash n" revue have installed AVS.
THE SOUND OF SILENCE
What if exhibitors could suddenly have access
to 34 million new patrons?
That's the number of deaf, hard-of-hearing,
blind and visually impaired individuals in the
United States, according to Judith Navoy, project
manager for the Boston-based WGBH Educational
Foundation's Motion Picture Access
Project. WGBH has launched the Rear Window
Captioning System, through which dialogue
captions can be seen by the deaf and hard-ofhearing,
and DVS Theatrical, which delivers
descriptive narration via infrared or FM listening
systems to the blind and visually impaired.
These demos, which are also underserved
by other traditional entertainment media,
could theoretically mean a 12 percent growth
at domestic turnstiles. Here's the potential
math: In 1996, 1 .34 billion movie admissions
were recorded, meaning each American on
average is attending a theatre roughly five
times a year; at the 1996 average ticket price
of $4.41 (about $22 annually), 34 million patrons
could account for as much as $750 million
in boxoffice receipts, which if attained
would have pushed the 1996 total domestic
boxoffice of $5.9 billion to above $6.6 billion.
Such numbers might be optimistic, and
Navoy admits that, though there's a "very large
potential audience out there," it's "hard to
guarantee a tremendous demand from consumers."
But she says audience reaction to
recent demonstrations of the technologies at a
permanent installation at General Cinemas'
Sherman Oaks, Calif, multiplex during
Universal's run of "The Jackal" was "terrific."
"It was pretty amazing," concurs Andrea
Nee, DTS vice president and general manager
of theatrical operations. DTS adapted its digital
technology to include the captioning and
description tracks on a separate CD-ROM that
plays alongside the other discs in DTS' player.
The player sends reversed captions to a
Trans-Lux LED display mounted in the
theatre's rear. Deaf and hearing-impaired customers
are able to use a portable reflective
panel, which they base in their cupholders;
they then adjust the clear reflector to bring the
captions into their particular line of sight.
(Navoy stresses that users are able to do this
without interfering with the movie experience
of the general public around them.) The DTS
player also sends the DVS Theatrical narration
to the theatre's emitter system, which transmits
the description track to headsets worn by blind
and visually impaired moviegoers.
The current cost of installing both the Rear
Window captioning and the DVS narration
systems, Navoy says, is about $15,000; she
hop)es that price will fall toward $10,000 as
more theatres use the technologies. (Each system
can be installed separately. The DVS narration
technology is the less expensive, at
$1,000 to $1,500, but it's probable for such a
visual medium as the cinema that the greater
upside is with the Rear Wmdow system.)
Navoy adds, "The positive public relations
aspect is a benefit of this. With there being so
many theatres out there these days, customer
service is an advantage to any exhibitor. Beyond
the numbers and the dollars, this will give
them an edge in how they're perceived."
There's also an additional advantage to the
motion picture art form itself. "DTS made a
large commitment to being able to deliver
exactly what the artist created to the moviegoing
public," Nee says. "And this expands that
audience for those artists."
For more developments in somid,
see our Nezv Sound Products Buying
Guide on pp. 42-43 in this issue.
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Response No. 472
February, 1998 31