My Day at Todd-AO

[MikeBrewster77]

You had me at Pic #50 with the three LSR6332's

Thank you for sharing!

[Ducatista47]

One of our HT group members posted his better pictures here:

http://socalht.com/htgroup/todd-ao/html/0.htm

I assume that is a nice SPL meter on the desk next to the remote controls in slide 45? It looks like my Radio Shack piece but a whole lot nicer. Fluke type colors too.

Clark

[JBL 4645]

Easy too spot the JBL 4412. wow the layout of the facility looks incredible a few achieve projectors and what looks like Moviola cutting machine.

[Titanium Dome]

I assume that is a nice SPL meter on the desk next to the remote controls in slide 45? It looks like my Radio Shack piece but a whole lot nicer. Fluke type colors too.

Clark

Yes, it is. I forget the brand, but it's obviously a huge leap above our standard RS units.

[JeffW]

I wasn't familiar with Todd-AO when this thread was active, but just had an experience with Todd-AO I thought I'd share.

While today Todd-AO is more on the sound side of the picture, Todd-AO also had a widescreen film format and a few feature films were shot in this 65mm negative/70mm print format.

One of these films, and the last one made in Todd-AO 70mm format after a nearly 20 year gap, was Baraka in 1992.

This film was re-mastered and scanned into digital format, re-released in 2008 on Blu Ray and DVD.

Here's the blurb from Wiki about the process (and this is also covered in the bonus footage on the Blu Ray disc)

Following previous DVD releases, in 2007 the original 65 mm negative was re-scanned at 8K (a horizontal resolution of 8192 pixels) with equipment designed specifically for Baraka at FotoKem Laboratories. The automated 8K film scanner, operating continuously, took more than three weeks to finish scanning more than 150000 frames (taking approximately 12–13 seconds to scan each frame), producing over 30 terabytes of image data in total. After a 16-month digital intermediate process, including a 96 kHz/24 bit audio remaster by Stearns for the DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack, the superior result was finally re-released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc in October, 2008. Project supervisor Andrew Oran says this remastered Baraka is "arguably the highest quality DVD that's ever been made". Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert describes the Blu-ray release as "the finest video disc I have ever viewed or ever imagined."

This title originally popped up in a discussion of really high quality Blu Ray releases, and it's pretty amazing to watch. There's no dialog, no plot, just a series of scenes set to a trance-ambience soundtrack (think Hearts of Space, for instance).

At any rate, the quality of the video and the DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack make this an incredible demonstration for your home theatre, but the movie stands on its own as sort of a National Geographic magazine set to music.

More info with some stills of some of the scenes

http://www.spiritofbaraka.com/baraka

[Tom Brennan]

Quite a few pictures were shot in Todd-AO; Oklahoma, Around the World in 80 Days, South Pacific, The Wayneamo and Cleopatra come to mind.

[JeffW]

Here's the list, I make it at 20 not counting the Todd-AO films about Todd-AO:

The following films were produced in the 70 mm Todd-AO format. (This list does not include films photographed in Todd-AO 35 (see above)).

• Oklahoma! (1955) - 30 frame/s (also photographed in Cinemascope)
• Around the World in Eighty Days (1956) - 30 frame/s
• The Miracle of Todd-AO (1956) - 30 frame/s; short subject
• South Pacific (1958)
• The March of Todd-AO (1958) - short subject
• Porgy and Bess (1959)
• Can-Can (1960)
• The Alamo (1960)
• Cleopatra (1963)
• Man in the 5th Dimension (1964) - NYC World's Fair short subject
• The Sound of Music (1965)
• Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965)
• The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965)
• The Bible: In the Beginning (1966) - Dimension 150 variant
• Doctor Dolittle (1967)
• Star! (1968)
• Hello, Dolly! (1969)
• Krakatoa, East of Java (1969) - presented in 70 mm Cinerama
• Airport (1970)
• Patton (1970) - Dimension 150 variant
• The Last Valley (1971)
• Baraka (1992)