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Topic: Columbia theme SDDS-only?

Charles Everett
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1470
From: New Jersey
Registered: May 2001

posted 01-02-2003 03:19 PM

My theory based on where I saw 4 recent Columbia titles.

The Reading Cinemas in Manville has Dolby Digital in the big halls. For xXx the audio began in the Revolution Studios logo. For Punch-Drunk Love the audio began after the Columbia logo (no Revolution Studios or New Line logos).

The Edgewater Multiplex Cinemas has Dolby Digital in all its halls. For Adaptation the audio began after the Columbia logo faded out.

The AMC Hamilton 24 is SDDS all the way around. For Maid in Manhattan the theme began when the torch lit up.

Maybe it's Sony's subtle way of urging theaters to get SDDS.

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Claude S. Ayakawa
Film God

Posts: 2738
From: Waipahu, Hawaii, USA
Registered: Aug 2002

posted 01-02-2003 03:34 PM

Charles,

The lack of sound during the opening of "XXX" and the other film you mentioned would have been the same even in a SDDS equipped theatre because that is the way the sound was mixed. I saw "MAID IN MANHATTAN" in a SRD theatre (Kapolei #1) and the Columbia logo was accompanied by the studio fanfare. The DVD of "XXX" also did not have any sound for the Columbia logo nor the company (s) that produced the film. By the Way, "MINORITY REPORT" also opened without the "DREAMWORKS and 20th Century Fox fanfares at theatres and on the DVD.

During the dawn of the digital sound era, Columbia and Universal released a few movies in SRD including "DRACULA", "DRAGON-The Bruce Lee Story" and "FM". With the release of "" and JURASSIC PARK", the two studios only used their own digital sound process. Universal had stakes in DTS and settled on that system and Columbia (Sony) developed and used SDDS. After a few years, there were a couple of Columbia films that featured SDDS and DTS such as "THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT" and "CITY SLICKERS-2". On rare ocassions, Columbia also used SRD. One fiilm that comes to mind is "AIR FORCE ONE". The film was released with all three sountracks. Universal did not use any other digital sound process other than DTS until they released "PRIMARY COLORS" in 1998 with all three digital soundtracks. Among the major studios, only Fox and Paramont release most of their films without a SDDS soundtrack, today.

-Claude

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 01-02-2003 06:38 PM

I cannot remember for sure whether the music fanfares for DreamworksSKG and 20th Century Fox were on the front of theatrical prints of "Minority Report" (the sound system at the AMC theater where I watched it was not all that great). But I do know the music fanfare is definitely on the DVD for both company logos.

Before June of 1993, when the "digital sound wars" officially began, the frequency of release for Dolby Digital encoded films was really pretty low. I would say DD title release frequency from June of 1992 to June of 1993 was very comparable to so-so years in the 1980's for 70mm blowup titles. This is the Dolby Digital release list for that one year period, right up to one week before "Jurassic Park" brought DTS into the fray:

BATMAN RETURNS Warner Bros., 6/19/92, Dolby SR•D
HONEY I BLEW UP THE KID Touchtone, 7/17/92, Dolby SR•D
THE MIGHTY DUCKS Disney, 10/2/92, Dolby SR•D
UNDER SIEGE Warner Bros., 10/9/92, Dolby SR•D
ALADDIN Disney, 11/11/92, Dolby SR•D
Bram Stoker's DRACULA Columbia, 11/13/92, Dolby SR•D
MALCOLM X Warner Bros., 11/18/92, Dolby SR•D
THE BODYGUARD Warner Bros., 11/25/92, Dolby SR•D
PURE COUNTRY Warner Bros., 10/23/92 SR•D
TOYS Fox, 12/18/92, SR•D
ALIVE Touchtone, 1/1/93, SR•D
MATINEE Universal, 1/29/93, SR•D
SOMMERSBY Warner Bros., 2/5/93, SR•D
A FAR OFF PLACE Disney, 3/5/93, SR•D
BOUND BY HONOR Hollywood, 4/30/93, SR•D
DRAGON Universal, 5/7/93, SR•D
POSSE Gramercy, 5/14/93, SR•D
SUPER MARIO BROTHERS Hollywood, 5/28/93, SR•D
GUILTY AS SIN Hollywood, 6/4/93, SR•D
WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT Touchtone, 6/9/93, SR•D

Other useless bits of gear-head release trivia (that Bob must get rid of or what remains of his brain will rot):

In the fall of 1993, "Demolition Man" was supposed to be the first dual format Dolby Digital/DTS release, but plans for that got pulled. Warner Bros. did, however, make the first DD/DTS release (in limited form) with Oliver Stone's "Heaven and Earth." Fox was the first company to issue a large inventory of Dolby Digital/DTS prints with "Speed" in 1994. One year later, Fox was the first studio to do triple format release with "Die Hard With a Vengeance" (although the SDDS/SR prints were separate from the SR/SRD/DTS prints).

Columbia messed around with DTS in 1994, using it on the releases of "City Slickers II" and "Little Big League". When Sony couldn't get SDDS into general production in 1993, they struck 70mm prints for certain markets. In 1994, they used DTS a couple times during that summer. SDDS installations began in August of 1994, not long after AMC's announcement they would equip all their screens with the format.

The would-be Paul Hogan come-back film, "Lightning Jack" (with Oscar winner, Cuba Gooding Jr. behaving as goofy as anyone ever has in movie history) was the first release to feature DD soundtracking on all release prints.

Warner Bros. is the only major studio to have used Dolby Digital on all of its films featuring digital sound. All the others have used CDS, or done things like DTS-only, SDDS-only or even the rare DTS/SDDS thing seen on films like "Men in Black" and "Jerry Maguire." There may be a couple indie film companies that can claim they've used Dolby Digital on all of their digital sound releases, but I cannot name them.

"Interview With the Vampire" was the first film to do the SRD/SDDS combination. Warner Bros. had been releasing a string of films in dual DD/DTS form. But they decided at the last minute to go with SDDS on "Interview". Some newspapers had ad goofs showing the DTS logo on stack ad artwork. Warner Bros. would continue doing SRD/SDDS releases until "Twister" debuted in 1996. From that point, Warners had been doing quad format releases ever since (with exceptions here and there like the DD-only "The Art of War").

Disney and New Line were among the last major studios to release quad format films. Disney's films were often DD-only when many others were using some combination of DD/DTS or DD/SDDS. Their first dual format release was the Stallone bomb "Judge Dredd" (DD/SDDS). "Con Air" was the first Buena Vista film to support DTS by virtue of quad format. New Line didn't do any quad format films until early 1998 with the release of "Dark City" ("Wag the Dog" had DTS time code, but no discs).

Come to think of it, "Air Force One" was indeed the first Sony Pictures Release to do quad format.

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Claude S. Ayakawa
Film God

Posts: 2738
From: Waipahu, Hawaii, USA
Registered: Aug 2002

posted 01-02-2003 07:15 PM

Mike,

You are correct. I just checked my DVD and yes, the disc does feature both fanfares. I knew there was from Dreamworks picture and another studio that did not have the fanfare and the only other one I recently watched was "GLADIATOR but that movie features the actual film score over both the Dreamworks and Universal logo and not the fanfares. Perhaps I got confused by that movie. Fox at one time before they introduced the current logo with the CinemaScope extention, never used the fanfare at all during the opening of many of their movies. The screen remained silent when the Fox logo flashed on the screen. At other times, only the original version was used and on very rare occasion, the full fanfare was used with the extention.

-Claude

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Darryl Spicer
Film God

Posts: 3250
From: Lexington, KY, USA
Registered: Dec 2000

posted 01-03-2003 12:39 AM

The only way you could get DTS discs for speed was if you agreed to play the film in your largest DTS house for so many weeks. With all the films that came out that summer that was just not going to happen. The first fox film that I remember getting discs to play was True Lies. They even sent in someone to verify our Dts set up was correct. I remember Blown Away I think was the first MGM picture to feature DTS and only DTS.

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Thomas Procyk
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1842
From: Royal Palm Beach, FL, USA
Registered: Feb 2002

posted 01-03-2003 12:55 AM

On the Minority Report theatrical release, the order of the logos was FOX and then Dreamworks.

On a DVD Screener copy that I saw at a video store my friend manages, it was the other way around. (Dreamworks then FOX)

Both had their respective fanfares. What order is it on the official/final releases?

=TMP=

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Claude S. Ayakawa
Film God

Posts: 2738
From: Waipahu, Hawaii, USA
Registered: Aug 2002

posted 01-03-2003 05:05 AM

Darryl.

I did not know "SPEED" was released to theatres in DTS in addition to SRD. I thought the movie was only available in SRD. When the movie was released in 1994, almost every studio was using only one digital sound process. Fox, Disney and Warner Brothers were releasing their pictures in SRD. Universal, MGM, New Line and Paramount used DTS and only Columbia was releasing in SDDS. This was the time when all of the different sound process was waging war against each other like the battle between sound on film and sound on disc during the early years of talking pictures in the twenties.

-Claude

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Ron Lacheur
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 650
From: British Columbia, Canada
Registered: Feb 2002

posted 01-03-2003 04:56 PM

I remember watching Starship Troopers in DTS but the ending credits didn't list DTS. It was DD and SDDS.

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 01-03-2003 05:30 PM

"Speed" was the first major release to support both DTS and Dolby Digital. Only Oliver Stone's "Heaven and Earth" featured both DTS and Dolby Digital before that --and the DTS prints were only in Los Angeles.

DTS also released their current standalone flying disc trailer at that time. Before, you only saw "The Digital Experience" logo --when the disc exploded the trailer was over. The improved version added the DTS Digital Sound logo on the end.

Fox started a DTS/DD release trend with "Speed" that Paramount and Warner Bros. would copy throughout the summer and much of the fall --at least until Warner Bros. broke away from DTS with their DD/SDDS release of "Interview With the Vampire."

The theatrical release of "Starship Troopers" --at least for the original North American release-- was DTS and SDDS-8. I remember seeing a print of it myself, and there was no Dolby Digital track on it. As Claude mentioned before, Sony had done the SDDS/DTS thing negating Dolby Digital a couple other times before on films like "The American President," "Jerry Maguire" and "Men in Black".

Of course, Sony has made other odd release choices during this time. The same year "Starship Troopers" was released DTS/SDDS-8, other Sony films like "U-Turn" were released DD/SDDS.

As stated before, "Air Force One" was the first Sony release to do quad format SR/SRD/SDDS/DTS. But the studio didn't start supporting quad format on a regular basis as least until 1998 when "Godzilla" became their next quad format film. I always wondered if Sony's move to support quad format was a kind of "returning the favor" motion to Universal when they also started using the quad format model in early 1998.

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Michael Coate
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1904
From: Los Angeles, California
Registered: Feb 2001

posted 01-04-2003 09:52 PM

Claude wrote:

quote:
During the dawn of the digital sound era, Columbia and Universal released a few movies in SRD including "DRACULA", "DRAGON-The Bruce Lee Story" and "FM".

FM??? Claude, FM was released in 1978!!! Are you thinking of Matinee, released January 1993, fives months prior to Jurassic Park, or was there a re-release of FM I'm unaware of?

quote:
After a few years, there were a couple of Columbia films that featured SDDS and DTS such as "THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT" and "CITY SLICKERS-2".

My understanding is that the inclusion of DTS was related to those films being produced by Castle Rock.

quote:
Universal did not use any other digital sound process other than DTS until they released "PRIMARY COLORS" in 1998 with all three digital soundtracks.

According to my records, Primary Colors was released in March 1998. Kissing A Fool and Blues Brothers 2000 were both released by Universal in February and featured all three digital sound formats.

quote:
I did not know "SPEED" was released to theatres in DTS in addition to SRD. I thought the movie was only available in SRD.

I was a projectionist in 1994 and handled a print of Speed. I can confirm the print we ran had both DTS and Dolby Digital (we didn't receive any DTS discs, though). I can recall acknowledging to myself during the print build-up that it was the first print handled that included more than one digital sound format.

Ron Lacheur wrote:

quote:
I remember watching Starship Troopers in DTS but the ending credits didn't list DTS. It was DD and SDDS.

Ron,
I just checked the DVD, and DTS and SDDS logos (and Dolby) are present in the end titles of the movie.

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Claude S. Ayakawa
Film God

Posts: 2738
From: Waipahu, Hawaii, USA
Registered: Aug 2002

posted 01-05-2003 12:14 AM

Michael,

You are correct, I did confuse "MATINEE" with "FM". Both "MATINEE" and "DRAGON" were released by Universal in SRD before switching to DTS exclusively with the release of "JURASSIC PARK"

"PRIMARY COLOR" was indeed the first film Universal released in all three digital sound process in 1998. I have the DVD and just to make sure, I checked the credits and it shows the logo for analogue DTS, Digital DTS, SDDS and DOLBY DIGITAL. All Universal films after "PRIMARY COLORS" were all released with all three digital sound process.

As far as Castle Rock films ties with DTS, I do not think that is true because Columbia was the exclusive distributor of Castle Rock Films and they released most of Castle Rock's pictures in SDDS only before the company was purchased by Time-Warner and the distribution went to another Time-Warner company, Warner Brothers.

-Claude

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Michael Brown
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1522
From: Bradford, England
Registered: May 2001

posted 01-05-2003 01:15 PM

quote:

I just checked the DVD, and DTS and SDDS logos (and Dolby) are present in the end titles of the movie.

End credit's can be incorrect.

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Paul Linfesty
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1383
From: Bakersfield, CA, USA
Registered: Nov 1999

posted 01-05-2003 02:13 PM

quote:
PRIMARY COLOR" was indeed the first film Universal released in all three digital sound process in 1998. I have the DVD and just to make sure, I checked the credits and it shows the logo for analogue DTS, Digital DTS, SDDS and DOLBY DIGITAL.

Claude, I'm a little unclear how the DVD showing that Primary Colors was released in all three digital formats proves that it was the FIRST Universal film to do so.

The dates and formats Michael Coate has provided are readily available from Widescreen Review or http://www.filmreleases.com/filmreleases/.

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Paul Linfesty
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1383
From: Bakersfield, CA, USA
Registered: Nov 1999

posted 01-05-2003 02:16 PM

quote:
I can confirm the print we ran had both DTS and Dolby Digital (we didn't receive any DTS discs, though).

It was definitely shown in DTS at the UA East Hills Theatre in Bakersfield where I saw it during a "sneak" (i.e.: normal advance) preview.

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Claude S. Ayakawa
Film God

Posts: 2738
From: Waipahu, Hawaii, USA
Registered: Aug 2002

posted 01-05-2003 04:24 PM

______________________________________________________________________

"End credits can be incorrect"

______________________________________________________________________

I saw "PROMARY COLORS" in SRD in a theatre so the credit is indeed correct- at least for SRD.

Mike,

I did not mean to say that the DVD was released in all three digital sound process for the home because most videophiles know that Sony never made SDDS hardware and software available for home thetre use. When I mentioned the credit listing all the digital sound process, I meant the end credits on the film itself as it was shown in the theatre.

-Claude

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