From the Twister to Judy’s Voice

“You’re in the tornado, man.”

This is Paul Freeman, the principal audio artist at Sphere Studios, talking, offering an assurance to cinematic thrill-seekers about the enhanced version of 1939’s “The Wizard of Oz” that is coming to Las Vegas beginning Aug. 28. The immersive elements are designed to tickle all the senses, but Sphere’s sound maestro is focused on his department in particular, of course, and has promises to make about how being off to see —and hear— the Wizard in 2025 will not be akin to just putting an upgraded speaker system in the old jalopy.

There are so many questions to address, when it comes to this severe a reinvention of a classic, even limiting them just to the aural, for now: How much of the orchestral score was re-recorded? Will Dorothy still sound like Dorothy, amid all the updates, or will Judy Garland now be lip-synching to Addison Rae? And will the haptics embedded in the seats still be offering what Dead & Company drummer Mickey Hart recently referred to as an “anal massage,” or are there limits on just how much rumble in the bum-ble Sphere’s producers think a “Wizard of Oz” crowd can handle?

Before getting to what was done with the music, let’s talk about some of the sensory extremes involved in the ’39 film’s 4D upgrade.

“Obviously, the tornado is an opportunity for us to do something outrageously outrageous,” says Freeman. “We’ve taken every single frequency that we know exists in different proximities of the tornado, and we’re mimicking that. So when Dorothy’s trying to get into her house, and the tornado’s 13 feet away from her, hold onto your dentures. It’s gnarly in a big way, But also, the tornado has a sound. Somebody physically screaming is what I’m using for that sound. You don’t realize that’s what it is, but it’s big. And when she goes in the house (to hide from the twister), you get a totally different experience because she’s now in the house with a bunch of wind and the house is vibrating.”

The sound designer promises other much more subtle but still unsettling effects. “When the Wizard talks (from behind the curtain, on first approach), we developed a software synthesizer that allows us to mimic the tonality of his voice in a very, very low frequency standpoint to where you’re scared to death along with the Cowardly Lion. It’s not just that the seats are shaking,” Freeman emphasizes, lest this be mistaken for anything as relatively simple as old-school Sensurround. “What’s going on in the seats is mimicking how he’s physically speaking.”

But, of course, despite moments like these, “The Wizard of Oz” was never built as a pure thrill ride, like so many modern movies. So for every potential attendee wanting a cinematic roller coaster, there will be another wondering how the Sphere version will handle the pure loveliness of the Emerald City and Dorothy’s (no place like) home, as first rendered in one of the great song scores of all time.

“We were thinking to ourselves, if we do something to make the vocals modern, are we going to irritate the ‘Wizard of Oz’ purists?” says Freeman. And he doesn’t use that term at all derogatorily, pointing out that, in some way, he considers himself among that number. “I could probably consider myself a purist in this. I mean, I’ve been watching this movie and have lived this my whole life. I’m very mired in ‘Wizard of Oz’ lore, film-wise, and I even worked on ‘Wicked’ — and I think we got this right.

“When you walk into Sphere,” the audio designer continues, “you may already have a preconceived notion as to what it should sound like, but you also walk into ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and you have a preconceived notion as to what it should sound like. And I think that right this second, it’s a beautiful melding of those two things. And that’s not a sales pitch whatsoever.”

Carolyn Blackwood, the head of Sphere Studios, which took on the project after licensing the film from Warner Bros., thinks that “The Wizard of Oz” is uniquely positioned among the most vintage classic films to spiritually merit this kind of a rethinking, because of how the original release itself was reinventing what people believed was possible at the movies.

Says Blackwood, “Sphere is a brand new, fully experiential, immersive venue that Jim Dolan has created with the idea of how you bring audiences together with this massive media plane that envelops you with full visuals and sound in this completely immersive experience. So if we’re going to do something that’s original, there’s Darren Aronofsky’s ‘Postcards From Earth,’ and we’re doing another original film right now. But if you’re going to do a licensed experience and use these brand-new technological advances with AI, what movie do you start with? ‘Wizard of Oz’ became the focus for Jim and the team because, number one, it’s iconic and, 8-to-80 people know this movie, so it’s got a built-in nostalgic fan base. But there are plenty of other movies that check that box. The second reason is that ‘Wizard of Oz’ in its time was also a technologically groundbreaking property, when you went from black and white into the dreamscape of Technicolor. So it was both things, the beloved iconic nature of this movie, and the fact that, in and of itself, that movie did something similar in its time.”

The most blatant enhancements viewers will notice are undoubtedly visual. Legs come up for discussion, and not just because, as a stunt, the Sphere owners recently positioned a giant pair of witch’s legs appearing to stick out from under the venue, as if Jim Dolan’s ginormous orb, not Dorothy’s house, is what did her in. But Dorothy has sprouted new legs, herself — on-screen, that is, in scenes where she was in close-up before and now will be part of a shot that has been AI-enhanced to show a lot more information. “If there was a closeup before and it was just Dorothy, but you knew that the Tin Man and the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion were in the scene with her,” says Blackwood, “but you didn’t see it in the original, “you now you go wide and they’re all there together.”

And while no attraction at Sphere ever makes constant use of the dome, lest everyone need a chiropractor from constantly looking up, it seems conceivable that a few flying monkeys will soar up into the rafters… right? “Can you imagine that?” says Blackwood, not quite answering the question. “We’re gonna make full use of that dome” is all she promises.

But going back to the pure audio of it — which is the focus of the announcements being made as tickets go on sale this week — Freeman is the spokesperson for just what is being accomplished on the sound front.

“The biggest audio challenge,” he says, “has been the blending of modern recorded spatialized music in that venue versus the original 1939 optical audio dialogue, and then the blending of all that with the infrasound seats to make it into a cohesive, holistic, immersive experience, while keeping the original character and feel of the original film intact. And it has been outrageously fun.

“The only thing that is original from the film audio-wise is all the dialogue and vocals. Otherwise, it’s all new. Actually, there’s still some production sound effects in there, but they’re pretty few and far between. The original film was very light in the production sound (i.e., foley effects); this is pretty robust. And everything’s positionally correct. Everything’s working in the venue so that you’re not sitting in a venue watching a movie. The whole trick here is to make this feel like you are in these locations, and not just sonically, but emotionally as well.”

Sphere has a capacity of about 18,000, but only 10,000 of the seats have haptics built in. Fortunately, as with “Postcard From Earth,” they are not selling the whole venue for this filmic experience, but only ideally positioned seats off the floor that do all have those speakers built in, so no one has to wonder if they’re only getting a 3D instead of 4D experience. And although so far at Sphere the haptics have become most famous for their (literally) bottom-end qualities, like the brilliant workout they get from Mickey Hart’s nightly Dead & Company drum solos, Freeman says their use will go beyond that into more subtle, heady areas in “The Wizard of Oz.”

It won’t be limited to “all those things that you’ve seen in the past, based on low frequency vibrations moving the seat based on things that are obvious — you know, the hit of a kick drum, those kinds of things. In ‘Oz,’ we’re using this as a more of an immersive effect where, for example, when Glinda comes down, I want to use the seats as a signature sound. You know, the seats go up pretty high in frequency. So when Glinda appears, and there’s that little harp arpeggio that happens, for the tonic note of every heartbeat, I’m sending a tone to the seats that gives you a very, very, very, very subtle vibration, but you also hear the note. …. The same thing with the Witch. When the Wicked Witch talks, we’re doing a backwards reverb in the seat, which moves the seat in a particular way. It’s very, very, very subtle. It’s not like a kick drum or the storm in ‘Postcard.’ The witch has a particular character to her that is not obvious that it’s there — but when you take it away, you know that it’s gone.”

Agrees Blackwood, “Paul as an audio artist can design those things so it’s not just a shake — it’s not just ‘Oh, elephants are running by.’ There are themes to the vibrations, just like in a film score, you know a character is gonna have its theme, and Paul and his team do that with infrasound. You don’t always notice it. But there is something like … We did a test in the venue when Paul had mocked out dozens and dozens of infrasound haptic moments thematically throughout the film, and then we were testing which ones were impactful and effective, and we turned all the audio off in the film, so there was no sound otherwise except what was happening in the seats. And it was fascinating. Those tones have this very interesting sort of subconscious impact on you. So, just like a music cue sheet, we’ve actually marked out through the film these moments where we use that technology in a way that’s pretty spectacular.”

But if you’re interested less in sound technology advancement and the 85-year-old genius that is Judy, Judy, Judy… Freeman can address exactly what was done with her. Or wasn’t.

“We’ve had this discussion a lot,” the sound designer assures fans. “In the very beginning, we talked about, with Dorothy… do we emulate her (by putting Garland’s voice through) a really high-end studio microphone, so it sounds like a modern recording up against this modern orchestra, recording as part of this new sound design? Or do we let it sit as legit? And in the very, beginning when we started having these conversations, it seemed like a worthwhile conversation — until we physically heard it. When you physically hear this, there’s no discussion to be had. It needs to be what it is.”

So, no one has messed with Dorothy. “First of all, all of her vocal performances sound wonderful,” Freeman says. And, confirms Blackwood: “People have asked us, because they know that we’re obviously using AI technologies on this film visually, a lot of questions about whether or not we were gonna do that to the vocals. We didn’t. This is Judy Garland.

Which doesn’t mean everything about the original vocal performances felt 100% ideal. As perfectly as Freeman says Garland was recorded, “Auntie Em has some oddball harmonic distortion. Obviously the Witch does; the witches always sounded terrible. But when you try and fix them, it sounds wrong. You know what the film sounds like, and I think that trying to imagine make them sound modern — correct — is incorrect. It was a big concern in the beginning, but once you get in the venue and you listen to it, there’s nothing to talk about. The thing that’s right is to let them be what’s right.”

But, he allows, “There are certain things” in the original vocals that required adjustments, if not replacing, Specifically: “There’s a lot of munchkins, and the munchkins sound incredibly irritating. So we’ve helped them by positioning them in the venue differently, so now it sounds like when they’re all singing together, you’re in it with them. You could be a munchkin as well, or you could be standing next to them. And that was the way that we got around the sonic (issue) with them, and it’s totally believable, totally viable, and doesn’t affect the legitimacy of the original recordings.”

The orchestration, as previously mentioned, is all newly recorded, with 80 pieces conducted by scoring giant David Newman. It involved 80 pieces, recorded on the same soundstage at the former MGM — now Sony lot — where the original was conducted… but not with all 80 pieces at once.

“We would make an educated decision based on things that we knew we could get spread out wide versus things that needed to be tucked in closer, and then we would just start stripping those things off, as multi-channel, complete mixes,” Freeman says. “We were doing 7.7.1 stems all apart from each other, so each section of the orchestra that we peeled away is its own orchestral recording.” Typically, when the recording is done this piecemeal, he says, “what winds up happening is everybody’s playing to a click track. Everybody might be metrically correct, but it doesn’t sound like an orchestra ebbing and flowing with itself. So one of the tricks here was to, number one, get the orchestra to play correctly to the 1939 style of performance, with its particular ways of vibrato and mutes and whatever. But it was to also to get the orchestra, even though we were peeling things apart, to ebb and flow and sound sonically correct with each other. So they were always playing to what we had previously recorded with them and paid serious attention to how that was working together. Then after those original individual components were done, it was to put them time-wise into each other, so you would never know in a million years that this wasn’t everybody playing in one place. It sounds like everybody’s playing right there in the venue. I mean, it really seriously is beautiful.”

Freeman goes a bit deeper into the weeds in discussing what has to be done for a mix in a massive round building that is designed so every seat is getting the exact same sound, which he says involves “more math than Einstein would even conceive of.”

He notes: “Sphere has some very specific rules from a temporal standpoint or time domain issue. Since it’s a round building, there are certain things that you can do and certain things that you can’t do. There are specific rules to where if you make things too wide, they start to fall apart on the edges. And it’s lot more difficult with the (music artist) residencies, because we’re using the whole venue, as opposed to films and corporate events where we’re narrowing the venue out.

“But we’ve taken the short parts of the orchestra, or the parts of the orchestra where they’re playing short notes, versus parts of the orchestra that are playing long notes — so we have short strings and long strings; short brass, long brass; short wood(wind)s, long woods — and we’re doing basically a 7.1.4 stem of each one of those groups. We figured out where we can take the short strings and position them correctly within the orchestra and get them as wise as we can before they start to fall apart on the edges, and then fill the balance of it in with the long strings.

“One of the cool byproducts of that is, number one, it gives you a very, very, very immersive feeling. So when you listen to ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ and you’re hearing the real Judy Garland vocal placed position where it should be based on the picture, and you’re hearing that orchestra enveloping you, it is a version that you’ve never heard before, and you’ll never hear again. It’s perfect. It is the perfect version of ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow.,’” he confidently asserts.

Freeman can’t help singling out “some pretty fun things with the orchestra as well. When the Tin Man sways, orchestrationally, parts of the strings are ascending and descending to evoke the swaying of the Tin Man (in the original score). Well, I can physically put the orchestra in its home base and just take those strings and pan perfectly with him. It’s a weird juxtaposition where the orchestra is at its home base, but part of it’s moving with the visual. And he’s big, so when that physical thing takes place, it is like, ‘Oh, okay — I’ve never heard that like that before.’

“And the tornado” — all things “Wizard”-ly here lead back to bragging about the tornado. “We’re doing a lot of that with the different themes that happen as things spin around. So like when Mrs. Gulch (Margaret Hamilton) is on her bicycle and starting to spin and she turns into the witch, with her theme, which you’ve heard a bazillion times, we’re moving that along with her and everything else that is moving in the tornado.”

Yet, for all of this, Freeman makes what may be the boldest promise of all: “We’re not doing anything in this film that would take you out of the moment.” Whether or not that is possible or even advisable to hold true, everyone should be advised to hold onto your dentures, as Freeman would say, and your little dog too.