Smell Cinema
As smell-o-vision (even olfactory cinema ) refers to an extension of the audiovisual cinema to olfactory stimuli.
Another approach to expanding the spectrum of effects of the cinema is the feeling cinema , in which the transmission of haptic , i.e. H. palpable sensory stimuli are experimented, as well as the motion cinema , which is used, for example, as "fun fair amusement" during the Bavaria Film Tour .
From a technical point of view, controlling odors is unproblematic: The DTS system contains a time code that can be used to control any effects; On the other hand, the problem with the synthesis of smells and, above all, the rapid air circulation in the cinema, in order to avoid mixing of the different smells.
History and Development
The first attempts to help the moving images on the jumps of sensual sensitivity were made in 1906 by Samuel "Roxy" Rothafel . At the family theater Forrest City, Pasadena, Rothafel dipped cotton in a rose essence and hung it in front of an electric fan during the screening of the weekly film about the Pasadena Rose Bowl Games. Nothing is known about the reaction, except for Rothafel's disappointment with the rapid evaporation of the scent.
A problem that others also had to grapple with, such as Albert E. Fowler, manager of a theater in Boston, who poured a bottle of lilac perfume into the ventilation system for the film Lilac Time in 1929, or at the premiere of The Broadway Melody in 1929 , at that of Synthetic orange blossom perfume was sprayed on the ceiling.
Probably the first olfactory film was produced in 1940 by Hans E. Laube using the Odorated Talking Pictures (OTP) process ; it was the Swiss feature film My Dream (director: Valerien Schmidely ).
In 1954, Morton Heilig developed the idea of the Sensorama method, which is considered the first fully immersive system and enabled as many senses as possible to be addressed ; he presented his idea in the essay The Cinema of the Future :
"Open your eyes, listen, smell and taste, feel the world in all its wonderful colors, spatial depth, tones, smells and surfaces - this is the cinema of the future!"
Seven years later, he actually designed such a device.
In 1960 Charles Weiss presented the AromaRama process in New York ; the process was presented with a documentary about the Great Wall of China ( Behind the Great Wall , 1959).
Also in 1960, Mike Todd Jr., the son of the stage and film producer Mike Todd , brought the thriller Scent of Mystery to cinemas using the Smell-O-Vision method - at least in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, because only there were they Cinemas converted accordingly.
In 1962, Morton L. Heilig patented the Sensorama simulator ; However, this was not a film process that could be projected in front of an audience with scent support, but rather a kind of kinetoscope for a single viewer or “sniff”.
In 1981 John Waters took up the idea of olfactory cinema in his film Polyester ; Odors were transmitted using the Odorama process, which involves cards impregnated with fragrances, which viewers had to rub at appropriately marked areas of the film to release the scents.
In 1989, in the Parisian film palace Grand Rex, the diving film Le Grand Bleu (Eng. In the intoxication of the deep ) was upgraded with “The Smell of the Sea”.
In 2001 the fragrance film One Day Diet celebrated its premiere in Munich. Equipped with a mobile scent device , the Sniffman , cinema-goers can experience the short film One Day Diet with their noses. The device, the size of a Walkman, emits various scents during the performance. However, several visitors said that the desired effects were not transmitted as perfectly as announced. The scents of soap, perfume and pizza smelled too chemical for many. The audience reacted to the German premiere of the first “scented cinema” but mostly amused.
From January 17 to February 14, 2008, the trailer for the film 27 Dresses was accompanied by fragrances in the hall in 14 cinemas of the CinemaxX chain .
On May 3, 2012, Spy Kids - All the Time in the World - launched in German cinemas. There is a scratch card with eight fragrance fields for the Robert Rodriguez film , the process here is called the Aroma Scope .
In the summer of 2016, Wolfgang Georgsdorf installed his Smeller fragrance organ in Berlin as part of the Osmodrama Festival for Scent Art. In addition to other, non-cinematic presentations, the native olfactory film NO (I) SE by Georgsdorf itself as well as the odor-synchronized films The Other Homeland by Edgar Reitz and Continuity by Omer Fast were shown.
Applications and reflections
At the end of the 19th century, Kurd Laßwitz mentioned in his utopian story Up to the Zero Point of Being. Story from the year 2371 a so-called Ododion (“smell piano ”), which “was characterized by a large range of smells; it ranged from the dull cellar and musty odor, assumed to be the lowest scent, to the zwiblozin, an extremely delicate odor that was only discovered in 2369. Each press of a button opened a corresponding gasometer, and artificial mechanical devices provided for the attenuation, diffusion and interaction of the scents ”.
Aldous Huxley in his describes dystopian novel Brave New World ( Brave New World , 1932) a so-called "Feel Cinema" (in the original English feelie ) that gives a synaesthetic whole-cinema experience.
Both the olfactory and the emotional cinema experience a parodic reflection in the film The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977) by John Landis , in which a scene takes place in a “Feel-a-Rama” movie theater.
In his novel, The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books, Walter Moers describes a theater performance that is immensely enriched by a fragrance organ that is played to match the events.
See also
- Gustatory perception , olfactory perception and trigeminal perception
- Immersion and Flow (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)
- Cinerama
- Dolby Stereo , Dolby Surround
literature
- The fragrant film is here! A sensational Swiss invention . In: Swiss Film. Revue de la Cinémathographie Suisse . 6th year 1940. No. 83, p. 36.
- Herbert Richter: The movie theater, its origin and its development . In: Rudolf Pabst (Ed.): The German movie theater in the past, present and future . Berlin 1926
- KJ Burdach: Taste and smell: gustatory, olfactory and trigeminal perception . Bern 1988
- Jutta Hoffritz: Perfume instead of cleaning. Shoe soles. Vacuum cleaner. Movie theaters. In addition to the human body, fragrance manufacturers are discovering more and more sources of emissions that need to be combated . In: Die Zeit , No. 52/2001
Web links
- Anne Paech: " The aroma of the cinema. Films seen through the nose: From olfactory films and smells and ventilation in the cinema . University of Konstanz .
- Gerd M. Hofmann: Loose facts . 1999; to the olfactory cinema with ODORAMA and AromaScope odor cards