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MillimeterTomlinson Holman: THX Originator
Nov 1, 1998 12:00 PM, Tomlinson Holman
Tomlinson Holman is a professor at the School of Cinema-Television and principal investigator at University of Southern California's Integrated Media Systems Center (part of the School of Engineering). He is president of TMH Corporation where he develops entertainment technology. He developed the Lucasfilm THX Division's offerings-the THX Sound System for motion-picture theaters, Home THX, and the THX Laser Disc Program-and was technical director for the design phase of Skywalker Ranch. Holman holds six U.S. and corresponding foreign patents, licensed by over 40 companies. He won the Samuel L. Warner Medal and the Eastman Kodak Gold Medal from SMPTE and the 1996 Career Achievement Award from the Cinema Audio Society. He is the author of Sound for Film and Television, Focal Press, 1997.
In the next 25 years, I expect much more work to be done along the path of making sound decisions possible in a wide range of listening conditions that translate well into the best venues: alternately the movie theater and the home theater. I expect both traditions to be with us, since each solves a sociological need. In the case of the movie theater, we satisfy the need for coming together with a group of strangers with whom we share certain values to have the catharsis, which is so good for the soul. (Doesn't everybody laugh at the HMO joke in As Good As It Gets?) In the other case, we continue with the stream already established by the best home theaters, cocooning with loved ones to have the experience of program material much more frequently than we could if we had to go out to get it. The work in which I am engaged attempts to portray as closely as possible the same sound experience no matter the venue, from the best motion picture and home theaters to the desktop and even very advanced headphone listening, and I hope that this work will see fruition in the course of time.
I also expect that the distinctions between offline and online systems will gradually disappear, as more and more functions can be provided offline and as digital prices, already dropping dramatically, make the processes better and more available. This will lead more and more to personal filmmaking. It is a trend of the industry going back at least to the 1930s that technical people must run the complex technical processes (like sound) in the beginning, and artistic people, supported by technical people, can take over some years after introduction, bringing ever greater range of expression to bear. Whether personal filmmaking will necessarily be better filmmaking is a question. I remember the scene in All That Jazz wherein the exhausted director, waiting forever on the editor, says in effect, "Damn it, it's better," as being near the soul of the filmmaking process. Perhaps, without the reflecting mirror of others to look at the work, personal filmmaking only works on the level of a genius like Stanley Kubrick, while the rest of us need collaborators to get along. But at least technology will offer us the choice.
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