The Wired Theater: Audiences Get Social At The Cinema
There is a well-known myth of movie audiences in the late 19th century fleeing for the exits at the sight of a train that seemed to be barreling straight toward them. In reality, audiences’ early fascination with motion pictures quickly turned to admiration, a sacred respect for the movie going experience. Talking during movies became, almost instantaneously, strictly verboten. Decades later, other rules reared their heads to stomp out social distractions in the cinema. First it was,
The Return of Smell-O-Vision, the Advent of 4D Cinema, and the Brave New World of Sensory Film
TIME Magazine might have deemed it one of the worst 100 ideas in history, but it’s hard not to harbor a fond nostalgia for the wonderfully bizarre promise Smell-O-Vision once afforded moviegoers. Making movies that smelled was a bold and definitively quirky concept intended to persuade the television-hooked masses of 1950s Americana to migrate from their plastic-covered couches and microwaved TV dinners in order to experience movies in a ‘scent’sational new way. Of course,
