Moving pictures

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This article was published 21/06/2016 (3366 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

You’re at the helm of the Starship Enterprise, swiftly navigating through space and dodging enemy fire. You can hear the occasional explosion and you feel yourself lurching to the side as you narrowly avoid a collision with a Klingon ship.

But you aren’t boldly going where no one has gone before. You’re at the movie theatre.

Cineplex has added a new experience for moviegoers at its Silver City St. Vital location — 30 D-Box seats that shake and sway along with the action on the screen.

“D-Box is one of the coolest new innovations in the movie-going experience,” says general manager Carl Osato. “The D-Box actually syncs to the soundtrack of the film and your seat moves you with the film… you immerse yourself right inside the films.”

If something blows up, or a car is weaving perilously through a busy street, the seats react and move along with the action. “If you’re driving, you’re going to be moving. If there are actions or explosions on the screen, you hear a pop coming through your seat from the explosion,” Osato says.

“You’re moving forwards, backwards, you’re rumbling. It gives you a completely new experience that nobody’s ever had before in theatres.”

The seats were just installed on June 10, coinciding with the release of Warcraft, the action film adapted from the popular video game. Osato says the D-Box seats were completely sold out for Warcraft’s Friday and Saturday night showings, even though viewers pay an $8 surcharge on top of a general ticket price, with a total ticket cost surpassing $18.

Osato says the price of the experience has not deterred Winnipeggers. “People are going to pay for that premium experience. You’re not going to get that experience anywhere else in the world,” he says.

Cinemas around the world have have recently begun to add premium experiences in an attempt to lure audiences away from high-definition televisions and comfortable couches at home. Cineplex’s McGillivray location was the first in Winnipeg to offer VIP seating, which includes a lounge and serving staff who will bring popcorn, candy and even alcoholic beverages to your seat.

Other cinemas amp up the audio experience or have gone with higher-resolution projectors to attact customers.

“Bringing them into St. Vital, we put them into our UltraAVX auditorium,” Osato says. “You have the UltraAVX screen with your 4K projector, you have the Dolby Surround Atmos, and now you have your D-Box seats.”

Osato said the decision to install the D-Box seats at St. Vital was prompted by their immense popularity at other Cineplex locations, including the SilverCity Polo Park cinema, which installed 24 of the moving seats a couple of years ago.

I got a chance to pull up one of St. Vital’s new D-Box chairs. I was shown a demo reel of three films — Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), Terminator Salvation (2009) and The Polar Express (2004) — to give me a taste of a typical D-Box experience.

The intensity of each seat can be adjusted; I made sure to set mine at the highest level. They had a lot more kick than I was expecting and I was taken aback when the seats started to move and shake. Every part of the seat was reacting to what was on the screen; all I could do was grip the armrests and wince as a car was blown sky-high or an explosion shook the chair. The film’s fourth wall was immediately broken and I found myself suddenly emotionally invested in the characters — more so than usual.

I found myself silently rooting for Captain Kirk as he hurtled through space, with all 30 of the D-Box seats pitching and moving in unison. When trucks blew up in Terminator Salvation, every part of my chair shook in reaction. My seat lurched forward when the train flew down the icy tracks in The Polar Express, and I took the advice of Tom Hanks’ character to heart when he yelled, “Hold on!”

The demo was played a second time without activating the seats. I realized that my feet were tucked under me and I was gripping the arm rests in anticipation. The enjoyment was still there, but without the movement, I didn’t feel as enveloped by the movie.

Osato is hoping St. Vital’s next D-Box film will be the long-awaited Independence Day: Resurgence, which opens Friday. But not all movies are going to get the D-Box treatment.

“D-Box has its own engineers and the movie producers decide which films will get the D-Box experience,” he said. “It takes them upwards of 400 hours per film to sync the action sequences within the film to move the seats around during your movie-going experience.”

alexandra.depape@freepress.mb.ca