(Previous chapter: It's in the Cards)
Standing tall behind an actual vineyard, Skywalker Sound is a big winery-looking, red brick building that’s home to everything and anything that has to do with sound within Skywalker Ranch. Recording studios (large enough to hold an orchestra), foley studios (footsteps and slamming doors), mixing studios, editing suites, plus a litany of actual offices... you name it, it’s all in there.
And
there’s one more thing you can find here: a private screening room called the
Stag Theater. With its 300-soul capacity, it’s about the size of your average
multiplex theater. And it’s not especially luxurious either, instead coming
across as a very nice room, but nothing spectacular. The truth is, you can’t
see what’s mind-blowingly incredible about the Stag.
But
you sure as hell can hear it.
Back in 1983, Lucasfilm deployed the THX system to ensure that showings of Return of the Jedi would conform to certain audio standards. So in high-end theaters, the movie soundtrack sounded exactly the way the mixing engineer intended—or as close to it as technical limitations and architectural concerns allowed. The system took its name from George Lucas’s first feature film, THX 1138, but also from its inventor’s namesake, hence the Tomlinson Holman Xperiment.
(During my orientation day at Lucasfilm, a sweet HR lady asked my small group of new employees if anyone knew how the THX system got its name. A few hands went up, and when one of them was selected to offer an answer—THX 1138—all the others fell back down, deflated. The cocky, 25-year-old me had been waiting for just that moment to raise my own hand, and mention Tomlinson Holman when called upon. Our HR lady was quick to congratulate me on my erudite answer, but a quick look around the room sufficed to confirm that I had just marked my territory with the smell of absolute dorkness.)
THX went on to certify more than theaters: home sound systems, computer sound cards, physical movie releases (VHS, Laserdiscs, DVDs...) and so on. But its original intent had always been the theater experience. And so the Stag was built around THX.
Think
of the Stag Theater as the king of THX: it’s the reference theater, built according to the exact specifications
the THX system requires. Its equipment not only provides the greatest surround
sound you can experience at the movies, but it also perfectly reproduces what
the mixing engineer heard in his or her studio. In other words, the Stag is
what every other movie theater around the world tries to be. And if they come
close enough, they get the THX certification.
So you can imagine what it sounds like when you step into that sonic temple.
The room is neither too muffled, nor too echoey; neither too velvety, nor too
wooden. It’s just a perfect balance between liquid and solid. Pure aural bliss.
When
I walked in there for the first time—with permission to take a quick peek on my
way to lunch—the whole thing felt like a religious experience. My own breathing sounded
like the most expertly mixed gust of wind in the history of cinema, my own
footsteps altogether like the start of something wondrous and the end of
everything. It brought tears to my eyes and I never wanted to leave.
(Those
who know me and my hyper-acute hearing will tell you I don’t exaggerate about that
stuff: nowhere else have I heard such perfect acoustics, even when the room was
empty and no sound was playing. It was beauty at a level that causes pain.)
About a month into my Lucasfilm tenure, a coworker asked me if I wanted to go see Raiders of the Lost Ark with him at the end of the week. He proceeded to explain that, once in a while, Lucasfilm held screenings for employees... at the Stag Theater. Not usually LFL productions, either: it just happened that this time around they were showing Raiders, one of my favorite movies.
So, would I go?
A
few expletives later, we had a date.
Friday night couldn’t swing by fast enough. When it finally did, I showed up early to make sure I could sit in the exact center of the Stag Theater, grabbing the sweet spot to end all sweet spots. The room filled up quickly, sometimes with faces whose owners I’d had a chance to meet, but usually with friendly strangers I hoped I would get to know. (It would soon dawn on me that my role as internal reporter meant that I could meet whomever I wanted on Skywalker Ranch—though I did infiltrate ILM a few times—but I hadn’t yet made that realization.)
Right before the movie started, I looked ahead and noticed I was sitting behind George Lucas. (I would later hear that Steven Spielberg was supposed to join him for the showing, but couldn’t make it at the last minute.) He was actually one seat over on my left, which meant that during the entire evening, I watched Raiders with one eye on the screen, and one eye on George. I saw him smile, nod his head, then press his lips together and furrow his brow, in sync with what I assumed were scenes he was still enjoying—almost 20 years down the line—and others he wished had turned out better. (He reacted strongly to the end sequence where Nazi heads melt and explode, but whether his body language expressed revulsion or pride, I’ll never know.) He would sometimes lean over to laugh or whisper something in producer Rick McCallum’s ear, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying.
Remember we were watching this thunderous adventure in the Stag Theater, where the soundtrack was LOUD yet perfectly defined. I had frankly never heard a movie sound like that, and I fear I might there and then have forever damaged my aural enjoyment of cinema: it would all be downhill going forward. From the rumble of that giant boulder bearing down on Indiana Jones, all the way to the hissing of snakes (so many snakes!) and the crack of our archaeologist’s whip, every frequency was just right, everything mixed together into the perfect mélange. I felt enthralled, as if some alchemical process had transmuted sound into a hypnotic compound delivered straight into my brain.
There
was a round of applause at the conclusion of the movie—on that ominous shot of an
endless warehouse where the titular ark is re-buried, this time amongst a
million anonymous crates—and every single spectator remained in their seat
until the last note of the end credits had died down. (Which it did with perfect
grace.)
As
the lights came on, we all stood, George turned around while putting on his
sports jacket—it was a chilly evening—and we nodded a greeting to each other. I
blinked hard: George Lucas had gestured a
“hello” at me after a showing of Raiders of the Lost Ark. I said
something—I like to tell myself it was “Still a great movie!” or some other
enthusiastic compliment, but to tell the truth I can’t remember what crawled
out from between my lips. It might not even have been intelligible: George
smiled politely and we all ambled towards the exit.
Wonders within wonders.
I would soon find exciting new reasons to go back to the Stag, but as a first introduction, it left a mark I don't think will ever wash away.
(Next
chapter: ID Please)
(Full series here)
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