{"id":16311,"date":"2025-08-22T14:36:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T14:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/16311\/"},"modified":"2025-08-22T14:36:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T14:36:13","slug":"ethical-ai-and-a-rerecorded-somewhere-over-the-rainbow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/16311\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Ethical AI’ and a Rerecorded ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSphere<\/a> is promising to take audiences over the rainbow, down the yellow brick road and into an entirely new type of cinematic experience. It\u2019s \u201cThe Wizard of Oz<\/a>\u201d as you\u2019ve never seen it before \u2014 not only digitally enhanced but expanded to fit the Las Vegas entertainment complex\u2019s massive 160,000-square foot screen.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s pushing the visual medium,\u201d Jane Rosenthal, one of the new film\u2019s producers, says. \u201cIt\u2019s pushing the exhibition of shows and concerts in a way that\u2019s singular, and it\u2019s exhilarating.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd it\u2019s also controversial, at least among cinephiles, sparking fierce debate ahead of its Aug. 28 premiere about whether you should muck around with a classic. That\u2019s because this \u201cWizard of Oz\u201d adds characters to scenes (we didn\u2019t see you there, Uncle Henry!) and extends the images projected on screen to fit Sphere\u2019s sprawling canvas. The team behind the film combed the archives at both the Academy and Warner Bros., looking through shot lists, sketches and notebooks from the 1939 original that could inspire and shape their work.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSome of the things we did were just organic and authentic to what the original filmmaker\u2019s intent was,\u201d says Jennifer Koester, president and chief operating officer of Sphere.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut it\u2019s also true that none of this would be possible without AI \u2014 a technological advancement that many in Hollywood worry will cost jobs.<\/p>\n

\n\tRosenthal has heard the criticism, but she argues that the use of AI in storytelling is nothing new, likening it to CGI: \u201cAnyone who is talking about this hasn\u2019t seen it, so you\u2019ve got the blind talking to the blind, and they\u2019re upset about AI. AI in the film industry has been used for many years. It\u2019s been used on \u2018Jurassic Park,\u2019 \u2018Avatar,\u2019 \u2018Benjamin Button.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Sphere team says it\u2019s using \u201cethical models\u201d that have been trained on \u201cThe Wizard of Oz\u201d footage, as well as original props and designs, all with the permission of the rights holders.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt also promises a full sensory experience, such as giant wind machines to drop the audience inside a tornado or a boom sound that ricochets around Sphere\u2019s 167,000 speakers as Dorothy taps on the Tin Man\u2019s heart.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe whole idea of it is you\u2019re not passively watching \u2014 you are actively feeling like you\u2019re in it,\u201d Carolyn Blackwood, head of Sphere Studios, says.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Sphere team is excited for audiences to hear Dorothy singing \u201cOver the Rainbow.\u201d \u201cWe ended up rerecording with an orchestra, on the original MGM lot, and in the soundstage where they had recorded the original music. We were able to split the tracks. You can now hear her voice. It\u2019s still her voice, but you\u2019re hearing it pure,\u201d Rosenthal says.<\/p>\n

\n\tUltimately, the hope is that presenting \u201cThe Wizard of Oz\u201d on the biggest, widest and most decked-out screen imaginable won\u2019t just delight fans; it will introduce new audiences to the story of a little girl from Kansas who came to realize there\u2019s no place like home.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFor people that haven\u2019t seen it before, this is going to totally blow them away,\u201d Koester says.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThe Women of Oz \u2013 Jane Rosenthal, Jennifer Koester and Carolyn Blackwood
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBRIAN FRIEDMAN<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sphere is promising to take audiences over the rainbow, down the yellow brick road and into an entirely…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16312,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,289,290,18,19,17,14713,82,14714],"class_list":{"0":"post-16311","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-sphere","15":"tag-technology","16":"tag-wizard-of-oz"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}