Can you elaborate on the above further when you have a moment? Why is that a relatively big risk in your view?
There's a number of elements which combined add up to a fairly significant risk:
1. Although cinemas are designed/built to a set of acoustic standards, there is still quite a significant variation between them, not uncommonly, that variation from the standards is deliberate. My own local cinema is a reasonably new multi-screen but they've obviously cut some corners in the construction, the screens are not very well acoustically isolated from each other. To counter this, they've rolled-off the bass response and lowered the LFE channel. If I adjust my mix to sound right on one of these screens, then it will sound far too bass heavy in another cinema which has stuck more rigidly/accurately to the standards. Quite a high proportion of cinemas have effectively doctored their sound and how are you going to know if the cinema you are testing in (referencing against) has been doctored and if so, where and by how much? BTW, most of those working at the cinema won't know and the one or two who might know, are extremely reluctant to talk about it!
2. My mix room is good, it's considerably better than even highly specified home or project studios. Here's a photo to give you an idea what we're talking about:
Including professional acoustic designer/consultant, acoustic construction/treatment and the sound system, it probably cost somewhere in the region of $120k to get it to sound as good as it does. Just under half the total cost of the studio. It's about 28ft long and 18ft wide, a decent size and it sounds great. It's perfect for higher budget TV productions and as a high budget feature film sound design room. It's not so great as a theatrical mix room though, it's many times too small! I couldn't even fit in the front theatrical speaker arrays used in cinemas, let alone the numerous surround diffuser drivers and then of course there is the acoustic difference between a large room and a relatively small one. So, despite the fact my room is tuned to the same frequency response of a cinema and is much closer to a cinema than the average small mix room, it's still not particularly close and all the mix decisions I'm making are effectively educated guesses. Considering I'm making many thousands of mix decisions, even if I'm right 99.9% of the time, there are still going to be at least a few nasty surprises.
3. A commercial theatrical dub stage is a completely different animal, it is in effect an actual cinema. The same size and specifications as a cinema but a bit like a super-cinema, with up-rated sound system and acoustics, so it performs as a premier cinema but with more clarity (to spot errors). As far as sound is concerned, it's effectively a reference cinema, spot on the specifications, rather than with some margin of error. Here's an example of a commercial dub stage which I've worked at:
None of this comes cheap of course. Instead of the $260k or so I've spent on mine, we're up closer to $10m! What do we get for $10m? No more guessing! If there is a problem in one particular cinema then it's because that particular cinema has a problem, not because we've done something wrong with the mix. Across all cinemas as an average, it will sound as we intended when we mixed it on the dub stage. There is no other way of knowing this, except with a commercial dub stage, I certainly can't guarantee it in my room and I can't guarantee it even if referenced against a cinema.
Who in your above sentence/example is arranging the test screening in a cinema?
Usually the producer, as the test screening is usually not for the sole benefit of checking the sound but also to check elements of the picture, the grading for example. Sometimes it is me who arranges the test screening though.
G
