I have spent over thirty years between how a film gets made and how it gets experienced. I started as an usher, and I have worked my way along that chain more or less in order: the projection booth, then the room, then the loudspeakers in it, then the formats that feed the screen and the speakers, and now the business case that decides whether any of it gets built.
The common thread is the reference experience: what the filmmaker heard on the mix stage and saw in the grading suite, and how close a paying audience gets to it on a Tuesday night. In a typical cinema, not as close as it should be. Comparatively fixable, though.
The path so far
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Early 1990s
The booth
Usher, projectionist and technician, AMC Theatres
Seating the audience, then running the show, then keeping the equipment alive between shows. The best education available in what an audience actually experiences, as opposed to what the spec sheet promises. By the end, helping AMC build and open new theaters. (Ground floor first. The booth came later, and is upstairs.)
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1994–1998
The room
THX Consultant and Technical Services Supervisor, Lucasfilm
Designing, measuring and certifying cinemas and mixing stages across the US, Europe and Asia, well over a thousand of them. Contributor to THX Surround EX, developed jointly with Dolby.
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1998–2009
The loudspeaker
Director of Technology Marketing, Miller & Kreisel Sound. Co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer, Audio Design Labs. Co-founder, Blue Sky International.
Audio Design Labs designed and manufactured audio products for other companies' brands, as an OEM and ODM partner. Good work, typically under someone else's name. So we founded Blue Sky to show what we could do in public: studio monitors for people who mix for a living. A demanding customer base (they can hear you cutting corners).
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2010–2022
The format
Dolby Laboratories, from content creation tools through cinema product management to Senior Director & Product Architect, Dolby Cinema
Defined the requirements for, and led the teams that developed and launched, Dolby Atmos and Dolby Cinema. Dolby Cinema grew out of the Dolby Vision laser projector: once the image was that good, the room became the limiting factor, mostly stray light. So we designed the whole room around picture and sound together, from the entrance corridor to the 3D glasses. I was employee number one on Dolby Cinema, built its operating program, and worked its first deals, starting with the Christie partnership that builds the projectors. In 2024 the Academy recognized both halves with Scientific and Engineering Awards: the Dolby Atmos Cinema Sound System and the Christie E3LH Dolby Vision Cinema Projection System.
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2022–now
The business
Senior Director, Business & Strategic Planning, Cinema, Dolby Laboratories
Working out where premium cinema goes next, and making the commercial case for it. Most visibly, the next-generation Dolby Vision laser projector co-developed with Christie, which lights screens up to 58 feet wide with one projector instead of two. Thirty-odd years on, the job still means helping open new theaters, at a somewhat larger scale. The path turned out to be a circle. (Six titles at Dolby so far. The business cards changed more than the job did.)
Patents
Co-inventor on eleven US patents, all assigned to Dolby Laboratories. Mostly about what the audience sees and walks through, which surprises people who assume I only listen to things.
Cinema 3D eyewear
Reusable 3D glasses built for theater operations: keyed lenses and removable temples for field repair, lens angles and anti-reflective frame areas that keep stray light out of the image, RFID for tracking, and surfaces designed to survive the wash cycle.
US 9,766,479 (2017), D667,482 (2012)
The theater entrance
A vestibule with a curved image projection wall and a curved walkway into the auditorium, so the film starts before you reach your seat. Dolby Cinema, signature entrance included, received a Red Dot product design award in 2015.
US 9,551,161 (2017), US 9,938,738 (2018), US 10,450,765 (2019), D774,207 (2016)
Content that follows the audience
Entrance content linked to the feature and to the people walking past it, with spatialized sound that moves along with them.
US 10,907,371 (2021), US 11,885,147 (2024)
Writing and press
Mostly I work in the background. Occasionally the background gets quoted, and once in a while it writes something.
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March 2025
Dolby and Christie introduce the next-generation Dolby Vision laser projector
Smaller, lighter and more efficient, built to bring Dolby Vision to more auditoriums, from Dolby Cinema to exhibitors' own premium screens. Quoted on behalf of Dolby on the partnership with Christie.
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October 1997
Theatre construction for the digital age
Written while at THX. Digital soundtracks brought far more low-frequency headroom, and in a multiplex the hardest noise to keep out is the film playing next door. Why the standard wall ratings miss most of that bass, and how to build walls that don't. (Bass, mostly. It is always the bass.)
Where a typical soundtrack puts its energy, by octave band in Hz. Illustrative, after the 1997 survey. Film Journal International, Vol. 100, No. 9
Credits
- Employee number one, product architect
- Dolby Cinema
- Partnerships and deals
- Dolby Vision laser projection
- Requirements and team lead
- Dolby Atmos
- Co-inventor
- Cinema 3D eyewear
- Co-inventor
- Theater entrance design
- Contributor
- THX Surround EX
- Co-founder
- Audio Design Labs
- Co-founder
- Blue Sky studio monitors