Movies… Talkies… and now Smellies!

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*/Cinemakaran thats how he calls himself. And thats what he is trying to be, a cinema personnel. We now each other for some 3 years or so and we have had a wonderful time together. Sajeesh ettan came here as a student and now he is a lecturer. He has experienced the highs and lows of life, but am sure he is set to achieve great heights. This article is something he wants to work on. Its feels great to host his article in here. I conclude by wishing him the very best in all aspects of his life.*/

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Have you ever felt cinema is handicapped when it comes to projecting reality? Is cinema lacking something? Give a thought to it. If your answer is ‘NO’, you are wrong! What about Smell?

Didn’t you ever feel the need for smell in cinemas? If a fragrance of love was incorporated with the ‘I am flying’ sequence in James Cameroon’s “Titanic”, wouldn’t it have been more awesome? With the spectacular cinematography and amazing music in the background, a pleasant fragrance of love would have given an extremely romantic experience for the sequence. 

With the sight and sound making cinema a realistic way of representing life, there was always one thing that cinema lacked; the power of Smell. If smell can be incorporated to cinema, it will have the real 3 dimensional experience with the 3 ‘S’ operating, i.e., Sight, Sound & Smell!

 Smell in Cinema

 Smell is one of those sensory experiences which are strongly associated to human memories. It brings back the memories of places and people. It is also associated with spirituality since divine odors are an important ingredient of most of the spiritual practices. Taste buds also work only due to the existence of smell. Recent researches have also proved that the smell can be used to induce certain feelings like nostalgia, fear, romance etc.

 

Once smell was considered least important. In fact smell was ignored and left in the trash in an era dominated by the computers and electronics. But the sense of smell is now considered as one of the means by which visual media’s delineating effects can be mitigated.

The sense of smell is poised to break free from many of its assumed delineation. The mystery of how smell works, for instance, has defied scientific understanding for centuries. However with the award of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine to Neuroscientists Richard Axel and Linda.B.Buck, the basic code by which scents are perceived and cognitively processed seems to be on the verge being   cracked (Nobel Prize Org. 2004)

Smell and Cinema is not a quite new concept. In fact attempts to incorporate smell to cinema dates back to 1916; even before sound was introduced! It was S.L.Rothafel, the owner of a film theater in Forest City, Pennsylvania who deluged the audience of a rose bowl game newsreel in the scent of rose oil. He dipped cotton in rose scent and held it in front of an electric fan, there by suffusing the theater with floral fragrance. But soon, a new fad hit the moviegoers; Sound. The technology that would one day be known as Smell-O-Vision was lost in noise!

 

Hans Laube and Smell-O-Vision

Later on, Hans Laube was excited by the idea of smell in cinema. He invented Scent-O-Vision, a system that released scents connected to individual scents in movie theaters, and debuted it at the 1939 New York’s World Fair. The basic concept involved a projectionist manually releasing various scent vials at specific points in a movie, such as the scent of flowers during a romantic scene or the smell of gun smoke during a shoot-out. The original Scentovision system failed to catch on for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the substantial amount of conflicting fragrances which eventually filled the theater.

Scent of Mystery

For years, the technology was forgotten. But it was re-introduced in 1960’s in the mystery film aptly titled as “The Scent of Mystery”. Laube perfected his technology into a “Smell Brain”; a series of perfume bottles with scents that were released into the theater automatically as the film threaded through the projector. The process was called Smell-O-Vision.

Ads for the film read, “First they moved (1895)! Then they talked (1927)! Now they Smell (1960)! Scent track was incorporated on the film itself to trigger odors, analogue to a sound track. The release of the odors was synchronized with specific audio visual events in the film. Several of the film’s most prominent clues were set to be conveyed by the Smell Brain.

Even though the idea got a positive buzz before the release, the experiment was a flop. In fact Times Magazine’s (2000) Reader Poll has selected it as one of the ‘Top 100 Worst Ideas of all Time’!

Even though smell was synchronized with the audio visual content, its immediacy was restrained by the slow diffusion of scent, especially in a large theater space. Audience members in the balcony found the smells delivered to them several seconds delayed; the entire system was olfactory out of sync. Other parts of the theater barely got the smells.

Release of one scent to another was not instantaneous and had to be carefully managed to avoid odorific confusion which was not desired. Subsequent removal of the smell also had to be carried out to avoid the uneasiness created by the odor in the atmosphere. This also was not possible. Smell-O-Vision was temporarily snuffed out.

 There was also another attempt to mix smell with cinema. The process was called “Aromarama” which dispersed smell through AC with Freon gas. An Italian travel feature about China, “Beyond the Great Wall” (1958) came with this technology whose tagline read “You Must Breathe it to Believe it”!

 All these attempts during that era can be related to the frantic efforts taken by the film makers to retain the cinema audience from Television. Certain techniques like 3D, Cinerama etc never caught on like Smell-O-Vision. But still cinema survived with spectacular viewing experience rendered to the audience. Thanks to Cinemascope and 70mm technologies.

Odorama

The idea of smell kept on exciting film makers through the years. Modern attempts at reviving Smell-O-vision were undertaken by John Waters when he released his film ‘Polyster’ in 1982. He handed over ‘Scratch and Sniff’ cards to the viewers and they were asked to smell it during specific scenes.

The ‘Scratch and Sniff’ cards had some 8-10 spots which were numbered. The audience had to scratch and sniff each spot when that particular number appears on the screen. This turned out to be quite popular and more fool proof. When the MTV re-aired the film in 1992, they handed out the “Scratch and Sniff” cards at convenient stores.

Smell in Gadget Age

 

In the gadget age Smell-O-Vision lives on. Digiscents inc. is developing the ismell personal scent synthesizer; a device that will let smells be transmitted through the internet scent synthesizer can be compared to the desktop speakers.

In Cinema, the Collin Farell starrer “The New World” which was released in Japan in April 2006 tried to bring back the essence of smelling cinema. The film which was released in certain theaters in Japan had an internet based fragrance system. The movie goers were exposed to various scents to heighten their sense of joy, love, sadness etc during key scenes.

The technology was based on NTT Com's Fragrance Communication (Kaori Tsushin) system, which uses a special scent-emitting device programmed with information obtained via the Web. Scents were emitted into the theaters using devices placed under viewers' seats. The system was employed at one theater each in Tokyo and   Osaka.

The system downloads an aroma recipe and distribution schedule from an aroma-control server and stores the information in a LAN box, which can then be disconnected from the network and moved freely. The box is then connected to aroma-emitting devices placed under a number of seats in the theater. Each device contains six base oils, which are combined according to the recipes for specifically generated aromas. The LAN box controls the automatic release of these aromas during selected scenes of the movie.

Future Prospects

Research has shown that the human sense of smell can create stronger, more lasting impressions than sight, suggesting that smell has the potential to greatly heighten the intended effect of communication for diverse purposes. So, the idea of smell in cinema will never die. In fact it will get on to Television and of course internet too. And who knows, if we have more fool proof technologies, the entire structure of cinema might change just like sound changed the structure and story telling styles of silent movies.

There should be provision made to remove the scent as and when it is released to avoid the foul smell sticking on to the environment which inturn will create suffocation in the viewers. And there should be attempts to make the fragrance reach each and every member in the audience at the same time. If minor things like these are taken care off, in the digital age, as the mystery surrounding how the smell works has been almost clarified, there will be no looking back for the idea of  smell in cinema.

Cinema is always a novelty. Cinema has not reached the saturation level yet and it will never reach there! More and more newer things will come up to make the cinema exciting as ever. Let there be more efforts to make the cinemas smell in the coming years with the increased and better understanding of the Odors and how they work and transmit. This will make cinema a real 3 Dimensional visual experience!

 

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SAJEESH RAJENDRAN

Faculty –DFM, SAE, India

 

 

Reference : The Smell culture Reader      Edited by Jim Orobnick (Berg Publishers)

                   http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/biosi/staffinfo/jacob/teaching/sensory/olfact1.html