I don’t know how you all feel about giving them, but I love sitting through a demo. Notice I didn’t say a good demo. Sure, those are great and better than the alternative, but lesser demos give you something to think about and let you appreciate those stellar demos all the more.
There were a host of great demos at CEDIA Expo, mostly featuring Top Gun: Maverick, with a few John Wick: Chapter 4’s thrown in for good measure. I don’t recall seeing a “Never Enough” from The Greatest Showman, a perennial favorite, but I know I heard it on several occasions as it sailed across the show floor.
Sony had two home theater demos at its booth, and in the smaller one they showed a scene from Across the Spider-Verse, a Sony movie, naturally, and one I loved, but the scene they chose was a funny talking scene, which is wild when you think of all the action scenes that were also in the film.
At first, I thought it strange, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked what they had done. The entire animated film is a feast for the eyes with its shifting color palettes and animation styles, so even a conversation-heavy scene showed off what the projector could do. And you didn’t get the crazy immersive battle sounds out of the speakers, but you did get crystal-clear dialog along with some immersive audio cutaways (mostly to Mumbai traffic).
Also From the Editor: Showroom Week – No Two Alike
Still, I am aware that a tradeshow demo is different from a client demo. For one thing, at a tradeshow, you are very aware of the gear — it is often discussed before and after (and sometimes during) — the demo. And while they do a great job, being located in a box on the show floor or in a demo room next to other equally loud demos is not the ideal immersive situation. The tradeshow ones are also packed — far from the personal tour clients receive.
When it comes to that personal touch, I’d be interested to hear how personal you get in your own experience centers. Do you let the client pick the movie and, if so, do you let them pick it ahead of time so you can be sure it packs a punch? (I’m sure it does. Probably more a question of controlling the situation than quality…)
I waver over which demo I prefer — a scene from a film I have never seen before or one that I am very familiar with. Going in cold, everything is a surprise. You don’t know where sound will be coming from or what will happen next on screen to trigger it. It creates a high sense of anticipation followed by genuine surprise at what unfolds. Certainly memorable.
On the other hand, experiencing a scene I love in a new setting and having a new encounter with well-known content can also dazzle me. In those cases, with the context of the scene firmly embedded in my mind, it is very easy to get pulled in by the theater. It also clearly shows the exceptionalism of your showroom theater.
Incidentally, Cineluxe recently relaunched with a focus on film reviews in terms of their quality on today’s home cinema systems. There is a section on “Great Demo Scenes” that, at the moment, features four films I know pretty well and whose scenes I know I’d love to see in your demos.
