At Home with Tech

If you enjoy watching movies on an IMAX screen, or if you’ve ever been to a 4D theater and think that’s cool, then you’d better hold onto your hat when walking into Sphere in Las Vegas.

I recently visited this enormous venue for the first time while I was attending the NAB conference, and I was not disappointed. In fact, I was blown away (almost literally). Sphere was quite the immersive experience.

We’re Off to See the Wizard

I saw “The Wizard of Oz at Sphere,” reimagined for the massive 160,000-square-foot screen and 17,600-seat dome-shaped arena. The movie’s run time was slimmed down to 75 minutes, but everything else was supersized.

This new 2025 version uses cutting-edge tech to greatly extend the 1939 dimensions for each scene both on screen and off. However, the creative process also revealed certain technological limits with having to scale up the movie’s main characters to insane proportions.

GenAI Enhanced

In a few closeups, I noticed that Judy Garland’s face had that Princess Leia artificial CGI vibe from “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.” Clearly, there was some GenAI power at work here. 

And I was right. I later learned while attending a Google keynote at NAB that Google DeepMind partnered with the visual effects artists to tackle many of the hurdles involved in creating ‘super resolution’ imagery as well as entirely new elements.

But what I didn’t realize while watching the movie were the multitude of ways that GenAI magic had also been deployed to flawlessly do the impossible. And it was usually so good, I didn’t notice it was even happening.

Sure, it may be a challenge to extend the background elements like the haunted forest or the yellow brick road. But it’s an entirely different hurdle having to visually lengthen the actors’ performances. And that had to happen, because the wider screen size required characters to be in the frame where they weren’t originally.

Performance Generation

So, to create something from nothing, they used ‘AI character outpainting,’ which morphed original medium shots and cropped bodies into full-body shots.

But that wasn’t all of it. 

Since the field of view was so much wider on the wraparound screen, more characters suddenly had to remain in particular shots, even though they were framed out in the original scenes. So, those performances needed to be ‘generated.’

And it often felt entirely natural. (Occasionally, there was resulting blurring for background characters, but I expect most viewers wouldn’t notice.)

Inside the Tornado

Each of the movie’s old 4:3 frames had to be broken down, reconstructed, digitally extended and then sometimes reimagined.

When you begin to recognize the process, effort and wizardry applied here, the results become even more impressive.

And then there were certain scene enhancements that were hardly subtle. They’re blatantly reengineered to knock your socks off with everything that Sphere can throw at you.

I’ll mention the tornado sequence and say no more, other than it was worth the price of admission right there. 

Incredible.

400 Section Seats are Fine

Speaking of the price of tickets, I sat in the higher ‘400’ center section. Though my seat was relatively far away from the more expensive seating, it was absolutely fine for this film. 

If anything, the higher vantage point gave me a better view to appreciate all the expanded visual elements stretching over my head.

I got the same incredible 4D and audio experience as the lower section seats. Sure, I may have missed out on (spoiler alert) a falling apple or two, but that’s okay.

Impressive, Most Impressive

I bought my ticket to “The Wizard of Oz at Sphere” at the last minute. So, I didn’t have time to do research about how they re-made this movie. That’s probably for the best, because I didn’t know exactly what to look for. I simply experienced it.

Sure, I still spotted some of the limitations from 2024-2025 AI tech, but now, I also recognize and appreciated how far these filmmakers stretched to create this.

Ultimately, I am floored by the overall achievement. 

And just visiting Sphere by itself was a total experience. (It didn’t really matter what was playing.)

There’s a mischievous design cleverness that’s displayed throughout the entire space, beginning from the moment you walk into the lobby.

And after I sat down in my seat, I must admit I was fooled by the preshow illusion, an homage to Radio City Music Hall in New York City.

So, if you’re in Vegas, and you want to take in a show, I absolutely recommend you head over to Sphere.

You’ll quickly discover you’re not in Kansas anymore.