The film industry is big business, both here in South Africa and around the world, and over the years those in the game have tried to make the cinematic experience more enjoyable for consumers.

Some innovations have worked, like IMAX and 3D, but others have been less successful. The industry already has the Razzies, dished out to the worst movies and performances of each year, but what about the ideas that have bombed?

The Conversation asked four film experts to pick their biggest flops, so let’s see what came out tops.

First motion, then sound, then … smell?

In the 1950s, the popularity of television exploded, and the film industry started experimenting with technologies to lure audiences back into movie theaters [sic].

In this context, two 1959 olfactory innovations – AromaRama and Smell-O-Vision – emerged.

Both psychology and neurology have shown how closely smell is related to memory and emotion. But the orchestration of smell in a “smell story” or “smell movie” is another matter.

AromaRama involved pumping scents through an air-conditioning system, while Smell-O-Vision’s 30 odors were released from vents placed underneath the seats…

Instead of enhancing the cinematic experience, the smells ended up supplying something briefly weird and not very interesting, no different from a noisy special effect.

Letting audiences twist the plot

Billed as a “quantum leap into the future,” Interfilm premiered in December 1992 at the Loews New York multiplex with the short “I’m Your Man,” written and directed by inventor Bob Bejan.

It was something like a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book brought to the big screen, courtesy of then cutting-edge LaserDisc technology. Armrests were outfitted with three-button joysticks. Every few minutes the video would pause and viewers had 10 seconds to vote on one of three choices for the story path…

Despite backing from Sony Pictures, few exhibitors were willing to take on the $70,000 cost of retrofitting a single theater. The film was shown in standard definition via video projection, which couldn’t come close to matching the quality of the 35mm film playing next door. And some audience members would exploit the voting system by racing between vacant seats to cast multiple votes for their preferred storyline.

A giant flying film projector

In the 1960s, American Airlines hired the film equipment manufacturer Bell & Howell to design an in-flight entertainment system that could compete (and contrast) with TWA’s large single-screen system that had premiered in 1961.

The result was Astrocolor, an in-flight entertainment system featuring a series of 17-inch screens suspended from the luggage rack.

…the film was bizarrely threaded along the length of the cabin next to the overhead luggage compartments. This meant that passengers in the back of the plane saw a scene nearly five minutes after the passengers in the front.

Astrocolor had effectively turned the airplane into a giant film projector, and maintenance of the complex in-flight entertainment system could hinder an airline’s flight schedules.

I can handle a crummy in-flight movie, but if the plane is delayed taking off because of some weird film rigging experiment I’m losing my cool.

Not as badly as this woman, but there will be a scene.

Still waiting for a 3D movie that blows me away, to be honest.

[source:conversation]