Moving sound has been added to moving pictures to bring greater realism to the screen. Accompanying Walt Disney's newest Technicolor creation, "Fantasia," in which Mickey Mouse and a host of new companions perform to the rhythms of classical music, this latest Hollywood invention made its first public appearance a few weeks ago at the Broadway Theater in New York.
Moving sound is literally that. Four circuits using sixty loudspeakers make it possible to chase music right around an audience, out of the screen and back into it. Or make notes die away into infinity overhead. The sound equipment alone fills thirty-five packing cases. For that reason "Fantasia" will be screened only in selected metropolitan theaters where the speaker systems can be installed.
Two years of painstaking work by Disney. R.C.A. engineers, and 1,000 Disney assistants went into "Fantasia," which is really a pictorial interpretation of seven great compositions. The music is by the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, under pieces as Schubert's 'Ave Maria,' and Beethoven's Sixth Symphony so that audiences would feel as though they were standing on the podium with Stokowski. […]
