The recent world premiere of “Narvik,” a new Netflix film named after the small town in Northern Norway where the Norwegian army and the Allies fought and won their first battle against Germany in World War II, was held at a large outdoor cinema in the town square and supported by 5.1 surround sound courtesy of Martin Audio Wavefront Precision (WPC) line arrays.
Stein Hjertholm from the event production company All-In originally contacted Thomas Nordvik Olsen from Audiolight in Harstad and he, in turn, asked if Øystein Wierli, head of sound at Atendi, Martin Audio’s Norwegian distributor, could act as consultant. “We had no hesitation in jumping straight in,” Wierli says. “But when we actually started thinking about it, we had two main challenges. Aside from the fact that this was a first for an outdoor cinema in this format, it was also planned for mid-December.”
He was aware that temperatures in the Arctic Circle at this time of year are generally down to below -20 degrees Celsius, noting, “If you are lucky, you only get a meter of snow in a day! So not only was the production ambitious in the first place, but the weather was certainly a wild factor as well.” (The low temperature on the day of the event was -10 degrees C.)
The premiere had been originally set to take place in December 2021, until the pandemic lockdown made it unfeasible. An attempt was made to reschedule to March 2022 but the war in Ukraine then posed questions on whether it was appropriate to show war scenes in such a format. “So the production moved on once more,” continued Wierli, “and finally on December 11 last year it went ahead.”
He was on site supervising and tuning the Wavefront Precision-headed system. “They needed to make sure the PA system would do justice to the film’s massive soundscape,” he says. “The soundtrack was created to match the actual scenes and sounds from 1940. It was both frightening, and at the same time authentic.”
A total of 36 WPC elements and 18 SXH218 subwoofers were deployed in 5.1 configuration, powered by 16 iKON iK42 multi-channel DSP amplifiers. Audiolight provided the PA and crew to rig the WPC/SXH218 system. “The biggest problem beside temperature and snow was to create a phantom center channel, as a center hang of speakers was impossible,” Wierli concludes. “We don’t think anyone around the center of Narvik would have missed the explosions and other hard hitting sound effects.”
