When we last visited director Barry Sonnenfeld (February/March 2004), he was a man without a home theater. Having sold his house in Amagansett, New York, and not yet ready to move to Telluride, Colorado, he had to watch DVDs in the screening room at his East Hampton, New York, offices. Barry has since settled into a house in East Hampton as he awaits his move to Colorado. Here he tells how setting up a home theater in his interim abode unexpectedly gave him a glimpse of cinema’s future.

Accidentally selling our home in Amagansett four years before we intended to move to Telluride, I found myself living in a house with a huge basement that had the potential to be a home theater. The screening room in my old house was designed for 35mm film projection. The movies I directed had been edited in East Hampton, and we would often look at the work in progress in my home theater. Movies like Men in Black and Wild Wild West had hundreds of optical effects shots that we would screen for contrast, color, and sharpness. The room also had an analog Sony video projector — a great CRT model with 9-inch tubes.

The last film I directed, Men in Black II, although shot on film, spent most of its life in the digital world. The film dailies were transferred to video and then edited digitally (as almost all films are, with the exception of Steven Spielberg’s — Steven still insists on editing on film). All of our recruited-audience screenings — where we invite three hundred people who don’t know how to spell to watch our movie and comment on it — were projected digitally. It wasn’t until we had finished the project that we cut the negative and made film prints for the theaters. I was also getting sound mixes in Dolby Digital surround sent to me over the Internet, which were then downloaded to my computer and synced to the film projectors for viewing.

When I was in Los Angeles directing MIB II in 2001, Texas Instruments set up a demo of its latest digital projector in a local theater. The image was extraordinary — the only thing missing was the projector flicker we’re used to seeing in movie theaters. I could tell that a change was quickly coming. When it came time to build a theater in my new home, I realized that the future was digital and that 35mm projection was no longer needed for either my work or my viewing pleasure.

Although the Sony CRT projector I had in the old house produced a beautiful image, it needed biyearly tweaking, and I really wanted to see what a 16:9 high-def digital proector could do. I interviewed several installers and hired the amusing, talented, and often ill John Tamburello. He drives a car that most junkyards would reject for not having enough panels worth scrapping. On the other hand, he says he doesn’t worry about its being parked on the streets of New York City. He seems to live on pizza and cold coffee, and always exhibits flu-like symptoms, but is strangely very smart, informed, and easy to work with.

The first decision we had to make was the size of the screen. I wanted a microperforated screen so the front left, center, and right speakers could be located behind it. I also wanted a fairly large image, even though the room is only 18 x 24.5 feet. We went with a 12-foot-wide screen, which Sweetie the wife thinks is too big and I think verges on too small. Because our room is located in a dedicated space without windows, we had 100% control over the room’s ambience and were able to go with a relatively bright (1.3 gain) white screen. (Some projector manufacturers suggest using a lower-gain gray or silver screen in rooms that can’t be completely darkened to help create the illusion of deeper blacks, since grayish blacks have been one of the drawbacks of DLP projectors.)

Our theater was designed with a soffit running across the back of the room that sends cool, fresh air across the enclosed projector. I didn’t want to hear the fan of a projector during screenings, and although this was quite an expensive architectural detail, it was worth it, since it also isolates the projector from cigar smoke. The cigars created additional expenses due to the installation of industrial-strength smoke eaters as well as a variably controlled ozonator to kill any smoke odors.

The biggest debate concerned the projector. At the last minute, after we’d decided on one manufacturer, several people suggested I check out the Sony Qualia 004. I drove into New York City and visited the Sony Concierge Qualia showroom, where I saw how incredible the projector is. It uses three 1,920 x 1,080-pixel SXRD (Silicon Crystal Reflective Display) panels and projects an extraordinary 1080p-resolution picture. The detail is crisp and sharp, and the contrast is easily controlled. I like to watch sports with lots of pop and color saturation, but use a slightly more muted setup for movies.

Ironically, the Qualia is very quiet, but having already built the room with ventilation in the soffit, and to keep it safe from the cigar smoke, we placed it in the soffit. If you’re building a room knowing you’re going to use this projector, don’t go through the expense of enclosing and ventilating it. It’s not only quiet but a beautiful piece of industrial design. (For more on SXRD technology, see May’s “Object of Desire,”.)

Although my background is in cinematography, having shot movies for the Coen brothers (Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing), Danny DeVito (Throw Momma from the Train), Rob Reiner (When Harry Met Sally, Misery), and Penny Marshall (Big), and although the films I have directed have a certain visual style, I’m equally concerned about sound. I believe the success of any movie is in proportion to the manly use of subwoofers. Comedies are no exception. I have two powerful Sunfire True Subwoofer EQ Signature subs. The rest of the speakers are made in Denmark by System Audio, and I’m happy with the clean, smooth sound.

The other big decision was the Sunfire Theater Grand IV preamp/processor/tuner and the Sunfire Cinema Grand 400 amplifier, which puts out more power than we need. I don’t like overly complicated remote controls and wouldn’t let Tamburello set up a Crestron or any of those cool things that make life complicated, especially when you buy a new piece of equipment and have to reprogram the remote. Instead I decided on a Home Theater Master MX-800 universal remote, which we use in all of our other media areas as well.

I wanted to make sure that our room was dead enough, soundwise. John and I talked about putting acoustic panels on the lower halves of the walls to dampen the sound, but with the plush furniture and deeply carpeted floor, we found that this wasn’t necessary. And as a comedy director, I’m well aware of the imporance of not deadening a space so much that peals of hysterical laughter get swallowed up by the room. I once had a terrible premiere of Addams Family Values at Paramount’s new theater in Los Angeles, which was so dead that the audience never heard itself laugh. Sherry Lansing, the head of the studio, promised me she’d never have another comedy premiere there again.

Unfortunately, just as the home theater was completed, with the Qualia tuned to perfection and the subs reverberating in my stomach, I was hired to direct a film in Vancouver with Robin Williams titled RV. I won’t be back home until the fall.

My hunch has proved correct, however. Digital will be standard procedure on RV. This will be the first movie I direct where we won’t even make film dailies. The lab is transferring the film negative directly to high-definition tape, which will be fed into Avid editing stations. We’ll cut and preview the movie on high-def tape for those people who don’t know how to spell, and I’ll be able to use my home theater to view those cuts of it. The first time we’ll see the movie on film is when we make a print off the digital intermediate. I just hope it doesn’t hurt the comedy.