Lions, Tigers and Tech—Oh My! Alumni Help Dorothy Debut in Ultra-HD at Sphere

For anyone who has only seen the movie on television, The Wizard of Oz is an incredible movie theater experience. Its larger-than-life characters, vivid colors, and memorable soundtrack were made for the big screen. 

Now, a Georgia Tech professor and several alumni are helping bring the 1939 classic Hollywood film to what will likely be its largest screen ever: the Las Vegas Sphere's 160,000-square-foot interior screen. 

Distinguished Professor Irfan Essa is the senior associate dean of the College of Computing. He also leads Google DeepMind's Atlanta lab, which played a pivotal role in "reconceptualizing" the film for the August 28 premiere of The Wizard of Oz at Sphere. 

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"When the request came to us, I was almost jumping up and down," said Essa, who started working at Georgia Tech in 1996. "This is the best opportunity to showcase the magic we develop using AI." 

This month, Google published a blog post detailing the immense challenges of bringing Dorothy's adventures to life in 15K resolution. The project relied on bespoke versions of Google's generative artificial intelligence (AI) platforms to move from grainy film negatives to what the blog called "ultra-ultra-high definition imagery that will pop inside Sphere." 

Essa said that while generative AI video technology has been used extensively to generate new videos, this effort takes the original content and storyline of the 1939 classic and presents it in a new format. 

"The AI technology allowed creators and artists to bring the original content in a new experiential form on one of the world's largest screens," said Essa. 

The project team used the original film, outtakes, and archival information to train its updated generative AI models. The blog said, "In addition to old footage, the team scoured archives to build a vast collection of supplementary material, such as the shooting script, production illustrations, photographs, set plans, and scores." 

The project team then used the content data to "train on specific details of the original characters, their environments, and even elements of the production, like camera focal lengths for specific scenes." 

Georgia Tech alums –including several from the College of Computing and the School of Interactive Computing– contributed to The Wizard of Oz at Sphere project. 

"Many Georgia Tech alumni are involved with the project. Some of the core members include Steven Hickson (CS Ph.D. 20), Albert Shaw (CS 16, MS 17), and Meera Hahn (CS Ph.D. 22)," said Essa. 

"Many others like Daniel Castro Chin (CS Ph.D. 19), Grant Schindler (CS 03, Ph.D. 10), Pedro Velez (CS MS 17), and Amit Raj (ECE Ph.D.) also contributed to many aspects of the project."