Led Zeppelin on the Big Screen
March 30, 2015 – Fathom Events brought a classic concert movie back to the big screen to help celebrate the 40th anniversary of release of the Led Zeppelin Physical Graffitii double album. The album which has been hailed as the greatest double album of all time, was remastered and re-released in February. Each of Led Zeppelin initial six studio efforts has been repackaged and expanded through an on-going campaign overseen by Jimmy Page, beginning with Led Zeppelin I last June.
Fathom Events, presented this new career-spanning Led Zeppelin concert movie event to U.S. theaters on March 30. The film that features several classic live performances was cleaned up, converted to digital and had the sound track remastered under the oversight of Fathom Events. The movie was nearly two hours long and featured performances include songs from Led Zeppelin’s appearances in January 1970 at Royal Albert Hall in London, July 1973 at Madison Square Garden in New York City, May 1975 at Earl’s Court in London and August 1979 at England’s Knebworth Festival.
Fathom Events Led Zeppelin Event 2015
This new movie event was promoted with a Led Zeppelin logo containing images from the expanded reissues of the band’s first six albums. Fathom oversaw earlier presentations of Celebration Day during October 2012. That concert film commemorated the 2007 reunion of original members John Paul Jones, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, as they were joined by Jason Bonham for updates of 16 songs from Led Zeppelin’s celebrated discography at London’s O2 Arena.
The digital transfer was quite clear, and the nearly 70 people in the audience, most in their mid-to-late 50’s, were deeply immersed in the production. The sound track was re-mastered to support the multi-speaker sound system in the theater, presenting a very strong positional placement of the sound. This was similar to a “contained” concert experience by providing a lot less of the volume and sound induced air movement while producing a strong clarity of sound. This made the event very listenable.
The re-mastered soundtrack and multi-speaker mix made a big impact on the presentation of “Going to California”, “Stairway to Heaven” and “Kashmir”. The movie footage transferred well to the digital projection, some of the stylistic stills from the concerts in the early 1970’s were showing their age and limited resolution when expanded to the new screen and projection. The graininess of these images, while dramatic in contrast to the moving content, blended quite well with psychedelic portrait stills placed in the footage.
Overall a great experience, the audience reaction was very positive, some even sang along with the performance.
