Bad Boy Bubby in Binaural Sound

Cinefreaks and audiophiles, lend us your ears (and eyes). We’ve got a world-first screening of the controversial classic Bad Boy Bubby for you, as you’ve never heard it before: in binaural sound. Don a special audio headset and you’ll literally be plugged into the lead character’s experience.

As the name suggests, binaural sound is recorded with not one but two microphones, positioned to create a “3D” stereo sound sensation for the listener. During production in 1993, Bubby’s maverick sound recordist James Currie experimented by placing multiple microphones and transmitters under lead actor Nick Hope’s wig.

Currie says, “Sound isn't just heard through your ears but through your entire body.” Through the immersive experience of binaural sound, a truck rumbling down a highway becomes a stereo vibration absorbed across the bitumen, up Hope’s body, and into the audience’s earholes.

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In 2015, Bubby comes of age and comes home. This special 21st anniversary screening will take place in Port Adelaide, which served as home base during the film’s shoestring shoot in the ‘90s, and the Port is proud to welcome back its prodigal sons. The event is the brainchild of Port Adelaide-based film buff Mike Retter, and is part of the Adelaide Film Festival Emerging Curators program.

Of this unique screening, the film’s renowned director Rolf de Heer says, “It's startling to think that twenty-two years after Bad Boy Bubby confounded everyone, including me, by winning five prizes at the Venice Film Festival, and twenty-one years after it was released to an unsuspecting general public, the film is still ticking away, being shown, being seen, being loved and loathed in probable equal measure.”

For cinephiles, this screening is akin to seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey in Cinerama. What’s more, Currie, de Heer and Retter will be in attendance for a stimulating post-screening Q&A, introduced by the prestigious Christian Jeune of Cannes Film Festival fame.

Revisit this homegrown experiment cum international hit on Sat 17 Oct, 3.30pm, at the Waterside Workers Hall. Book for Bad Boy Bubby now.