Todd-AO
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| Industry | Post-production, broadcast media, motion pictures, television |
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| Founded | 1953 |
| Headquarters | Hollywood, California, United States |
| Owner | Todd Soundelux |
| Website | www |
Todd-AO is an American post-production company founded in 1953, providing sound-related services to the motion picture and television industries. The company operates three facilities in the Los Angeles area. Todd-AO is also the name of the widescreen, 70 mm film format that was developed by Mike Todd and the American Optical Company in the mid-1950s. Todd-AO had been founded to promote and distribute this system.
Todd-AO began as a high resolution widescreen film format. It was co-developed in the early 1950s by Mike Todd, a Broadway producer, in partnership with the American Optical Company in Buffalo, New York. It was developed to provide a high definition single camera widescreen process to compete with Cinerama, or as characterized by its creator, "Cinerama outta one hole". Where Cinerama used a complicated setup of three separate strips of film photographed simultaneously, Todd-AO required only a single camera and lens.
The company's focus began to shift after Mike Todd's sudden death in an airplane accident in 1958. The 70 mm Todd-AO process was adopted by Panavision, Cinerama and others. As the production and exhibition markets became saturated with Todd-AO System hardware, the focus of the company gradually began to narrow down to the audio post-production side of the business, and Todd-AO became an independent sound mixing facility for commercial motion picture films and television after acquiring Glen Glenn Sound in 1986.
In May 2014, Todd-AO's parent company, Todd Soundelux, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. As part of the bankruptcy proceedings, they closed their Hollywood and Santa Monica facilities, leaving only their Burbank location operational.
On November 17, 2014 the Todd-Soundelux Trademarks (Todd AO and Soundelux) and Copyrights (Sound Effects Library) were acquired in Federal Bankruptcy Court (Central District Case No. 2:14-bk-19980) by Rob Nokes of Sounddogs.com, Inc.
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