This jazzy modern classic is turning 10 – and it’s still a great way to test home cinema hardware

Ryan Gosling is really in his element right now. Following the success of the sci-fi blockbuster Project Hail Mary, every other piece of content on my social media is a slickly edited video of the handsome devil.

Much of his back catalogue regularly appears in our AV test room. Barbie and Drive, for instance, are both excellent test discs, and the eagle-eyed among you will have spotted us using them in our reviews.

But there's another film featuring Gosling that is a brilliant way to test your home cinema hardware, and it is celebrating its 10th birthday. Damien Chazelle's La La Land leapt onto the screen back in 2017, and blew critics and audiences away with its show-stopping score and captivating performances from Gosling and Emma Stone in the leading roles.

If you have somehow never seen the modern classic, let us fill you in. It follows Sebastian, a struggling pianist, and Mia, an aspiring actress, who fall in love. When their careers start to take off, they find themselves having to make some tough decisions.

It's a film that we see used time and time again in demos for a range of AV kit, but over the years we have not used it in our own test room as much as we would like to. So this anniversary seems like the best time to revisit the best scenes to challenge your home cinema system, and also to bring it back to the top of our shelf where it belongs.

Opening sequence

From the off, La La Land really starts all guns blazing. On a hot summer's day, a seemingly endless queue of cars stretches to the Los Angeles horizon during rush hour. And what would any of us do in this scenario? That's right, open up your car door and break into a synchronised song and dance number.

The six-minute scene is dynamic and energetic with near constant movement that challenges a TV or projector's motion handling. With the crowd weaving around the cars and dancing in every direction, keep your eyes peeled for motion blur or juddering.

On top of that, the scene puts your audio system to the test. As dancers clamber about on the roof of the cars and horns blare around the soundfield, the precision of your audio set-up will be challenged. With a convincing Dolby Atmos system, you should hear the various sounds all around the space with a sense of accuracy and immersion.

"A Lovely Night"

Even if you haven't seen the film, you will almost certainly recognise the classic iconography of this scene. After running into each other at a party, Sebastian and Mia find themselves at the top of a beautiful hill but, despite obviously having feelings, lament that they are wasting this romantic view by spending it with each other.

As the pair move from the shade under a tree to a colourful night sky, it is a good test of how your screen handles the subtle detail in the crinkles of Sebastian's white shirt and the darker areas of Mia's yellow dress.

This beautiful sky also delivers a great test on its own. It starts at the top of the screen with a bright violet, before merging to pink and then ending in a darker red. On many screens, this may reveal an issue with colour banding, which is where smooth colour gradients are instead divided into stark lines.

A dance under the stars

After admitting their feelings for each other, Sebastian and Mia take a romantic trip to the Griffith Observatory which makes for another excellent test scene.

As the scene takes a magical realist turn and the pair floats into the night sky, note the contrast between the bright twinkle of the stars and the dark of the sky. There is a danger of the deep black looking more like a dark grey, or the stars not standing out against the more cavernous black backdrop.

On top of that, the twinkling stars can go the other way to create an unwanted "halo effect" where light spills out too much. That is particularly prevalent with Mini LED TVs because they rely on a backlight with local dimming zones. This all means it is particularly useful if you want to challenge your own Mini LED screen.

What's your favourite scene in La La Land? Drop it in the comments below.

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