American Cinematographer - July 1992 - 72

Othello and lago

(Michael
MacLiammoir)
stroll the

battlements.

the

magnificent composition of

shots where Welles would perform
with his back to the camera, but his

body movement doesn't match the
dubbing that he later did. "Othello
difficult role," Saks observes.
"The language has to be mastered

is

a

to direct, produce, and be a pro¬
duction manager at the same time
is nearly impossible. But he
achieved a style there, in the many
scenes with his back to the camera.
He'd turn and you'd see a profile. I

-

think it's a style of pragmatism.
And his acting in the dubbing is

magnificent. There

was no ADR
then either, so God knows what it
was."
Othello's entire soundtrack
was

re-recorded and re-mastered in

digital stereo surround at Univer¬
sal, with the help of the Chicago
Symphony Orchestra and the Chi¬
cago Lyric Opera. "Prior to this re¬
cording," says Dawson, "a synthe¬
sized guide track was created to
ensure that
every note and every
musical phrase was totally in sync
with the original score. This let us

70

noise to the forefront."

Dialogue

had to be carved out word for word
from the original optical negative.
"Sections that were out of sync

digitally processed so that
syllables and vowels could literally
be expanded or compressed to
match lip movement," he reveals.
The decision to use Dolby
was "essential to be
commercially
accepted," says Saks. "We had to
do Dolby surround to get the track
to match the magnificence of the
visuals." But they didn't have sepa¬
rate dialogue tracks. Universal en¬
gineer Ed Golya, the re-recording
were

mixer who acted
sor,

as

audio

supervi¬

used his tech wizards to

carve

out the

dialogue from the compos¬
ite. "They made a positive track of
the composite, which is less noisy
than the negative," says Saks. This
was
put on a digital machine, and
every word was carved. "There
was some

music and effects

on

top

of the

dialogue, because it's a com¬
posite, but they were able to digi¬
tally equalize much of it out."

bring certain orchestrations that

Universal's AMS audiophile
stretched and compressed the dia¬

had been buried in distortion and

logue into sync. "The dialogue edi¬

American

July 1992

Cinematographer

were never able to match wild
tracks of what was on screen," Saks
notes. "The lago character was way
out of sync, while Welles came

tors

fairly close. That led me to believe
that they didn't look at the picture
when they did the wild track; they
may have listened to a scratch re¬
cording done on location and tried
to match it."

The
sic

were

foley effects and

not

mu¬
sacrosanct, but

Othello's

indecipherable dialogue
replacement.
Saks' three years of college Shake¬
speare came in handy, but the main
objective, he says, "was not to use
any non-original dialogue. We
didn't bring actors in to do any
more
dubbing. That would have
was

not restored via

made the film

more

understand¬

able, but then we'd be tampering
with something that should not be
tampered with. You can't do that to
a

master like Welles. Beatrice

agreed that with a film of such
major historical significance, it was
more
important to see what Welles
did than get the story of Othello,
which everyone knows." Noise re¬
duction helped clean up the track,
American Cinematographer - July 1992

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