American Cinematographer - July 1992 - 76

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Carving Out the Couplets
When Orson Welles was filming
Othello in the late 1940s, it was stan¬
dard to shoot the original produc¬
tion sound directly onto 35mm op¬
tical negative. This scratch track
was believed to have been used for

the looping

the elements at hand. The Univer¬
sal task force thought they could try

sound effects and music tracks, and

by carving out the dialogue from
the original mix. Fortunately, the

and effects track

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changes occurring under the re¬
synced dialogue.
Five mixers
Golya,

-TILTING
MIRROR

cluding supervising editor John
Fogelson and sound supervisor/
re-recording mixer Ed Golya, were
originally asked to clean up the
optical final mix and augment

AGENT-

of the sound effects for stereo.

A completely new soundtrack was

also in the works, but the Univer¬
sal contingent was well prepared.
"We've restored old wire record¬

ings," says Murray Allen, former
president of Universal, "though
nothing as mammoth as this."
came

to Universal

done wild. It is known that Welles
himself looped at least two of the

-FILM AND
VIDEO

EUROPEAN

staffers, in¬

only the composite track. The
big problem was sync. During the
looping process of the early 1950s,
the Shakespearean actors delivered
brilliant readings in the studio.
Alas, these readings rarely matched
the performances on film. Some of
the looping, it is suspected, was

-HORIZON
ROLL

characters, if not more. The original
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augmented with additional

Dawson.
Universal's

with

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made. Both

were mixed low,
underneath dialogue. The music
was re-recorded and the effects

were

Saks

FEATURING:

was

music and effects

optical negatives, the final mix, and
the M&E were among the original
audio elements located by Michael

some

way

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found, however, leav¬

different languages. After
looping and building complete

as a

Batteries.

were

many

uncommon

again recording the sound on opti¬
cal negative, the sound was mixed
or dubbed. Then a generic music

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ing the restoration team wondering
if the sync could be improved with

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original mix. No original dialogue

European
to accommodate

tice not

of all of Othello, a prac¬

would make it possible to stretch
and compress syllables and remix
the new dialogue with the original
M&E in order to reduce the amount
of sync distraction inherent in the

dialogue editor, given the existing
technology of the time, could only
do

much to restore sync.
Saks and Dawson asked
the Universal team if it was possible
to recover the sync of the dialogue.
Because of music and effects under
the dialogue, the task could be ac¬
so

complished only if the original dia¬
logue tracks were found; the tracks

July 1992

ambience for surround channels,
which would help mask any

Lucas Bower, Bob Bennett, Steve
Wilke and Terry Shilling-carved

and

re-synced dialogue with the
help of assistants Dave Lewis and
Tim Reisig. Allen oversaw the
project and kept the flow going.
First, optical positives were made
of the original soundtrack. Ten in¬
dividual reels were made and
transferred to DAT in sync with
time code so that the film sound¬
track could be retired. Then, the

digitally based elements

were
transferred to workstations - two
New England Digital Direct-toDisk systems and three AMS Au¬

diophiles.
The

carving

six months and

was

process took
done via the

development of cues within the
DAWs (digital audio worksta¬
tions). Re-syncing was achieved by
time-scale modification of indi¬
vidual syllables or phrases. Many
times there were words in the
soundtrack that didn't exist at all in
the picture. Each reel was re-synced

about four times,

subject to ap¬
proval by Fogelson and Golya.
After the carving and re¬
syncing process, the prepared
tracks

were

then transferred to

DAT and sent to

Fantasy Studios in
Berkeley, California, for Sonic

American Cinematographer - July 1992

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