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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Topic: Woody Allen Mono???
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 08-21-2006 03:48 AM
quote: Ron Curran
Leo, I never got the opportunity to see the 70mm restoration of Vertigo but I thought it had a stereo track. Damn! A mono track would be an insult to Bernard.
For the 1997 restoration, the entire audio was remixed. Three-track audio elements from the music sessions were used, some Foley was entirely rerecorded, and dialogue and other parts were lifted from a variety of surviving elements.
Nothing like the resulting 5.1 mix was ever shown when the film was originally released, which is a controversial aspect of that restoration. Those who support it (Robert Harris, who did the restoration, occasionally posts here and so I hope I'm summarising the argument accurately!) claim that it's making the film accessible to a new generation of audiences, that the music recordings used are original and that the restoration wouldn't have been economically viable without the end result being stereo. They'd also add that the original mono mix has been preserved, and is therefore available for researchers or purists to hear if they want to (though I'd have liked to see it included on the DVD release, etc.).
Those who have a problem with it argue that the new mix is radically different from the version that was originally shown, that Hitchcock wouldn't have wanted it and that in effect, we're seeing a fundamentally different film.
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 08-21-2006 05:34 AM
Putting both an original mono track and a re-mixed stereo one on a DVD seems to be quite rare; I've only got one, 'A Clocktower Orange' I don't know why it's not done more often; a mono AC-3, or MPEG layer 2, track doesn't use a great deal of data, and there's often enough space on the diskc that it could have been done. The mono track on ACO does seem to sound better on my mono television than the stereo one (in mono).
The 70mm release of 'Vertigo' was DTS, wasn't it, so it would be possible to play either version with any print, if suitable discs were made available. The problem with doing that at a cinema is, of course, that whichever version you play there will be some of the audience who will not like it.
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 08-22-2006 02:36 AM
quote: Michael Coate
The answer to the former question is simple since the restoration work was done in 65mm and so the 35mm prints were reductions from that.
The 65mm intermediate elements were not the reason; a 65mm frame doesn't have an AR of 1.85, does it? I believe that most of the restoration was done in Vista format, with 65mm being used for the final interneg from which the 70mm prints were struck, but R. Harris could say for certain. I don't think the 35mm prints would have been derived from any 65mm element, but from a 35mm interneg optically printed from the Vista restoration elements. Bob, If you're reading this, is this correct? Any ratio of image could be printed on a 5-65 frame, matted on either top and bottom, or sides, if the ratio of the image differed from that of the frame. Since the original negative of 'Vertigo' was photographed in Vistavision, it would have had a wider aspect ratio than a 4-perf 35mm frame ant therefore ant 35mm print would have to have to be hard-matted to some degree, unless the image was cropped at the sides; the image simply doesn't exist to fill the full area, to the top and bottom, of a 35mm frame.
I think from memory that the Vista camera aperture icludes the soundtrack area, so the AR would be somewhere close to 1.5, though not all of this would be intended to be seen on screen. II don't know what the intended AR of 'Vertigo' was, but hard-matting a print to 1.85 is unusual, even for a film intended to be shown at 1.85; a small overlap is normally allowed between the matted frame area and the projector aperture area, at the intended ratio.
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Mitchell Dvoskin
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1869
From: West Milford, NJ, USA
Registered: Jan 2001
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posted 08-22-2006 08:32 AM
quote: Ron Curran
according to the American Widescreen Museum, VistaVision aspect ratio was formally 1.85, though 1.66 was acceptable
That is correct in that VistaVision was marketed to theatres with the notion that you could run it as wide as your theatre would allow. This is not to say that films were actually shot with that thought in mind. As anyone who has run a lot of classic films can attest, many film were marketed as "wide screen" 1.85, but frame much better at 1.66 or even 1.37.
A Horizontal VistaVision release frame is about 1.66, I have some horizontal VV frames of Strategic Air Command and measured the aspect ratio. This is the aspect ratio that was reduced and printed on original release 35mm vertical prints.
I have run an IB Technicolor original release print of Vertigo, and I can tell you that the matting at 1.85 is far too tight. Yes, there are a couple of shots where you can see the bottom of the mats/rear screen when you run at 1.66, but overall you lose content at 1.85 that was clearly intended to be seen.
The complaint many of us have with sound on the Harris version is not the stereo, which I like, but rather the added Foley effects that were never there in the first place, or brought up in volume to change the feel that Hitchcock intended. While there may have been notes indicating things Hitchcock thought about doing, the original release version was Hitchcock's Director's Cut. Many of us feel that second guessing Hitchcock years later is offensive and view the Harris version as an alteration, not a restoration.
I have a great deal of respect for Mr. Harris's work in convincing the studios that there is value in restoring classic movies on film. He is clearly the ground breaker in this field. I just wish that he, and everyone in the field, would stop mucking with the films and just restore them to the way they were originally seen. The only one who should tamper with a film is the original director, and only sparingly and with good reason.
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Paul H. Rayton
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 210
From: Los Angeles, CA , USA
Registered: Aug 2003
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posted 08-22-2006 04:37 PM
And, speaking of Kubrick and mono I might add that, several years ago, the Egyptian Theatre in L.A. had a Kubrick retrospective, and the prints of "A Clockwork Orange", "Barry Lyndon", and "The Shining" were all in stereo. And not just stereo, digital stereo. And not just digital, but "quad"-tracked prints, i.e. with all 3 digital formats present, plus the analog!
I'm not absolutely sure about the others, but I know "Clockwork Orange" never had a stereo playdate in it's original release, even via a mag print, though there is a mention of "Dolby" in the end credits. I assume the Dolby credit would have been for some of the sound studio equipment, because mag n.r. was employed before sva soundtracks came out.
In any event, the "Clockwork" music sounded wonderful in stereo (even in this latter-day "revisionist" version); I could hardly pull myself out of the theatre when checking the sound.
At least they didn't stereoize "Dr. Strangelove"!
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Mike Schindler
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1039
From: Oak Park, IL, USA
Registered: Jun 2002
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posted 08-24-2006 02:41 AM
Kubrick is another guy who supposedly preferred mono because it offered consistency between venues.
As for the aspect ratio thing, what is the current thought on not his design, but preference for home video, specifically 16:9 displays?
Here's a somewhat interesting sidenote. A few years back, we had a screening of DR. STRANGELOVE which was hosted by Mark Caro, the critic for the Chicago Tribune. I had heard about the supposed multi-ratio thing, and tested the film at 1.37:1, which is essentially what the multi-ratio transfer is. It quickly became blatantly obvious that the film was meant to be shown in 1.66:1, so that's what I ran it at for the show. During Caro's post-film presentation, he actually brought up the multi-ratio thing and pondered why it didn't change throughout the show. So, I started yelling the explanation down to him from the window in the booth. That didn't work out too well, and I don't think anyone really cared except for the two of us, so I gave up and sent him a long detailed explanation via email.
OK. That's actually a pretty lame story. Sorry.
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