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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Author
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Topic: Optical sound on Cinemascope.
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Dan Sherlock
Film Handler
Posts: 11
From: Hollywood, CA, USA
Registered: Feb 2008
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posted 02-26-2008 09:57 PM
As Michael said above, there were plenty of errors in the "Wide Screen Movies" book to allow my putting together a “corrections” list that grew and grew and grew. But John Belton’s book only has a few errors that I have noticed, so I doubt that there would be much of a “corrections list” anywhere.
One error in John Belton’s book does appear to be the statement that the use of “Fox hole” perforations disappeared with the introduction of magoptical sound. The evidence suggests that this claim by John Belton was influenced by the same error in the “Wide Screen Movies” book. Here’s the real story:
The first use of an optical track with Perspecta for a CinemaScope film that I have found was for prints (mostly European prints) of Knights of the Round Table. (They were released a few months after the premiere in the USA.) The original mag-striped prints from Fox for CinemaScope had no optical track at all. Fox fought but finally relented against the use of optical tracks (particularly for drive-ins) and in 1954 allowed the use of stereo mag prints, monophonic mag prints, and optical prints. I do not know if there was an earlier release of an optical sound CinemaScope title than Knights of the Round Table.
Fox did not invent the “magoptical” format. It was in fact developed by the Motion Picture Research Council, with substantial help from MGM. The first magoptical film was apparently Kismet released by MGM in 1955. Fox strongly objected to the use of magoptical prints, but finally relented and first used it for the movie Bus Stop in 1956 and then for all magnetic prints beginning with The True Story of Jesse James in 1957. There were indications at the time of development of the magoptical format that it was hoped that the magnetic stripes could be stripped off of magoptical prints to reveal a full size optical track for secondary release, but this proved to be impractical.
The first 35mm mag prints (with CS perfs) that did not have the 12 KHz control tone was apparently the Cinestage prints for Around the World in 80 Days. This was because the modified Perspecta process for the surrounds did the job of suppressing the noise from the narrow oxide stripe used for the surrounds. The first mag CinemaScope title without a 12 KHz tone? I don’t know, but the tone continued to be used for many, many years for such prints.
To address a comment from Monte above – the aspect ratio for mag-only CinemaScope prints is 2.55:1, not 2.66:1. The 2.66:1 aspect ratio was used only for the early CinemaScope showings, and the 2.55:1 shape was recommended by Fox even for shows using interlocked mag stereo.
There were indeed mag releases using KS perfs. There were a number of movies using this type of print – particularly from Universal around the early 1980’s. (Universal was very slow to adopt the Dolby stereo optical format.)
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 02-27-2008 07:49 PM
I ran both SOUTH PACIFIC and OKLAHOMA! when Samuel Goldwyn had the rights and they both had the standard sprocket holes and three mag strips, with one mag head necessarily tracking on the edge of the sprocket holes. Can you say brrrrrrrrrr? They played fairly well in mag, without the surround track of course, and depending on how good your ears were, you could hear that undertow of motorboating going on on the Left channel (if memory serves) because of the head running over part of the sprocket holes.
It was better than no mag at all, yes, but seemed like ill-conceived to me. I mean, most of the theatres back then, even the local neighborhood houses had installed Fox sprockets drives on their machines even if they didn't buy the whole CinemaScope package. They had to, otherwise they couldn't play the magoptical prints. And if you are as old as I am, you will remember Fox being adamate that from THE ROBE on, EVERY Fox title was going to be CinemaScope/Stereophonic. So to drop a mag channel to accomodate theatres that not only don't have mag penthouses, but hadn't converted to Fox sprokets....well, as I said....ill-conceived. Besides, do you know what that optical track sounded like with only half its ass peaking out from under the mag track on a magoptical print? Fox should have called it mag-half-assed-optical; you had to turn the fader up twice as loud just to get a decent level, but that was without any noise reduction, so you doubled the noise PLUS, you got that weird rumbling sound as the optical slit read the uneven edge of the applied oxide stripe. It was anything but ideal.
I had to run THE SOUND OF MUSIC for a week in a mono/optical only house using a magoptical print and it drove me crazy knowing there was awesome stereo tracks on the print and all I could hear was that AM quality mono. So whereas standard Fox magoptical prints compromised the optical mono track, that hybrid KS perf/3track magoptical compromised the mag playback as well.
Foolish.
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