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Re: [ARSCLIST] Quarter-inch splicing tabs

Hi Tom,

As a retired (except for sound projects) motion picture film (and later digital) editor, much of the work I've been able to do with sound tracks, whether they be on 35 MM (16 MM is much more difficult to edit) film or a non linear editing system like Audition, has been a result of learning the tricks of the trade. Many of those same techniques I learned in the Hollywood studios editing my sound tracks have been used as I've gone into the world of strictly audio editing.

You are correct about keeping the distance of the sprockets right, but in "35", you have four sprockets per frame and twenty four frames per second, so you have 96 increments in that second to change what's there. Since the mag. tracks in the beginning of post production (i.e., the cutting room) are double system or separate from the picture reel, you can slip the sound or manipulate it in any way that works for you. Many times on the cutting bench, I've made a series of butt splices that were one sprocket in length, so that one frame might have four splices in it. When working with loop lines from actors that were not very accomplished in recreating their lines in "post", I had to change the timing and even the syllables of their tracks to get good synch.

And yes, when I first started as an apprentice in the '50s, we did still work with optical sound tracks, but unless you had a composite print (the sound track mated to the picture and running along its edge), you still could manipulate it to do what you wanted. As far as cutting optical sound tracks, there is a technique called "blooping" wherein you use ink at the splice to briefly cover the jump in modulation, and at sound speed, the change is hardly heard, but there is even an art to that. At ABC television in Hollywood where I first started, we would even bloop composite prints when we inserted new commercials for the summer reruns in film shows. We had a jig that would clamp the section into place with a slot that exposed only the sound track with a diagonal taper from one end to the other. We would actually use a spray gun to evenly distribute the ink on an angle across the splice. One could (and did as an apprentice) do this process all day. One should keep in mind that the optical sound tracks on 35 and 16 composite prints are pulled up and proceed the picture in order to reach the sound head on the projector (which is positioned after the picture head) "in sync" at the same moment the corresponding picture is going through the picture gate. So that complicates the process of editing these prints after the sound has been mated in the lab printing. Even so, were even able to edit in or out scenes for timing purposes without ruining the continuity of sound. Of course, if the modulation at the cut was strong enough and not too different, we could make the splice without blooping. Sometimes you got lucky!!

Thank God for digital tools. Everything today is a "piece of cake" compared to solving problems in those earlier days. Of course, in post production we had much more time to think and figure out solutions then, because working with film had a given time frame. Today, the "bottom line" and faster tools drive us all. Everybody thinks that we can work wonders in a flash, but it still takes time to think out the solutions and multiple passes help us to sift out the details of perfecting a sound track.

Rod Stephens
Family Theater Productions


Tom Fine wrote:

Film editing is a different thing. You have to keep the sprockets distance right. There have been editing jigs for film since the earliest days of film. With optical-sound film, you will hear pops and ticks on edits because it's entirely possible to mate up different parts of a wave-form and it's also very easy to scratch the emulsion, particularly with edge-only opto-sound. Really good sound editors used to be able to go by the visible soundtrack on the film. As you probably know, the first binaural-stereo recordings were done by Bell Labs on optical sound-film and re-released on LP in the 1970s. Stokowski and the Philly and they put some then-current many-mic/many-track records to shame sound-wise.

By the way, editing mag-film has the same limitations as optical in that sprocket distance must be maintained. There isn't much time between sprockets but there sometimes is enough to make an edit difficult.
-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- From: "David Lennick" <dlennick@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, March 10, 2006 10:59 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Quarter-inch splicing tabs


"Richard L. Hess" wrote:

In some respects, I think we can credit Jack Mullin as the earliest
craft editor, working with scissors to edit Bing Crosby and Burl Ives
shows in 1947 on his Magnetophon transports with his own electronics.

And yes, you can hear some of them.


Even before then, MGM was editing on film to put together its soundtrack albums and
cut production numbers down to three minutes..some of those edits sound as if they
were done with an axe.

Were the Columbia pitch changes due to start-of-reel/end-of-reel
speed changes or what?


That must have been the reason. Some glaring ones: Dinu Lipatti's Chopin Waltzes,
very last track (side 1 I think), major pitch change right on the last note. EMI
finally corrected that on the CD issue but we had to put up with that pitch change
for over 30 years before that happened.

The worst edit I ever did was when we had the organ blower on for the
main take and then we did a pickup at the end and someone had turned
the organ blower off....


The worst editing on a best-selling LP is on Vladimir Horowitz's so-called "live"
recording of the Rachmaninoff 3rd Concerto on RCA. Parts are from the rehearsal,
and the piano moves.

dl



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