ARCHIVES

LOOK AT ORIGINAL ISSUE

HISTORICAL CONTEXT - FILMS OF 1989

The release this June of Star Trek V will be a boon to movie sound fans. Landmark soundtracks have become as widely expected from this series as are their consistently high-quality visual effects. MOVIESOUND NEWSLETTER set out to find the sonic heart of Paramount's summer hopeful, and found that Trek V 's predecessor is also part of the story. There are going to be some remarkable sounds in Trek V, supervised by Mark Mangini. Once you appreciate the sound work in any one of the Trek series, you'll be aware there's a continuum of creative team work.

Mark Mangini slumped on the couch in his Studio City apartment, tired from a workday full of the sounds of Star Trek V. He handed this reporter a beer and we dove into talking about his work. Mark had a hand in the first Trek film, as well as Poltergeist, Raiders, and 48 Hrs. He supervised the sound for Joe Dante's Gremlins, Explorers, Innerspace, and The 'Burbs . Star Trek IV brought him an Oscar nomination for Best Sound Effects Editing, and it began an association with Leonard Nimoy that went on to cover Three Men and a Baby and The Good Mother. We asked him how he first got the Trek IV job.

Mangini: "Ralph Winter had been visual effects coordinator on Explorers, and we got along well, talked a lot about sound. Now Ralph was producing Trek IV and I was being considered for the job. I spent a day wandering around Paramount with Leonard Nimoy, talking about sound in general and the concept for the alien probe in particular... how to give it character. I remember it was the day they were shooting exteriors of the Bird of Prey (the Klingon Warship) as it was parked for repairs on Vulcan." (Actually, it was just the ship's belly and gangway in the middle of the parking lot. The matte artists painted in the rest.)

MSNL: How was working with William Shatner different than Leonard Nimoy?

MM: "First, these are two very different movies, and directed by two very different men. I think they take different routes to achieve the same goals. As far as ideas about sound, Leonard is much more deliberate in his thinking. He's very intellectual, methodical. And so most of his ideas about sound I was able to execute. Bill is extremely freewheeling... uninhibited in his thinking, and so he had a great number of ideas about sound, but with a buckshot approach. That means some of them will hit the target, but not all. It's fun working that way, too."

MSNL: How long did you work on IV as compared to V ?

MM: " Trek IV was a great schedule, which for me ran from June'86 to late November. This one is more like January through May of '89, only half the time. John Pospisil started three weeks earlier on some design stuff, so he's actually gone longer."

(Pospisil, AKA "John P.." was cosupervising sound editor of Robocop with Steve Flick. He specializes in custom sound effects for top SF and fantasy films, and has worked with Mangini for years.)

MSNL: What are some new sound effects designed for Trek V ?

MM: "We had about forty design FX on a list. I couldn't do it all, even with John P. There's a lot of stuff for the new Enterprise we see at the end of IV. We made armaments, phasers, shuttles, planet ambiences, and a new turbo-lift, you know, the elevator that Kirk always takes up to the bridge. Al Howarth made new Enterprise engines and Warp "sweeteners". (Alan Howarth has been contributing to the Star Trek sound effects since the first feature.)

MSNL: What about those background effects we hear on the Enterprise bridge?

MM: "Well, as you know, we put a little of the TV show bridge beeps in at the end of Trek IV , when they are first given the new ship. We knew it was supposed to be a more high-tech Enterprise . But we'd been in the Klingon ship through the whole movie. So we said to Leonard "let's put those in," and he said, "are you sure we need those old TV effects?" and we said "Trekkies'll love hearing it. It's familiar." So we just added a touch of it. Doug Grindstaff had made all those wonderful Trek sounds that have become old friends to all of us. I went back to his composite bridge background, which had little Touch Tone beeps, and these little pings. I found the individual elements that made this composite, and I remixed it with some more high-tech beeps and tones. So I got a new composite that I like better, but it's still reminiscent of the TV show."

MSNL: What other familiar effects will we hear?

MM: "Well, the ship "Warps-Out" and "pass-by's" have been the same through I, II, III, and IV , from a composite mixed by Bill Varney for the first film. But these sounds have been contributed to by many top sound people. For instance, the Cloaking/Decloaking device FX, which came from Trek II , have elements from CeCe Hall and George Watters (the Paramount team,) Alan Howarth, George Budd, and Sprocket Systems' Randy Thom. They all contributed something. Many of the stock FX in Trek IV are gleaned from the dubbing masters from Trek I, II, and III. It kind of grows that way."

MSNL: There seems to be a kind of folkloric tradition with these sounds, then, a respect for their forebears, as elements build and evolve. Did the communicators stay the same?

MM: "You mean the owl chirp?"

MSNL: Owl chirp? You're pulling my leg!

MM: "(laughs) No. Grindstaff made that from an owl chirping, sped up and doctored a little. We didn't have it in Trek IV , because they were using Klingon equipment. But in Trek V we're back to the signature sounds. The Enterprise "whooshing" door open is the same as it was in I, II, and III. It's different from the TV one. Cece and George remade it and we've kept it. Nobody liked the TV door. It's familiar, but just sounds bad in a movie mix, where everything's bigger and flaws show up. We also made some new phasers and photon torpedoes."

MSNL: Tell us about all the weapons you worked on.

MM: "The Klingon Bird of Prey has a new gun. We called it a "wingtip" gun, because that's what the prop looks like. And there's a crude, handmade "rock" gun we had to do something for. I thought maybe, since it didn't use gunpowder, it might sound a little like compressed air. We don't really know how they work. Both the Enterprise and the Bird of Prey have photon torpedoes, which we made new. They're kind of a cross between manipulated Slinky hits, chopping big cables with a contact mike on the cable, and a synthesizer sound that's kind of a flangey blast or explosion just at the head end of the sound. Harve (Executive Producer) Bennett wanted 'em to sound the same for both the Enterprise and the Bird of Prey . Maybe that means a kind of arms parity. We also remade the hand phasers. I never liked the TV ones."

MSNL: What kind of major design FX were unique to this film?

MM: "I can't tell you without revealing the plot, but I will say that one involves the sound and voice of this very powerful being. We had to create an overwhelming sense of power with an actor's voice. The recording made on the set was OK, but not satisfactory for electronic processing, so I had to stick my neck out and talk Bill Shatner and Harve into looping all of that voice."

MSNL: Why? If it was well-recorded in production?

MM: "I needed to do some very special miking to get the effect we wanted. We re-recorded George Murdoch using an old-style mic. It was an old RCA 10001. A ribbon mike. I also used a Schoeps single-point stereo MS mike. Just recording a voice in stereo is unusual on an ADR stage. And I figured that one way to create magnificence was to get the chest resonance from a proximity recording. I needed a lot of meaty low-frequency modulation to work with, for processing later. So we had some good bass frequencies that could be boosted and shifted around electronically. The actor has a nice, resonant chest, so that gave us the bigness that we wanted. But I also needed to hear some intimacy , so we kept him unusually close to the mike. In fact right at his nose. It was natural far him to move off a little, so we had to keep pushing him close. Anyway, we printed this stereo recording to 35mm. "fullcoat," and (ADR Editor) Andy Patterson cut it the way you'd normally cut monaural ADR for any character.

We used a pre-reverb, as if the echo sucks up to the track, instead of following it. We used a pre-delay as well. Now it's not unusual to send a signal to be delayed before it hits the reverb chamber, but this time we did it with a backward recording, and used signal feedback to make it feel very different. Then we pitched the voice down and sent it to a sub-harmonic synthesizer. That gave us a super-low voice. Now, even though we hear this being speak in a cave, we chose not to use the cliche of cave reverb FX. And he's in all speakers in the theater, so he feels like he's everywhere at once."

MSNL: Any other aliens or beings?

MM: "Yeah. There's an alien horse John P. made out of some horses in heat blended with camel groans."

MSNL: Why in heat?

MM: "There're groans and bellows, not whinnies... and P. also made a kind of hybrid catwoman. No speaking voice, just animal vocalizations."

End of Part 1 of a two-part interview. Next issue, Mark discusses working FXs around music, experimenting with an exciting new technique, and Leonard Nimoy singing the immortal WubbaWubba song.

ISSUE GLOSSARY

We don't want to mow you down with tech talk, but here're a couple of definitions relevant to this issue:

FX: Sound effects

ADR: Replacement of production dialogue with studio-recorded lines, also "looping"

FOLEY: Replacement of production movements of props and actors by studio performance.

REVIEWS... OR AUDITIONS

THE NAVIGATOR

is an unusual fantasy about a tribe of medieval miners who dig their way into a modern city. Kind of a Time After Time with dirty fingernails. There's a plot about the Plague that may be a parable of our times, but we're here for sound. Let the real film reviewers battle over its success as art. Not that we expected a small Australia/New Zealand production to budget big sound. But it's interesting how an arty little film can give us isolated things to listen to.

When a film has a grainy, black-and-white look, and that's appropriate to the sketchy directorial style, do big sound effects feel out of place? The Navigator has moments of jarring inconsistency, because its sound sources have varying quality. The layers of FX, Production, ADR, Foley, and Backgrounds aten't integrated with any real focus.

The picture opens with some nice echo effects, with good use of surrounds, in a color dream sequence. The film's "real" world is monochromatic. That seems in harmony with the majority of the dialogue track, which is muddy and a little obscure, (It's fun to decipher the thick brogue of the miners, presumably something like a Yorkshire dialect (British readers: HELP!) We also try to understand their primitive culture without enduring obvious exposition. This is the challenging stuff Willow failed to do. European- and art film-goers have always adjusted to tracks that covered dialogue in cotton-wool. Never underestimate the skill with which Hollywood rerecording mixers glean clarity and sparkle out of production dialogue. No one else can do it.

So much of the dialogue and background effects go along at a passable level, that big FX stand out in high relief. For instance, you get used to this narrow world with its dark monaural sound. Suddenly there's a stereo dog bark off-stage left. Crisp and clean as any Hollywood soundtrack. It throws you. Torches are very important to these people, for the basics of survival. So much so that torches whoosh by camera with an outsize sound effect. Every sound editor in Hollywood has cut her/his share of torch whooshes (when they move) and constant crackles (when they don't) but we expect them to be mixed at reasonably subtle levels. People thought the theater was on fire! A big, clean sound effect comes much too boldly out of a grey, muddy context. Later, when a torch is dropped into an infinite chasm, (to the other side of the earth,) it echoes throughout the theater and on into infinity. That was most beautifully mixed. The caves and the medieval world have a sonic claustrophobia, where a lack of stereo backgrounds or surround ambiences keep your ears focused on the center speaker. You can concentrate on dialogue, but are never placed into a scene. When our heroes arrive in modern time, there is never a surround background that feels like our familiar world. Perhaps there was a story-telling problem here, and the director had a dilemma: If they hear all of our modern sounds at once, both the characters the audience might be overwhelmed. But it seems artificial that they don't react to sounds of the modern world. Our noise pollution, to make the story more literal and less a parable, would have knocked their burlap socks off! So there was no great moment of shock, of sensory overload. But the mixers and editors very effectively snuck in some distant police sirens and boat hoans, very gradually. Why did the medieval miners cross the road? To get to the other side of the story. They seem to experience the mystery of the modern world only as one of strange lights. The other senses are dead. We hear the cars whiz by only when they're close. These guys take a series of honking car horns quite in stride. Music to any medieval ears. (Not a line about the smell of the traffic, either.)

Lots of nice big water effects and the building of a subtle rumble before a submarine surfaces, violently upsetting their little boat. There's a nice wind effect when one of them is caught on the front of a speeding train. A wind sound that must, to the primitive man, be a devil's wind indeed. There are snappy little details that just grab you. Like a horse chomping at his bit, not even a story point. You can hear his teeth, practically smell his breath. And yet when the same horse falls in the water and thrashes about, the sound is laughably inadequate. It lacks power, lacks any specially-prepared bass notes or slowed-down sweeteners to give it size. When he gallops on asphalt through the city, the basic hoofbeat sounds on the front center speaker sounded light and tinny. Whether due to bad Foley, wimpy sound editing, or dull production recording, it's very disappointing! Yet we hear a terrific treatment of his hooves echoing off buildings around the city in the surrounds, a wonderful touch outlining the surrealism of the moment. There's a close-up detail of a rope about to break. The sounds are mixed too hot, and are poorly chosen. They don't creak threateningly. They telegraph the action. Then the damn thing breaks with a snap! And the sound is great! Vincent Ward has made a challenging, quirky little fantasy that never plays down to popular taste (except, pehaps in some of the music.) We understand that the values and budget of an art film can't be compared to Hollywood. But we'd like to see more consistency of thought and style in the sounds, and the varying quality of textures better integrated, especially when they're placing us in a fantasy world. If the film maker is showing us our own world with new eyes, let him show it with new ears, too.

DEAD CALM

recently screened at the Academy theater (thanks to the Editors' Guild screening series) is the best sound job yet in 1989. The 35mm Dolby optical SR print was as crystal clear and dynamic as any 70mm 6-track. All the sound elements were handled in SR throughout their work processes, except the original production dialogue, which was encoded with Dolby A noise reduction. But it's not Dr. Dolby that made this a great track. Phillip Noyce, the director, has evidently empowered Roger Savage, Lee Smith, and their Australian sound crew to push their craft to the limit. Roger Savage's crew had done the Mad Max movies, and are no strangers to "big sound." The surprise here is how artistically they have approached the particular subject matter in this picture, and drawn a soundtrack with personality out of a physically small-scale story. The musical score by Graeme Revell integrates with FX and dialogue flawlessly, from the opening when title music segues to train FX before we're conscious of it, (or when the scored rhythm leads us right into some windshield wipers,) to the seething, frenzied ending. By then we may have heard Revell's synthetic ''breathing" motif too often, but it harmonizes with sound FX to keep our adrenalin boiling. Sound FX are used to their best storytelling potential. We're introduced to the surrounding creaks and water-laps of a sailboat interior only after the dramatic moments of husband-wife dialogue have introduced the situation. A less creative mix would have tried to explain the location to our ears, before we need to know dramatically. Production dialogue shot on the deck of a boat can be a nightmare to edit cleanly and mix well. Dead Calm's dialogue makes the technical limitations disappear. The tracks are as bright as expensive crystal, with plenty of rich, warm midrange. ADR ("looped") lines are kept at realistic levels, and match production flawlessly. Sometimes we hear the labored breathing of a swimmer, or someone rowing a dinghy. These are the kind of sounds that in many films are perfomed or mixed quite clumsily, and will get unintentional laughs. But in Dead Calm the subtle grunts and breaths are little gems, set among bigger sounds. The Foley tracks FX are naturalistic, and work with production sound to weave a seamless reality, never drawing attention to themselves. And there are long scenes carried by sound FX only, the sign of a director secure in the effectiveness of his storytelling, and in the articulation of his sound track. This picture has relationship, love, psychology, lots of humor, and more action than you want. It is very contemporary, and depends upon the intelligent heroism of a small woman. It is a brilliant thriller, and, like Die Hard, needs to put us right into a believable situation in order to scare the pants off us. Sound craftsmanship is well-suited to create the environment. It goes with natural, seemingly casual acting and dialogue to "sell" the beginnings of an adventure, then expands to theatrical proportions to give us our money's worth: What fun for sound FX people to create the dark, moody interiors of a "Ghost Ship". The sloshing of water in a leaky hold, the shock of a faulty electric system arcing, the echoes of threatening metal hatches, the utter claustrophobia that surround effects can invoke... All this is reminiscent Das Boot , which was a milestone in sound work. There are often simple sound FX with surprisingly complex texture, or "color". Some tools and weapons, as one would expect. But you've never heard hydrophonic (underwater) recordings quite so pretty. Even a lowly bilge pump becomes a living character, so imbued with personality is its sound. Anyone expecting this track to be an uncomplicated 12 reels of background water laps and luffing canvas sails will be very surprised. In the proper theatre, Dead Calm is as realistic, exciting, dynamic, and nightmarish as Die Hard, and that's a tough act to follow! Roger Savage and Phil Judd mixed. Lee Smith was sound designer, Peter Townend, Annabelle Sheean and Tim Jordan edited FX & dialogue, Ben Osmo was production mixer. Foley artists were Jerry Long and Steve Burgess... Thanks to our tech advisor, Larry Blake.

Did Jim Kirk say something unforgiveable about Lucy Arnaz? Lawrence Luckinbill gives Director Shatner the old Klingon strangelhold in Star Trek: The Final Frontier . Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures, Inc.

RE-RESPECT!

What's a "Re-recording mixer?" That's an awkward, if appropriate term, since modern tracks go through so many stages from shooting to predubs to final mix. They are the folks who mix the tracks of FX, music, and dialogue into the total blend we know as a soundtrack. The industry refers to craftspeople who record live sound as "mixers," or "recording mixers" without the extra "re-". Though you'll read it on all modern credits, it ain't so easy to pronounce "Re-recording mixer" aloud. (Don't try this at home, boys and girls!) Dateline-Skywalker Ranch, Lucasfilm: Gag sign found on an office door "Tom Johnson, Re/Re/Recording... Gary Rydstrom, Re/Re/Re/Recording".

RETAKES

No room for a laser disc sound review in this issue. We wanted to squeeze in Dead Calm ASAP..... In our quick notice on 84 Charlie Mopic , we forgot to mention the great sound supervising/mixing work of Larry Blake and Dale Strumpell. Sorry, guys.

SKEW YOU

Marketing geniuses we are not. But we've just calculated the results of our Theater Beat survey. This wildly unscientific nose count should tell us a little more about who we are. Because we're starting the newsletter in L.A., there is still a heavy bias toward big-city numbers. Readers elsewhere, this means you can spread us around and our future surveys will skew more toward your lifestyle. It seems as we begin, that about 66% of respondants are in their 30's, with 20's and 40's splitting the remainder. Most describe themselves as middle- and upper-middle class, and are motivated enough to attend movies alone , if necessary. Here's the urban-leaning part: People told us they visit some 22 1/2 movie screens (7 theaters averaging 3 screens each) in their home area. Readers noticed 1/2 of those advertising stereo presentation (and we know that nearly all mainstream pictures are now released in stereo), and some 12% of screens advertised 70mm 6-track shows. Some 58% of MSNL readers go out to movies weekly, 16% daily, and 18% will go twice a month. The most telling bit of arithmetic is the 88% who "often notice annoying sound problems." What does that say about the state of our theaters? 68% of us will complain to management! We also got names of "Good Sound Houses" people wanted to share, and we'll make space for them soon. Drop us a postcard if you want some more survey blanks.

THE BOOTH

When we went to see Lawrence of Arabia , we noticed while waiting for the lights to go down, that the audio system was playing find-your-seats music with very high fidelity. It suddenly struck us that better projection booths must have CD players nowadays. We have a youthful memory of projection booths as noisy boiler rooms full of blinding carbon-arc light, hulking black iron mechanisms, cigar smoke, and girly magazines. But most projectionists today (if you can find them, away from automated cinemas) work hard to keep their booths high-tech, and believe there's a high craft to the proper presentation of a film. Light balance, aspect ratio, changeovers, sound system specs, even dimming the lights and opening curtains are part of the show. So the playing of music before a movie is an integral part of the experience. Assuming the music is of a style you enjoy, you'll want to listen to it carefully. The fidelity of this music is probably a good indicator of the theatre's overall sound system. (Movie trailers, by the way, may be released in mono or just poorly adjusted for sound, so we wouldn't judge a theater on their presentation.) And if it sounds to you like management was willing to spring for a CD player, you may be in for a good show. If something is glaringly wrong when the music is playing, you probably still have time to abuse one of the ushers about it.

-DS

SCOREBOARD

As it has been since Creation, some of the year's most heavily-hyped films, deserving or not, were nominated for Best Score Oscars, while some of '88's most innovative movie music went unnoticed. And Oscar promotion has overshadowed films released since January that have already disappeared. Here are some of my faves of recent memory: Danny Elfman's Beetlejuice had faint echoes of vintage Warner Bros. cartoon music, catapulting us all further into the surreal depths of Tim Burton Land. John Barry gave us prurient, sensual strings in Masquerade , truly a great score in the Hollywood tradition. And Basil Poledouris contributed what many believe to be one of the best scores of his career to John Milius' Farewell to the King , Still available on CD, it evokes the warmth and primitive innocence of tribal people, yet mixes engagingly with the militarism and epic violence of Milius' obsession. Recorded in Budapest, the score uses a traditional orchestra combined with Balinese gongs, bells, and a pan flute. The film, dubbed in Dolby SR, sounds almost as good as the music by itself. And then there's Zelly and Me. Has anyone seen this movie? I haven't, and I don't know anyone who's even heard of it, but it's one of my favorite film CD's. An understated autumnal reverie from the pen of Pino Donaggio. Write in if you know anything about the film. We're curious.

-RS

PUBLISHER ..... VANESSA T. AMENT

EDITOR ..... DAVID E. STONE

TECHNICAL ADVISOR ..... LARRY BLAKE

CONTRIBUTING MUSIC EDITOR ..... RICHARD STONE

COMPUTER ADVISOR .... JOHN SEMPER

Published in Hollywood-ISSN 1043 7304

Subscription rate $40 for 20 issues, Gift samples $2 for 2

Classified ads will be run for 20 cents/character, $10 minimum

TRAILERS

Next time, part II of Trek V interview. "To loudly go where no one has gone before!"

We'll try take 2 on that laserdisc review. Also, some gossip: Is sound work on The Abyss in trouble? And some notes on the prep and mixing of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, AKA Indy III .