Star Wars sound mixes — Page 2

Great article, Marvins! Learned a lot about the French dubbing business. The rest of the article was interesting and I'll translate it when I get home tonight.

OK, I decided to re-do Marvins original translation (j'espère que tu ne m'en veux pas!) and then translate a part of the interview that seemed pertinent

Here's the link: http://www.objectif-cinema.com/spip.php?article4547&artsuite=8

Gazette du doublage: You worked on the first Star Wars films. Retrospectively, what do you think about the first trilogy? Were you a sound engineer or a technical director?

Pierre Davanture: When Michel Gast and I saw Star Wars (1977) to prepare the dubbing into French, we were very impressed and immediately took particular preparations.

Knowing that the film was going to be mixed in Paris in 6 track stereo (for the 70mm release prints) we immediately envisaged the grand auditorium of the SIMO de Boulogne. I got in touch with my friend Jean Neny who wanted to come see the film. Before projecting it, he told me, "if I'm watching this film before it's even mixed, it's for you" but after watching it he recognized right away that I had done the right thing.

We decided that I would do some sound tests for Vader's and C3PO's voice and that I would give him, for the mixing session, edited tracks that were voice-distorted for each character. We only had a harmonizer which was used to distort Roger Carel's voice for C-3PO. We could not use the same machine used in the States for Vader's voice, so I used the harmonizer to bring down François Chaumette's voice an octave. Then, in order to recreate the resonance effect of the mask, I decided - as I've often done - to get closer to reality. We then constructed a box made of laths (about 40x25x30 cm) the inside of which we placed an omni-directional microphone and a small 12cm speaker, mounted on a pivot so that it could be adjusted for better results. Our chief editor, Maurice Martin, prepared the French voice tracks and Jean Nany, at the studio in Boulogne, worked on the mixing session in the presence of Ben Burtt, the production sound engineer.

This little box that I talked to you about was nicknamed the "Vader Box" and an artist even drew Vador's face on it. It stayed in PM Productions' auditorium throughout the years but unfortunately it has disappeared since.

La Gazette du doublage: Did you get the impression in 1977, at the release of the first film, that you had worked on a very special film that would mark its time?

Pierre Davanture : Yes, certainly. But we didn't imagine the infatuation that would continue 30 years on.

La Gazette du doublage: Did you have particular recommendations from Lucasfilm/Fox for the dubbing? Talk to us about your collaboration with Jean Rouat, Jean Neny and Ben Burtt, the sound engineer from Lucasfilm.

Pierre Davanture: No, we didn't have any recommendation from production seeing we couldn't even obtain the name of the machine used for Vader's voice.

As technical director of the SND dubbing services, I organized, in agreement with Michel Gast, the methods used to distort the voices as previously explained. Jean Roua recorded the dialogue. Maurice Martin made sure the voices were in sync and he then sent off the tracks for mixing. I only met Ben Burtt at the mixing session, as directed by Jean Neny.

La Gazette du doublage: Do you remember who the artistic directors and supervisors were for these films?

Pierre Davanture : For Star Wars Fox hired Eric Kahane as artistic director. Michel Gast surely regretted it because he really loved science fiction films and would have loved to have directed the dialog himself.

The following episodes, The Empire Strikes Back (1981) and The Return of the Jedi (1983) were dubbed by PM Productions under the direction of Michel Gast this time. I did the recording and premixing, Maurice Martin did synchronization and the mixing was done in the States.

Heidy Webel supervised those films and I have good memories of her which is not always the case with certain supervisors that I've had to deal with on certain films.

La Gazette du doublage: Did you ever go to Skywalker Ranch for the films' mixing sessions? What was your implication in the States?

Pierre Davanture: No, I never went to the States. Certain films like E.T and every other large Spielberg productions were mixed in the States after a premixing of the French dub tracks in Paris. This was always a source of problems because I think that American engineers were happy just adding the French dialog to the international tracks (music/effects) and to this day, I am persuaded that it is difficult, in a mixing session, to judge the intelligibility of words in a language that we do not understand. When the French version was listened to in Paris, it was rejected and remixed.

According to Anthony Daniels, the tractor beam line was recorded long after filming had finished, on his own in a broom cupboard in London. The resulting tape was biked to the airport so the line could be inserted into the movie.

http://www.anthonydaniels.com/journalism/wc/wc3/index.html

msycamore said:

Moth3r said:

It would make sense though - instead of a new remix, the 1985 release had its audio digitally remastered from an existing mix.

Then again this David C. Fein seems to have credentials (despite the inaccuracies about the ISR laserdisc) - it looks like he now works with Michael Matessino (the guy who gave us the list of ESP 70mm print differences) at a DVD production company called Sharpline Arts.

That's great info, moth3r! yeah there are inaccuracies with both the ISR LD's and the pan & scan transfers, but that certainly gives it more weight. No one is perfect and that site and info is old anyway.

Could someone please point out what is inaccurate about the information given on the old davisDVD site?

Bobby Jay said:

Could someone please point out what is inaccurate about the information given on the old davisDVD site?

Despite popular belief, this was not the only transfer made of Star Wars. At some point, a second fullscreen video transfer was created from a 16mm flat print source. Since an anamorphic (2.35:1) 35mm print had been reduced down to a flat (1.33:1) 16mm print, this 16mm source featured different pan & scan decisions made during the print reduction. One main difference in this transfer was that Luke's macrobinocular POV shot of the Banthas was squeezed to actually show the Tusken Raider walking to the side of the frame. This video transfer was only shown on HBO and was never offered for sale or rent  [ Special Thanks to David C. Fein ]

That video transfer was offered for sale in both CED and LD format, whereas the VHS and Betamax contained the other P&S transfer.

The letterboxed Japanese transfer was used to create this edition and since the picture on that had been shifted up, some slight re-adjustment was necessary to equalize the letterbox bands and place the 2.35 frame closer to the center. How this was done was through a "controlled video scroll" (like adjusting the vertical hold on an older TV set) to move the picture to the approximate center of the screen. The top of the frame, now vacant of the original picture, was matted over with a black letterbox band. Now here's the kicker: since this was all done by eye, at some point during this correction process the top letterbox band began over-matting onto the top edge of the picture. This essentially changed the aspect ratio of the film midway! To check for yourselves, grab this laserdisc and chapter to the cantina sequence. Go up to your screen and mark where the top letterbox band meets the top of the picture frame. At the point Greedo gets shot, the top black band will creep down lower than its original position. And to make matters worse, this happens a second time somewhere during the course of the film. So by the point the rebels are preparing to attack the Death Star, the film's aspect ratio has changed from 2.35:1 to 2.55:1. This "Incredible Shrinking Ratio" was later corrected in 1992 and issued on both VHS and laserdisc. See below for that  [ Very Special Thanks to David C. Fein ]

Sounds like a very weird way of handle it... actually both top and bottom letterbox bands increase in size during the transfer and I don't believe this to be the reason for the "incredible shrinking ratio" problem, the Special Collection and SWE ISR LD's are made from the same film elements/master, but the telecine is not the same, actually in some cases the ISR transfer shows even more picture information than the Special Collection transfer. See a few examples here: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Print-variations-in-77-Star-Wars/post/602483/#TopicPost602483

 The 1989 laserdisc was quietly reissued with the newly corrected letterboxed transfer, completely doing away with the "incredible shrinking ratio" problem. This release, pressed by Mitsubishi Japan, features the same catalog number as the 1989 release. So how can you tell the two apart? This corrected edition is released by "Fox Video." Coupled with the 1985 audio mix, this could very well likely be the best presentation of the film   [ Thanks to David C. Fein ]

The "incredible shrinking ratio" problem is still present on the Mitsubishi pressing, it was the Technidisc pressing that corrected the problem.

Thanks marvins and Mavimao for posting that french interview, great insight into the dubbing/mixing process.

marvins said:

Moth3r said:

 Apparently, an article about dubbing the new scenes in the SE was printed in 1997 in "Les Années Laser", a French magazine about home cinema.

There was a history of "who dubbed what and how" and also an interesting statement about the sound of the French LDs being plain stereo and not Dolby Surround because the original 1977 French mix for the movie was only a 2-channel stereo mix due to limitations of French theaters at the time. (Same statement appears on the lddb listing here).

 

Do you have more information about this article and when it was release ? Are you sure it was in "les années laser" ?

Because I'm searching this article but didn't find it.

I'm not sure. Someone at lddb told me about this magazine some time ago.

What changes are present (if any) in the '93 mixes of TESB and ROTJ?

Updated the first post. According to Star Wars Year By Year the tractor beam line was first included in the July 1978 theatrical re-release.

Sorry for bumping an old thread - and my apologies if this isn’t the right place to ask - but does anyone know what mix is on the 1985 CAV North American laserdisc? I figured it would have been the 1985 remix/remaster, but my copy does NOT have 3P0’s extra line about the tractor beam… which I thought it would if it actually was the '85 remaster.

RIP? 😮