It’s grievance time! Will and Devan take on the world of revisionist audio in film restoration. A niche subject? Probably. Something you should care about? Most definitely!
When you pop in the latest lovingly-restored 4k Blu-Ray release by a boutique label, you might expect that the soundtrack would be given the same faithful treatment as the video. Think again! The world of film restoration is rife with overly filtered audio, anachronistic foley decisions, and questionable surround sound mixes, and Will and Devan are here to explain.
In this episode, we discuss:
Digital noise reduction in audio tracks, and the disastrous results.
Revisionist sound effects; swapped gunshots, a wimpy-sounding shark, and more.
Alternate soundtracks in silent films.
The wacky, troubling world of surround sound upmixes of mono and stereo films.
Additional Resources:
Blah-Ray: A Compendium of Bad Blu-Ray Audio
An analysis of the questionable decisions made in the Jaws surround sound mix.
Alain Resnais’s quote about the dangers of excessive audio denoising:
Sound recording and reproduction techniques have changed a lot over the decades. If one remasters a film so as to tailor it to the standards of 2009, there is a danger of altering drastically the balance of the voices, the sound effects, and the music. By correcting so-called flaws, one can lose the style of a film altogether. It is better to respect the sound characteristics of the time, especially as in most cases they do not disturb the viewer anymore after two minutes. Above all, if one removes the background hiss from the soundtrack, one takes out all the harmonic frequencies of the actors' voices in the process. Be it in the low, the medium, or the treble range, the voices become neutral, flat, mannered; the acting loses a great part of its dramatic value. When you see an aggressively remastered film by Sacha Guitry, you have the feeling the voice you hear is not Guitry's; you believe that this is a dubbed film and the dialogue is being read or recited. In most cases I know, the remastering is so brutal that the performances are deprived of their appeal. Every time I have had the opportunity to compare an unrestored and a restored soundtrack in a recording studio, the loss was obvious. The same goes for the music: if one corrects a distorted spot, the music is likely to sound dead. As a director, I do not object to a carefully considered, non-mechanical remastering of my films, but I am keen on giving the viewer the choice between the two soundtracks. As a viewer, I always prefer what may be called the original version.
Films Discussed:
The Third Man (1949),
The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly (1966)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
Jaws (1975)
Napoleon (1927)