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Four Decades On

Jul 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Blair Jackson

Channeling the sound of The Sand Pebbles.

One by one, it seems, the great cinema spectacles of the 1950s and 1960s are being revived and restored for new generations of film fans. Although there is no longer the repertory circuit for classic films that existed in big cities nationwide in the 1970s and 1980s — videotape rentals effectively wiped out that market — film preservationists and shrewd marketers are still finding ways to revisit the great films of yesteryear, releasing lovingly restored (and in some cases expanded) versions on DVD, with scads of bonus features, and occasionally even in limited theatrical runs.

Now, in the wake of such restored blockbusters as Around the World in 80 Days, Lawrence of Arabia, and Dr. Zhivago, comes the 1966 epic The Sand Pebbles, director Robert Wise's sprawling drama of sociopolitical chaos in 1920s China, starring Steve McQueen. The three-hour film followed earlier successes for the director, such as West Side Story and The Sound of Music, and it was nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actor (McQueen), and Best Sound (supervising sound editor James Corcoran; other sound crew included film sound legends Murray Spivack, Douglas O. Williams, and Bernard Freericks).

The 20th Century Fox film's recent audio restoration (including print mastering for some theatrical showings) was done by Ted Hall of POP Sound in Santa Monica, Calif., a division of Ascent Media with a distinguished history of film and TV post work, restoration, and multichannel mixing. In fact, Hall had also worked on the restoration of West Side Story a few years ago and met Wise (now deceased). When we spoke in early August, Hall had been working with Jack Nicholson on a remix and director's cut of The Two Jakes (Nicholson's sequel to Chinatown), but The Sand Pebbles was still fresh in his mind.

Having seen The Sand Pebbles on television years ago, Hall says, “The sound was swishy and phasey.” Hall says the first step in this — and really, any — restoration was to assemble the best possible original sound elements. “[Fox] sent over 26 reels of [Westrex] 6-track mag for the 70mm version of the film,” he says. “The common way 70 was done in the '60s was what's called five-across-the-front: left, left-center, center, right-center, right, and then a mono surround. Jerry Goldsmith did the [Oscar-nominated] music, which was really cool because it was a 6-track of the orchestra, and the music sounded unbelievable. It was these great big tube analog recordings, and done in the same kind of five-across-the-front, plus a B and C stem, which were additional tracks for either room sounds — like the scoring stage — or specialty instruments he wanted to separate.”

The trick, he says, was getting it all together and then conforming the show. “I had a kind of cryptic cue sheet to go by. It was called their ‘studio version’ show, which is the one that's been on TV. After I'd done that, though, I called up [Fox's head of restoration] Schawn Belston and said, ‘I have a bunch more audio and picture.’ So they investigated, and apparently there was also what they called a ‘roadshow’ version for true 70 houses — not just stereo or mono houses — and that was a longer version, so I conformed that, too. Then I called them up and said, ‘I still have more audio.’ So there's also now an extra, extra long version for which they found the [additional] picture in England. The one they made [theatrical] prints of is the basic roadshow version, which is the medium-length version.

“The thing about 70mm of that era is the left-center and right-center were sometimes derived from [combining] the right channel and center channel [and left channel and center channel], and when you were listening discretely, it was fine, but if you fold it down to stereo or LTRT or mono, it incurs a slight delay and it starts phasing. So I put it all into [Digidesign] Pro Tools and adjusted it so I got everything totally time-aligned, which took a long time. So we got that together, matched it to the music, did some effects sweeteners, and created an effects stem.”

Part of the challenge of bringing a film like this — even with good multichannel source elements — into the current theater (and home theater) environment is breaking out the sound into the stereo surround and subwoofer channels. “A lot of what we put in the stereo surrounds are ambiences I took from the movie — rather than from a CD library or something — and then panned in certain ways,” Hall says. “One problem I had is that because there were these different versions, there might be a [mono] surround channel for a minute, and then it'd be gone. So in something like one of the engine room scenes, where there was a lot of background stuff going on, I would take a good section of the [mono surround] channel, loop it, extend it if necessary, copy it to another track, and then shift that a second later — and you get this cool stereo image that has some real dimensionality. I also used a digital spatializer to give it a little more depth.” Certain effects from the front channels were also judiciously panned into the rears, but Hall says, “You have to be careful with that sort of thing because everything is tied together, and you want it to still sound natural.”

As for the all-important subwoofer channel, “We had to create that from scratch,” Hall says. “Of course, there are various explosions and things that we put in the sub. And with the music, the cellos and double basses were separated enough that I could sneak some of that in the sub, too. The music, in general, was very discrete, so it was easy to work with.”

Hall says that the other laborious task on the project was “de-noising and de-clicking it because it was extremely hissy.” Still, all things considered, he says, “The sound design on the original movie was pretty amazing. There are all sorts of scenes on the water, on boats, and in Shanghai, China, and various other places, and fortunately it came to us in fairly good shape.”

© 2008 Penton Media, Inc.