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Reader SurveyHondo’s Audio Trek
Oct 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Dan Daley
Chace Productions has had a long relationship with Hondo. The Burbank, Calif.-based audio postproduction facility reworked the film’s audio first in 1990 for its VHS debut. That iteration had a stereo track created for it using Chace’s proprietary Digital Stereo Processor based on the negative’s mono track. (Both the left- and right-eye print images had identical mono tracks on them.)
That 1990 remastering was a pioneering effort at the time, coming before aids such as Sonic Solutions No Noise (and Digidesign Pro Tools, for that matter). “There are some rough spots recorded into the optical that just cannot be corrected even yet,” says Chace president Robert Heiber.
The process was mainly analog, but Chace was an early user of the Doremi Dawn workstation, and Michael Wayne was eager to modernize the film’s sound, agreeing to add new sound effects. “So we edited a few from the track and [Michael] brought in seven additional reels of mag effects that an editor of his had built—horses, arrows, guns, etc," Heiber says. "Michael’s theory on film was, 'Make sure the first 10 minutes and last 10 minutes had ‘em, and then they’d say it was a great film.'”
The final master was a VHS dbx 700 digital cassette and a set of three track mags with Dolby A—both of which are perfectly playable even today, Heiber says proudly.
In 1994, Chace redid the track for a special charity event in 3D. “We used the VA positive right panel, but with a full No Noise pass to reduce optical anomalies,” Heiber says. “We re-used the SFX tracks and added more loops with digital editing again under Michael’s supervision. In 1994, our digital recording format was a D-2 tape used as a four-track digital audio recorder.”
The current version was remastered beginning in 2004. “We redid the No Noise pass because this was for DVD and more critical listening was employed,” Heiber says. The 1994 audio version was used as a guide, and the latest version of Chace’s Digital Stereo Processor was used to create a 5.1 soundtrack.
The final result stands up to the relative rigors of DVD audio, but you can still sense a bit of what Hollywood used to call “oaters” in the 1950s. “Even though the technology has evolved over 14 years, the track itself still retains the sound of a ‘50s western with all of the grit that a John Wayne western demands,” Heiber says.
