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Cinemascope magnetic sound restoration


Daniel Bohm

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Hi All! 

I know it's not usual but I am in a strange situation and searching for a solution. We have a film that has only this sound source, all other original materials got lost during the years...

I am searching for a projector sound head or whole projector to digitize this film's sound: 

IMAG1804_(1).thumb.jpg.f175ae0531c67b661IMAG1803_(1).thumb.jpg.7b9dde90f69b8d821

That's the best I found about it on the internet:

http://www.graumanschinese.org/projection-2.html

 
cinemascope-package-head.gif
The whole point of CinemaScope was to give the public that Cinerama feel — without having to make expensive alterations to a theatre. Because of the grain factor, Sponable wanted to use as large a negative as was possible in 35mm, which meant going back to the silent aperture, which had the famous aspect ratio of 1:1.33. Expand that by 2 and you have 1:2.66, which would be wider than Cinerama (if the three panels were flattened out anyway).

The sound would be carried on a magnetic fullcoat dummy, just as Shane had been: 3-channel. One of the major benefits of the CinemaScope rollout was obtained when Hazard E. Reeves (of Cinerama fame) and his Reeves Soundcraft Corporation did the unthinkable: put the magnetic soundtracks on the film carrying the picture!
cinemascope-track-layout.jpg
cinemascope-4-track-magnetic.gif

bullet.gif Frequency response: 40Hz to 12K Hz 
flat + or - 2dB

bullet.gif Signal-to-noise ratio: 52dB

bullet.gif Distortion: 3%; less than 0.75% harmonic distortion.
transp.gif
cinemascope-4-track-close-up.jpg
transp.gif
LEFT: Sample of CinemaScope 4-track magnetic 35mm Tecnicolor IB release print of The Robe, © 1953 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation. ABOVE: Astor Theatre, Melbourne, Australia. Projection Room. 35mm 4-track magnetic print of The Blues Brothers passing through the optical sound head of a Cinemeccanica projector, 2013. Photo by George Florence. Viaastortheatreblog.wordpress.com.

It was an obvious thing to do, yet it wasn't until Reeves discovered a way to "stripe" an actual release print that Sponable and the gang at Fox realized that here was a way to make the whole thing work: 4-channel sound on the film.

So what they did was to narrow the sprocket holes, so that the space between them increased, then placed mag tracks for the left, right and center speakers, with a smaller one for the effects track. This came to be known as a "composite" print.

How did the magnetic sound on the print get read? Simple. The International Projector Corporation, owners of the Simplex brand, were asked by Fox to design what came to be called a "penthouse." Since the Chinese (and the Roxy Theatre in New York City) already had the Simplex XL projectors in the booth, the task of designing and constructing the first 4-track mag penthouse went to Simplex.

 

 

Is here anyone who knows a place to rent or buy a projector that can play this film?

I also need to ship it to Budapest, Hungary... so only magnetic sound reader head+amplifiers+special cog wheels maybe easier to ship.

 

Thank you!

Daniel Bőhm

 

 

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It ought to be possible to configure a KEM editing machine to read those tracks. That particular stripe layout would probably require a special head alignment. But I expect that the people at KEM ought to be able to supply that. KEM is Keller Electronic Mechanik and I believe their main office is in Hamburg so not that far from you in Hungary. If KEM cannot help, I think that Chinhda Khommarath here in North Hollywood would be able to configure a machine for you although I think he might be reluctant. If things don't work out with KEM or another source, contact me and I'll get you the phone number for Chinhda's shop. David

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I know that Chace Productions of North Hollywood has custom playback heads on their Magnatech 35mm dubbers that can play 4-track CinemaScope prints in order to extract surround playback in cases where the original mags no longer survive. In this case, I believe they had custom head blocks made by JRF Magnetics:

http://www.jrfmagnetics.com/

One trick is that you have to have a special transport set up to make sure that nothing comes in contact with the print. Otherwise, the rollers and guides could be irreparably scraping and scratching the film. I can tell you that the edge tracks on 60-year-old CinemaScope prints generally have a lot of warpage and dropouts, mainly because of the wear and tear that part of the print gets over time.

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