KGraham045 Posted February 28, 2014 Report Share Posted February 28, 2014 I'm working on a film shot in the absolute style of a spaghetti western. (No sound was recorded on set) We are doing ADR and foley for the the entire film. I've been trying to read up on the sound for those films without any real success. I've been looking for ways and just trying to see if anyone can offer advice on making it sound as "Gritty" as films of that era. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
old school Posted February 28, 2014 Report Share Posted February 28, 2014 Imagination and Protools brother. CrewC Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Blankenship Posted February 28, 2014 Report Share Posted February 28, 2014 Study up on the ways and techniques of Italian cinema during that period. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philip Perkins Posted February 28, 2014 Report Share Posted February 28, 2014 For the aesthetics of the sound design, just watch the films carefully. Certain things are over emphasized, and many things are left out or not "hit" with a sound. For "gritty" sound, well, they were doing the best they could with the technology then available. philp Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc Wielage Posted February 28, 2014 Report Share Posted February 28, 2014 Shooting without even reference sound is totally foolhardy in every way, in my opinion. I can't imagine a stupider way to shoot a movie today. To me, what you're doing is a needless expense. You're imitating something that was great, assuming that the qualities of the movie came out of technical limitations. The qualities of Sergio Leone's movies came out of the script, direction, and performances... not in the limitations of sound. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
old school Posted February 28, 2014 Report Share Posted February 28, 2014 Shooting without even reference sound is totally foolhardy in every way, in my opinion. I can't imagine a stupider way to shoot a movie today. To me, what you're doing is a needless expense. You're imitating something that was great, assuming that the qualities of the movie came out of technical limitations. The qualities of Sergio Leone's movies came out of the script, direction, and performances... not in the limitations of sound. Plus 1. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KGraham045 Posted February 28, 2014 Author Report Share Posted February 28, 2014 I'm not disputing the limitations of sound in the era, or performances, or shooting anything without reference. Just seeing if anyone has any insight or advise on the sound of the genre. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Blankenship Posted February 28, 2014 Report Share Posted February 28, 2014 Shooting without even reference sound is totally foolhardy in every way, in my opinion. I can't imagine a stupider way to shoot a movie today. To me, what you're doing is a needless expense. You're imitating something that was great, assuming that the qualities of the movie came out of technical limitations. The qualities of Sergio Leone's movies came out of the script, direction, and performances... not in the limitations of sound. +1 But I would amend your list with a couple of additions: "The qualities of Sergio Leone's movies came out of the script, direction, performances, cinematography, and music, not the limitations of sound." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc Wielage Posted February 28, 2014 Report Share Posted February 28, 2014 But I would amend your list with a couple of additions: "The qualities of Sergio Leone's movies came out of the script, direction, performances, cinematography, and music, not the limitations of sound." That works for me. I'm confounded by filmmakers who believe they can slavishly imitate the technical style of a previous great film and achieve the same kind of greatness. To me, what happened before was due to amazing creativity and trying to do something new. Leone wasn't imitating anybody... he was just trying to make a movie and stay within the confines of a very low budget and find a way to make it work. Post production ain't gonna make this good or bad. All of that is in the script, the performances, the direction, and all the intangibles mentioned by John B above. If you don't have those things, the greatest sound, ADR, and foley in the world won't make any difference. I have worked on projects where they had to do ADR because the soundtrack was completely lost, and it was an absolute nightmare because they wound up having to hire handicapped people to read lips and transcribe exactly what was said, record a temporary soundtrack so they could do some kind of basic edit, then bring in the actors for weeks and weeks to loop all the dialogue in sync. Without having even a bad reference of the original sound, getting the timing right is an absolute nightmare. It can be done as long as you have enough time and money, but god, I wouldn't want to be the poor post people having to deal with something this needlessly trying. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Henchman Posted February 28, 2014 Report Share Posted February 28, 2014 Wow. What an idiotic approach. What they did with those movies, was record sound. But revoice the non-English speaking actors. They do that with a lot of cheap scifi movies shot in the eastblock countries. They have a couple of English speaking actors, and the rest are locals. Whose very poor English gets re dubbed by North American actors. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
studiomprd Posted February 28, 2014 Report Share Posted February 28, 2014 KG: " a film shot in the absolute style of a spaghetti western. (No sound was recorded on set) " that was not shot in the absolute style of the spaghetti westerns, not even close. it was shot by some wanna-be who needed a large box of clue; dare I say: an idiot ?? Waterworld was shot knowing that it would be 100% ADR'ed, and we still had proper full union A-list first unit crew production sound crew at all times, plus a union 2nd unit production soundcrew almost all the time as well... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philip Perkins Posted February 28, 2014 Report Share Posted February 28, 2014 You can shoot your movie however you want. But as has been said, Leone etc were working in the realm of what was possible and affordable in that time--they didn't shoot that way because they liked the idea of ADR and having actors who couldn't speak English clearly or not having quiet enough locations, cameras, and equipment to allow the location sound to work. That was just how they threaded that budget needle given the resources they had. We have different resources today, and don't have many that Leone had, so we solve the quality vs budget issues differently. The sound aesthetic of those films was born out of necessity--the film's mediocre ADR and minimal sound design were done very quickly and cheaply, but it had a score written and conducted by one of the great geniuses of movie music, accompanying the work of a visionary director, a great DP and some very good, or at least very strange actors. Given the limitations on your time and budget, what great genre-defining solutions will you come up with? philp Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KGraham045 Posted February 28, 2014 Author Report Share Posted February 28, 2014 I had nothing to do with the production, only post production. I was asking for advice or just wanting to discuss the genre with you guys. Not wanting to discuss this specific production, or what they should have done. This post had gotten completely off my original intentions of posting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
old school Posted February 28, 2014 Report Share Posted February 28, 2014 There is no obvious answer to your question. No plug in will do the Spaghetti Western Sound because there is no such thing. A final sound track is a weave of many elements blended together in service of the story. I'm confident you know that. Personally I'd watch the 10 to 20 best films in the genre, take notes, and then throw them all away. Each film is different and its sound track needs unique to that story despite the genre stereotypes. I'm sure you will figure it out on your own because none of us here @jwsound can help much without all the details and footage and script in front of us. Best of luck. CrewC Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Smith Posted February 28, 2014 Report Share Posted February 28, 2014 Oh, and if you really want to duplicate the soundtracks of spaghetti westerns, make sure that everything is heavily overmodulated! I don't know why, but every optical track negative I have ever seen out of Rome from the 50's through the '70's are severely clipped. Even the mag tracks were recorded hot (just listen to the music tracks from "Once Upon a Time in the West"). Guess those guys just liked to slam the VU meters... --S Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay Rose Posted February 28, 2014 Report Share Posted February 28, 2014 I'm confounded by filmmakers who believe they can slavishly imitate the technical style of a previous great film and achieve the same kind of greatness. A friend, who knows I've been involved in a couple of different areas of filmmaking, asked me to look at the series of shorts he'd done for his business. They consisted of narration, titles, and then pans across stills. Basically they were Powerpoints with a little added motion. What they -weren't- was interesting. No organization in each episode, no benefits for the prospect/customer... just a bullet list of things he wanted to brag about that were interesting only to others in his industry.The pictures (stolen from websites) were only sort-of related to the topic, and the motion with each pic wasn't related to the topic at all. Don't get me stared on the voice record, music choice, or mix... Anyway, I told him (in a kindly way) that they really didn't reflect well on his business. I reminded him that his prospects watch TV and go to movies, so they expected a certain amount of slickness if only to say "the company that's showing me this is for real." Not that he had to spend a lot of money, just that he had to go back and re-think each episode, organize them around benefits, and produce them so sound and pix hung together. Maybe even callouts or titles -over- the images, so we know why we're looking at them. Bottom line, the films just didn't look like his was a professional outfit. He got mad. He told me how long he'd worked on each one in iMovie. And how much his wife liked them. And then the kicker: "How can you say this didn't look professional? I USED THE KEN BURNS EFFECT IN IMOVIE*!!! He's on PBS! You can't get more professional than that!" -- *It's actually called Ken Burns Effect on the iMovie menu. It applies a gentle zoom and random pans to a still. Or if you want, you can specify a path for the pan. It does NOT apply careful research, well written and acted narration, great archive graphics, and an interesting score to an already interesting topic. You know, the things Ken Burns does... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Blankenship Posted February 28, 2014 Report Share Posted February 28, 2014 ... It does NOT apply careful research, well written and acted narration, great archive graphics, and an interesting score to an already interesting topic. You know, the things Ken Burns does... It would do my heart good to know you told him exactly that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philip Perkins Posted February 28, 2014 Report Share Posted February 28, 2014 I had nothing to do with the production, only post production. I was asking for advice or just wanting to discuss the genre with you guys. Not wanting to discuss this specific production, or what they should have done. This post had gotten completely off my original intentions of posting. OK: one piece of advice then: hire Ennio Morricone as your composer. philp Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
studiomprd Posted February 28, 2014 Report Share Posted February 28, 2014 so in the end, post on a spaghetti western is like post on any movie... it depends! only in the instant case, it will be magna cum summo harder, as there is no guide track to go with whatever it did come with. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Blankenship Posted February 28, 2014 Report Share Posted February 28, 2014 OK: one piece of advice then: hire Ennio Morricone as your composer. philp +1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bondelev Posted March 1, 2014 Report Share Posted March 1, 2014 Shooting without even reference sound is totally foolhardy in every way, in my opinion. I can't imagine a stupider way to shoot a movie today. To me, what you're doing is a needless expense. You're imitating something that was great, assuming that the qualities of the movie came out of technical limitations. The qualities of Sergio Leone's movies came out of the script, direction, and performances... not in the limitations of sound. +1. Also Leone recorded production sound, but used it only as a scratch track for the actors to recreate their performances. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc Wielage Posted March 1, 2014 Report Share Posted March 1, 2014 Also Leone recorded production sound, but used it only as a scratch track for the actors to recreate their performances. Very true! I believe on one of the bonus discs on one of the classic features, they showed how some of the actors definitely had very strong Italian accents and were speaking broken English at best on the original location sound (which had tons of generator noise, wind machine noise, etc.). But at least there was a starting point for the ADR to take place. I'm curious to hear from Mr. Graham if he has any production sound at all to work from, or if he's literally starting from absolute silence. If it's the latter, I feel for him, because this will be a monstrously difficult, time-consuming, and expensive task. It's barely possible to do, but it again shows the stupidity of shooting first and then asking what's possible to accomplish in post. Oh, and if you really want to duplicate the soundtracks of spaghetti westerns, make sure that everything is heavily overmodulated! I don't know why, but every optical track negative I have ever seen out of Rome from the 50's through the '70's are severely clipped. Even the mag tracks were recorded hot (just listen to the music tracks from "Once Upon a Time in the West"). My old pal Rich Chace in Burbank came up with a way to read optical soundtracks with a CCD camera in the 1980s, and he'd jump through hoops at finding a way to minimize optical "clash" and coax less distortion out of old soundtracks. If the clipping happened in an analogue stage, all you can do is try a de-clip plug-in (like iZotope RX) and hope for the best. I know in Rick's case, they'd routinely mix and match between several prints, the optical negative, and the mag track, even foreign M&E tracks, desperately hoping to find one element that sounded best. Often, the end result was a combination of all of the above just to get one decent-sounding transfer for home video. The old spaghetti Westerns were more than just bad sound, though -- I think the ADR, the music style, the effects mix, the final decisions on the mixing stage... all of these had a very unique result. I even think the massive amounts of grain due to the use of Techniscope -- the tiny, tiny 2-perf-high frame -- also contributed a lot to the look of a lot of those films. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KGraham045 Posted March 1, 2014 Author Report Share Posted March 1, 2014 I actually do have scratch tracks, but I wasn't interested in discussing that part, so I don't put it in the initial post. My bad. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Henchman Posted March 1, 2014 Report Share Posted March 1, 2014 Well, if you are trying to emulate the crappy sound of the spaghetti westerns, keep in mind that they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the sound of the Blair witch project to make it sound the way it does. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc Wielage Posted March 1, 2014 Report Share Posted March 1, 2014 Well, if you are trying to emulate the crappy sound of the spaghetti westerns, keep in mind that they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the sound of the Blair witch project to make it sound the way it does. Reminiscent of Robert Rodriguez' $7000 first feature, El Mariachi, which had a $200,000 union mix at Sony Pictures in Culver City... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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