al mcguire Posted October 11, 2015 Report Share Posted October 11, 2015 How the West Was Won (1962). John Ford, Henry Hathaway,George Marshall & Richard Thorpe Cinematography: William H. Daniels, Milton R. Krasner, Charles Lang & Joseph LaShelle Anybody work with one of these cameras ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sarcanon Posted October 11, 2015 Report Share Posted October 11, 2015 Camera? It looks like a deep sea ROV for exploring hydrothermal vents. Interesting mic placement, though. Wondering whether they're for capturing audio or for cushioning impacts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
old school Posted October 12, 2015 Report Share Posted October 12, 2015 I don't think even Eric T is old enough to have worked with this beast. Love the mic array. CrewC Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
al mcguire Posted October 12, 2015 Author Report Share Posted October 12, 2015 Is that what they are ? So you can hear the camera crew bitching in surround sound ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Wexler Posted October 12, 2015 Report Share Posted October 12, 2015 Cinerama's sound system astonished audiences just as much as its enormous screen. In 1952, the term "Stereophonic Sound" was not something that the average person understood and they'd certainly never heard anything like it. Even after Hollywood adopted stereophonic sound in ersatz Cinerama emulations such as CinemaScope, there remained something different about real Cinerama sound. That difference was that CineramaSound, as it was called by the company, WAS real. Five, six, or seven channels of sound were recorded live on location, rather than being created from sound effects libraries in a studio. The MGM sound department probably had several hundred hours of train sounds but it wouldn't do for Cinerama. Seen here is a second unit recording sound effects for the train robbers sequence of How The West Was Won. The array of five microphones recorded sound that would accompany closeups of the engine's drive wheels. The film won an Oscar® for its sound recording. Cinema pioneered the practice of "traveling" sound which so impressed Zanuck and his wife, and exploited it as a form of audience participation. In an attempt to heighten this participation effect, Cinema sounds recordists regularly mounted 5 microphones in fixed positions on a support that was itself attached to the Cinema camera, effectively binding visual and auditory perspective together and putting the audience in the very midst of the onscreen action. Today we are referring to all of these things as Immersive Sound, and with Al's post we can see that these efforts were already in play in the 1960s. Pictured below is the microphone cluster mounted to a steam engine to record effects for How The West Was Won. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric Toline Posted October 12, 2015 Report Share Posted October 12, 2015 I don't think even Eric T is old enough to have worked with this beast. Love the mic array. CrewC Of course I was. I was booked doing this about the same time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
al mcguire Posted October 12, 2015 Author Report Share Posted October 12, 2015 Thank you Jeff, good info I had never heard about. Eric - I googled steam powered audio recorders and your name showed up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric Toline Posted October 12, 2015 Report Share Posted October 12, 2015 Thank you Jeff, good info I had never heard about. Eric - I googled steam powered audio recorders and your name showed up. Sure it did and here's the sign. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc Wielage Posted October 13, 2015 Report Share Posted October 13, 2015 There was a recent Cinerama production just a couple of years ago where some intrepid film buffs got together and made a short, just to kind of prove "it could be done." That was In the Picture, shot in 2012. I saw it projected, and my memory is that a lot of the sound was ADR'd, I'm guessing because three 1960 cameras bolted together sounded like a jack-hammer. This is a short on the crew in action from three years ago: http://www.in70mm.com/news/2012/picture/credits/index.htm http://blogs.indiewire.com/leonardmaltin/the-first-new-cinerama-film-in-50-years Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikewest Posted December 17, 2015 Report Share Posted December 17, 2015 Wow Eric A 3 track Ampex! What studio was this and which jazz group? mike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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