Video and Binaural Audio

Victor Engel wrote:

I recall one time I was at a theater when the wrong lens was on the projector for showing previews. Up next was a preview for a scary movie with what was supposed to be a startling loud noise. The problem was, the waveform (shown on the right of this image) was being displayed on the screen, and the image of the sound displayed before the sound came. So it was obvious that the startling sound was about to be blasted out of the speakers. So the audience was not startled. At least not those who noticed the track being displayed on the screen.

Less likely it was the wrong lens, more likely the projector aperture plate wasn’t fully inserted.  No lens would project sprocket holes unless the projector was a 35/70, but then the lens used for 70mm projection would show 35mm as a “postage stamp” image in the middle of the screen.   The sound track offset 21 frames, advanced, because the sound head is 21 frames downstream of the aperture.

On your comment about the 50% of film being audio, I think audio was more important for Star Wars than for any previous film. And it wasn't just the technology in projecting the sound. It was also the layers in the mix of producing the sound.

Lets not debate that one.  There were many films before Star Wars that broke ground with sound, including introducing new soundtrack formats.  Sound has to be considered pretty important to bring out a new soundtrack format.  Remember the era this all happened in.  Dolby Stereo was only a few years old, but introduced a compatible (to mono) track that could not only handle 4 channel surround, but installation required calibration, the equalization of each speaker/channel, which had never been done before (Academy mono is a well defined, but very low bandwidth curve).  Equalized theaters, extending the dynamic range of optical sound, and still providing backwards compatibility was Dolby Stereo’s big contribution to film sound.

At the time of Star Wars release it was well recognized that 70mm 6-track magnetic sound was far superior to anything optical, with 70mm having a linear speed faster than tape (22.5 inches per second), with fairly thick oxide coating, it had a pretty big advantage.  When Dolby A noise reduction was applied, and nudged the dynamic range up, it was the desired format for Star Wars, as it had been for other previous films.  There had already been various track and speaker plans for 70mm mag, so it wasn’t that big a deal that Star Wars was Dolby’s chance to try another one, their Baby Boom plan, which rather than use 5 full-bandwidth speakers behind screen, used only L, C and R, and used the other two as bass extension.  And that became the basis for THX theater sound years later.

But other films pushed the technology way before that.  Stereo sound  (actually 3-channel or 6 channel) was introduced in the 1950s as part of film’s combat with TV.  2001, in 70mm 6 track was a HUGE film for audio guys.  “A Star Is Born”, 1976, marked the first time Dolby noise reduction had been used on film, and had a 3 channel stereo track.  Many films push technology, Star Wars was certainly one of them, but without the landmarks of its predecessors, the jump  may not have been so big.

Yes, Star Wars is sound-effects heavy, but don’t get too wound up in thinking about sound layering, the final mix is still dealing with three main elements: dialog, music and EFX.  Pre-mixes and stems happen before that.  Remember, that all films being mixed in surround of the time suffered similar issues.  Apocalypse Now’s editor Walter Murch had no library of stereo gun shots, or any other stereo SFX, and so new ones had to be made.  And so on.

It was Lucas’s experience watching Star Wars in an Academy mono theater in San Francisco that triggered his push toward better theater sound.  Dubbing stages were already much better than any theater, and that’s where his tracks were created.  The catch phrase that THX later adopted is “As the creators intended”, but theaters of the time simply couldn’t do that.  The mismatch between theaters and the dub stage was what he was trying to surmount.  And once he (actually Holman) had done it, the importance of exhibition quality had to be emphasized.  It was the big bottleneck in the chain of creative to audience.  Then they moved on to home video audio….and that’s another story.

Have you ever watched Star Wars movies without sound? I think probably more than half of the experience is lost without it. Not so much with television, though.

My point about that was that you an watch most films without sound and sort of get the point.  Even watching a Star Wars film, you’ll get the basic plot and story line, and get the added benefit of seeing a space battle with realistic sound (that would be none, in a vacuum). If you kill picture, in many films where the narrative is carried primarily visually, you’ll disconnect from the story.  Listen to a space battle scene without picture, it’s hard to tell who’s winning.