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Facts about Perspecta Stereophonic Sound (1 Viewer)

roxy1927

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vincent parisi
It certainly did! One of those time machine events like seeing the film when it first opened in a large theater rather than in a revival house.
 

Bob Furmanek

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I'm not sure how I missed the boat all these years on knowing that those three Hitchcocks were originally in Perspecta, but I sure wish I could have them that way now.
It's not common knowledge.

In fact, this may be the first time that information has been shared online. Nobody has posted a complete list of the VV Perspecta Stereophonic Sound titles - until now!
 

Bob Furmanek

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If you are asking about Paramount, I can only say that when we met with the head of their archive about 25 years ago, all of the 35mm optical track negatives survived. I doubt they have been junked since then but you never know.

Unfortunately, they were not interested in doing preservation at the time. Bob Eberenz and I were set up to do it utilizing fully restored Fairchild and Altec integrators.
 

Bob Furmanek

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Possibly but this is the first I’ve heard of the AFI having Perspecta playback capability.

If they did, they would have either the Dolby or Chace cards and as mentioned earlier, those cards handled the left, center, and right steering correctly but did not have the gain control feature which is crucial to the systems success.
 
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john a hunter

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I have always been curious about Perspecta and have been thoroughly enjoying this thread, but calling it “stereophonic” is a misnomer. Taking a monophonic source (music, foley and dialogue) and simply steering it around to match the action on the screen would not enhance the viewing experience for me and would be a distraction. Better to keep it front and center, unless the soundtrack could be totally remixed from original music, foley and dialogue tracks if they survive.
Would have to agree with Drew on this one.
It's a mono track spread out over three front channels.
Having said that, it is definitely more sophisticated than I first thought, "mono with an echo" and given the low quality optical track of the time, a much better alternative.
It's really a shame that there is no "A" list title say from Paramount which gives a good idea of what it was like.
 

avroman

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I know this is off topic, but reading this thread reminded me of how , in 1956, our theatre had just installed 4 track mag. stereo for our CinemaScope. Because of the 2.55 mag. prints having more picture information on the left side where the optical track normally would be, it changed the optical centre of the picture.

Our projectors at that time, didn't have a Lens turret, or a concentric adjustment knob, to laterally adjust the Lens, so we would have to give the front of the projector pedestal a swift kick to the right before the film, so that the picture would be centered on the screen.

Just one of the compromises one had to make at various times to accommodate change.
 

Vern Dias

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As I recall, all of the projector bases installed in the Consolidated Amusement Company chain of theatres in Hawaii had adjustable bases that allowed the projectionist to adjust position of the the projected image in both the vertical and horizontal axis. No kicking was required :D
 

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Stephen_J_H

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Our projectors were equipped with vertical adjustment via a wheel on threaded rod beneath the lamphouse, but nothing as fancy as a horizontal axis gizmo.
I remember this from my time working part-time as a projectionist and putting myself through law school. We used Cinemeccanica Victoria 8s, and the adjustment knob was down towards the front of the projector.
 

allanfisch

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Scott Perry of mgm remixed high Society for stereo video. He also had to do the same for Deep in My Heart. Deep was stereo in theaters, but by the time of laserdisc, etc, the stereo mags had corroded and would not play.
Ten commandments was originally mono. AC lyles at paramount, did some digging through the records. He told me that rerecording was done after the film opened and when the film went off of roadshow, new stereo prints were made.
Joe, Scott did indeed do the High Society work. I'm not sure where he mixed it. That was just prior to my return to MGM in 1992. Ted Hall at POP,with me supervising did the work on Deep in my Heart. From the 35mm three channel music recordings and the split track mono dialogue and effects track. We created a full range 5.1 and a Dolby Stereo encoded LT/RT., As well as a limited and compressed 2.0 for VHS and broadcast. There is no record of a traditional 4 channel mix from the original release. And the optical tracks may indeed have been perspecta encoded, but as you know that format is obsolete and even if it could have been effectively decoded, I seriously doubt that it would have sounded anywhere as good as Ted's track taken from the source score cues.
 

Robert Harris

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Just noticed that this thread has popped up again, and I’d like to thank Allan for his comments on High Society, a quality re-mix.

Some annotations and small corrections:

I had mentioned that Williamsburg: The Story of a Patriot was unique in that it was the only VVLA production that ran magnetic. I neglected to say that it was a full 6-track 70mm mix on 35/8, and release printed as such.

Comparing Perspecta to Magnetic - One of the obvious positives in the Perspecta corner was the ability toward a single inventory, even if the process, which could work quite well wasn’t true stereophonic audio.

A knock against mag stated here is that the format was problematic in several regards - longevity of the mag oxide, life of prints, problems with maintaining the mag penthouses - which were seldom a problem if a venue had properly trained union projectionists, and the booth was properly funded by management.

Fact is that a single magnetic print could run for months or longer (and did) in a proper booth environment.

Problems could - and would occur - in second and third run, with improperly maintained gear or badly trained projectionists.

Probably one of the more notorious problems would occur when a mag/opt print would be run on optical only projection equipment, and the normal - not Fox perf sprockets - would destroy prints.

This is why some mag/opt prints (mag striped prints with Fox perfs) would be re-perforated to normal perfs, for continued use after initial magnetic runs. Keep in mind that mag/opt prints were standard optical prints, printed to Fox perf stock, then mag applied and sounded - but the mag left one optical track exposed for back-up, use on Fox perf equipped projectors in optical or for later reperforation.

As far as multiple inventories - yes, this could be a problem - as very early mag for 2.66 was synced to dubbers, followed by early 2.55 mag on film, which had no optical track. This was followed by mag/opt prints.

But also keep in mind that mag prints were sometimes struck for specific venues, with different curtain arrangements. These prints were specially ordered and sounded (for overture, playout) for different thicknesses of curtains and skrims.

Bottom line, Perspecta was a quality process for which printing added no cost, was distributed via a single inventory, and had no physical problems do to poor handling in projection - but is was not 4 or 6-track stereo - a much more expensive process.
 
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Peter Apruzzese

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Fact is that a single magnetic print could run for months or longer (and did) in a proper booth environment.
When I worked at the Cinema 46 in Totowa NJ in 1982, they had a 70mm reel of The Sound of Music they used to test the 70mm gear. It had a faded picture but the sound was terrific. The head projectionist told me it was a reel from the original run 1965-1966 from the Bellevue Theatre (Upper Montclair, NJ) where the film played for 100 weeks. He was the head projectionist there during that run and was proud that they never had to switch to the backup print the entire time SOM played.
 

roxy1927

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The Bellevue was a wonderful 70MM house. Saw GWTW there(yes that one) and Sleeping Beauty. Though oddly it seemed the full stereo was used only for the last reel.
The most beautiful SOM print I saw was at Radio City in the mid 70s.
Visually and sonically it was one of the most beautiful cinema experiences I have ever had. It only played for a week I believe so I always wondered what happened to that print. Somebody once told me it was locked away in a vault at 20th Century Fox.
I believe only one print was used for South Pacific's 4 year run at the Dominion in London. The projectionists used gloves.

Robert Wise said he received letters during I assume SOM's initial run of people complaining about the film's prints they saw. I guess there were projectionists even then in first run houses who treated prints without much care.
 
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