Osato
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White Christmas 4K Possibility? (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Bouncer
- Start date
More VistaVision on 4K, por favor.
The Blu, while flawed, is very watchable. It has it's merits, but could have - and should have - been better. But it's not a wash. And as Paramount has sort of overlooked virtually all of its Audrey holdings for a 'Paramount Presents...' reissue, seeing Funny Face in 4K seems highly unlikely at this point. It would be a shame to deny yourself the opportunity of seeing the movie again, albeit, not entirely in a presentation that satisfies 100% of the time. It actually holds up about 70%. Not bad. Not great. But not tragic either. Judge and buy accordingly.
If you've had the opportunity to sample the CD release of the original soundtrack from Sepia Records you'll know how bad the current Blu sounds. Very strident score and songs. Choreography on Blu grates on the acoustic nerve. It was a revelation to hear it on the Sepia, remastered properly in full stereo and sounding bombastic, but exquisite.
Sisters on Sepia was another revelation. Subtle nuances in the recording, virtually lost on the Paramount Blu. And Mandy possessed a spatial separation that gave it real razzamatazz. This just sounds garish on the Blu. Logically, if the masters provided to Sepia for the CD release came from Paramount, then Paramount should have no issues remastering a true stereo track for at least the songs in White Christmas on Blu.
But I don't see the studio dropping the extra coin to do this - even in 4K.
But if VistaVision could not have stereo were the first presentations of White Christmas in Perspecta sound? Was the soundtrack recorded in genuine stereo but the film presented in Perspecta? The opening ads I believe have no mention of sound. I know in '54 Radio city premiered its Cinemascope screen, starting with its first film of the year Knights of the Round Table, and premiered those first films in 4 track(?) stereo. A few of those films are out on Warner Blu-rays and have stereo soundtracks including I believe the non CinemaScope Deep In My Heart.
Classical recordings in stereo did not even begin on a large scale until '55-'56 with Decca. EMI because Walter Legge an otherwise great producer of classical recordings thought stereo was a fad produced some of the greatest classical recordings unfortunately in mono. Though recent remasterizations by Warner(they do get around) who bought the EMI catalogue have done a great job giving life to some recordings that sounded one dimensional in their EMI incarnations. The Callas Rigoletto and I Puritani are no longer merely great performances they now have a surprising to us who have been listening to these flat sounding recordings for years richness and depth.
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Comparing apples to giraffes here. First, VistaVision's negative was too large to fit a stereo track. Second, VistaVision was a Paramount process. They invented and christened it. Paramount's ambition with VistaVision was to outclass Cinemascope by creating true 'motion picture high fidelity'.
Cinemascope was a Fox invention, Darryl F. Zanuck's way to compete with Cinerama and Todd A-O in a way, by making a one-neg alternative (to Cinerama's 3), and creating a 'widescreen' format that did not necessitate an entire re-tooling of theaters for exhibition. As not every theater could show Todd A-O, movies like Oklahoma! were shot twice - once in Todd A-O and once in Cinemascope for wider theatrical distribution. MGM similarly hedged its bets by releasing 'scope' versions of Brigadoon and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, then reshooting both films in conventional 35mm matted widescreen.
Todd A-O, a predecessor to Panavision used larger gauge film stocks, needed new projectors and a curved screen. Cinemascope utilized conventional 35mm. In all of the cases, mentioned, except VistaVision, true, native stereo soundtracks were made possible by the 'real estate' located on the edges of the film strip. VistaVision did not possess such a luxury because it's picture neg took up virtually all of the available real estate for the image.
The push for wider images and stereo tracks was Hollywood's response to the television invasion that, by 1954 had cut theater attendance approximately in half. In the mad dash for 'bigger is better' sacrifices were made and formats came and went. Technirama, superior to Cinemascope in every way, failed to catch on, as did Cinemascope 55, and MGM Camera 65.
As the 1950's progressed, Zanuck licensed out Cinemascope to other studios to use, and Paramount lent VistaVision to its competitors. This is why you have VistaVision movies like High Society and North By Northwest being made at MGM and Cinemascope proliferating the market with product being output by virtually all the other studios by mid-decade: A Star is Born (WB), Knights of the Round Table (MGM), Tammy and the Bachelor (Universal), etc. et al.
The competitive leap frogging of the 50's is interesting as Cinemascope was invented to eclipse Cinerama, as VistaVision was meant to put 'scope' to shame, and then Cinemascope 55 was an endeavor to outclass VistaVision with a crisper image printed onto a larger neg, but still in scope's 2.35:1 aspect, and, with true stereo.
The push for stereo also coincided with the studios' sudden rise in interest to release 'soundtrack albums' on vinyl.
An interesting footnote. While movie soundtracks prior to the 50's were virtually all in Westrex mono, the recording of the actual orchestral arrangements by the studios, and, musical numbers for musicals were actually recorded using 'stems' that isolated various aspects of the orchestra and the vocalists, remixed to mono for theatrical release, but thereupon allowing future releases of 'old' movies and their soundtracks in true native stereo rather than processed pseudo stereo.
That is, if a studio's asset management program was savvy enough to keep all of these extemporaneous elements archived. Alas, this didn't always happen. And more oft than not, separation masters were erased to be reused for another production once the mono mixes were made, as no perceived use for them was considered by the powers that be.
This is how and why we have native stereo remasters of movies like The Wizard of Oz and Meet Me In St. Louis on Blu-ray with new stereophonic soundtracks, but a movie like '54's A Star Is Born is a convoluted mishmash of stereo, pseudo-stereo and mono mixes blended together.
White Christmas' technical specs suggest two versions were printed - one in mono, the other in Perspecta. Have never heard it in Perspecta. Perhaps, those tracks did not survive the deluge.
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Perspecta was encoded into the mono track via control tones, which were inaudible when played back with a mono optical head. The Perspecta controller bounced the signal from channel to channel according to the control tone record.
Filmic
Stunt Coordinator
Extract from Harrison's Reports original review of WC, not quite enthusiastic: "Considering the popularity of the players and the huge campaign that Paramount has undertaken to put over VistaVision, the picture ought to do well at the box-office. The Technicolor photography, shot in the VistaVision process, is sharp and clear, and in spots fascinating. But even though the photography is sharper and dearer than pictures shot with normal cameras, the greater clarity will not create a sensation and may not even be noticed by the movie-goers unless it is brought to their attention. In short, VistaVision itself has no dramatic or excit-ing values and will not serve to attract anyone to the box-office."
Will Krupp
Senior HTF Member
In retrospect, though, Harrison's critique is thoroughly unsurprising. He was a huge proponent of the Cinemascope process and seemed to resent that Paramount was going up against Fox in the first place. He also took umbrage, in the run up to the release of White Christmas, at what he saw as Paramount "badmouthing" their competition. He was really never going to give the process a fair shake, IMO.
RolandL
Senior HTF Member
Whether or not there was space on the negative is irrelevant. By the time Paramount implemented VistaVision, studios were already recording sync audio on separate recorders. Since the majority of VistaVision prints were reduction printed to 4-perf, the use of Perspecta boils down to cost. Either Paramount didn't want to do 4-track mag, or they thought Perspecta was "good enough."
Filmic
Stunt Coordinator
My only impression of hearing original Perspecta in a cinema setting came from a print of a 50s cartoon, possibly not the best example, but interesting to experience. The resulting sound reminded me of the stereo soundtrack for Fantasia, with the panning effects. That said, would a 1950s audience have noticed that Perspecta wasn't true stereo sound? I'm tending to think not.
Vern Dias
Second Unit
- Joined
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- Theodore V Dias
Many many many years ago, I had an IB Technicolor print of "White Christmas" and it had a Perspecta optical track. I also was able to reconstruct a discarded vacuum tube based Fairchild Perspecta decoder (required because the capacitors has degraded to the point it was inoperable).
So I was able to experience Perspectasound in my HT.
The results were mixed, as the optical track still limits the high end of the frequency range and requires removing any low frequencies below 50 Hz due to the fact that the 30, 35, and 40 Hz keying tones controlled the amplitude of the L, C, & R channels.
The Perspecta system obviously isn't capable of discrete audio from each channel. It did, however expand the sound stage for orchestral music and give some limited directionality for action seqences.
Alas, the print had gone to vinegar, and 35mm on my 52"x144" 2.76:1 AR screen has been superseded and improved on by 4K and even 2K Bluray.
IMHO, in today's world, print issues including combinations of vinegar syndrome, the use of "preservatives" (Renovex, etc), and Eastman color fading, along with with extreme scarcity of 4 track mag prints has made film an inferior viewing and listening experience in the HT when compared to 2K and 4K media often sourced from preprint image and audio materials.
About 15 years ago, for these and several other reasons, including downsizing my residence, I eliminated film support from my HT and no longer have any 35mm equipment or 35mm media in my media collection.
So I was able to experience Perspectasound in my HT.
The results were mixed, as the optical track still limits the high end of the frequency range and requires removing any low frequencies below 50 Hz due to the fact that the 30, 35, and 40 Hz keying tones controlled the amplitude of the L, C, & R channels.
The Perspecta system obviously isn't capable of discrete audio from each channel. It did, however expand the sound stage for orchestral music and give some limited directionality for action seqences.
Alas, the print had gone to vinegar, and 35mm on my 52"x144" 2.76:1 AR screen has been superseded and improved on by 4K and even 2K Bluray.
IMHO, in today's world, print issues including combinations of vinegar syndrome, the use of "preservatives" (Renovex, etc), and Eastman color fading, along with with extreme scarcity of 4 track mag prints has made film an inferior viewing and listening experience in the HT when compared to 2K and 4K media often sourced from preprint image and audio materials.
About 15 years ago, for these and several other reasons, including downsizing my residence, I eliminated film support from my HT and no longer have any 35mm equipment or 35mm media in my media collection.
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Considering how very powerful Berlin was at the time(I mean he was able to call all the shots) and how protective he was of his music I'm surprised he didn't demand Cinemascope and 4 channel Stereo like TNBLSB a block west at the Roxy. Or he thought Perspecta was good enough if indeed it was used at the Music Hall to have VistaVision. I have no doubt before filming even started he was shown examples of the process and had to approve it.
There's being in a position to demand certain things, and there's what the studio is willing to do. Paramount was so anti-CinemaScope at this point that he would have had to threaten to take the film to a different studio. Studio contracts hadn't been completely dismantled yet so he may not have been able to demand that and the film may have been put in turnaround if he had.
I had no idea Paramount was anti Cinemascope. Do you know why? Also Bing was still at Paramount correct?
And yes he would have had to take it to another studio. But would he still have had Bing?
Well I guess we'll never know what the film sounded like at its opening engagements.
Anybody have a subscription to Variety? If you access to the back issues you can look at its premiere review. It surely would have talked about VistaVision and possibly the sound.
Paramount was anti-CinemaScope because they had so much invested in VistaVision. Bing was still at Paramount, and given the evidence of High Society, I suspect that if Paramount were to loan him out, they would have demanded that MGM film in VistaVision as part of the loan.
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