PLAYBACK FROM WAYBACK

Peter Handford

The Newsletter article about the demands made on Ken Weston and his associates during the production of 'Evita' left me totally bewildered and rather than trying to understand the complications of what had to be done I simply gave up and took refuge in the garden, full of admiration for Ken Weston and thankful to be stuck firmly in a steam age, analogue groove where problems were not so alarmingly complex.

Thinking back I remembered two particular playback incidents which were abnormal. On location in Morecambe for 'The Entertainer' in 1959, Tony Richardson decided in his usual unconventional way that the music for the Music Hall sequences, which had been prerecorded in London for playback use only, not only didn't have the acoustic quality of a music hall but the performance by highly trained musicians was too polished in comparison with the local musicians who performed at the Alhambra Music Hall, Morcambe, where we were shooting. The musical director who was with us on location agreed and Tony told me that we would scrap the London-made playback tapes and record new playback tapes with the Alhambra Theatre orchestra. That we managed to do and those new music masters were sent to Shepperton where playback copies were made. All went well during the shooting of the music hall sequences, which involved the orchestra and tap dancing, and having been assured by Tony that there was no more music we were most relieved. Later he decided to shoot an extra scene which involved a short additional piece of music, no great problem because it involved one shot for which the music recorded at the time would become the master, so no need for playback and that track went off with the day's rushes. The next morning Tony told me he had decided to do an extra cover shot which involved a section of that music, I told him that it could not be done since, for obvious reasons we would need playback and the music master was at Shepperton. As the shot had to be done that morning Norman Bolland, the maintenance man and I decided that the only thing to do was to record a new playback track 'over the phone' from Shepperton. Norman went off to phone John Cox to warn him what we proposed, John, having first said "What ever is that mad mixer (me) going to think up next" organised the playback of the music rushes on the transfer room speaker with a telephone in front of it and we made a new telephone quality playback tape which, in spite of interruption from the 3 minute 3 pips added by the GPO, served it's purpose quite satisfactorily.

A more complex and unfriendly playback session took place in 1980 on the 'Heaven's Gate' locations in Oxford. By then I had been recording on twin track for some time, using a battery operated stereo mixer, custom built by Raindirk, and a Nagra IVS. Over a working breakfast at Claridges Hotel, after he finished his dawn jogging, Michael Cimino told me that what little experience he had of twin track, used occasionally on his previous picture 'The Deer Hunter', had not impressed him; understandably when he described some of the results, however, he now thought that it might have some uses, which he would consider before our next meeting. At that meeting he announced that since he considered that conventional methods of using playback were old fashioned and had an unreal result he had decided to instruct me to use an entirely different method for his picture. He had ordered the highest of hi-fi equipment, with Altec speakers of enormous output, to be delivered from the States at enormous expense. High quality tapes of the music masters would be sent from the States and instead of using these in the conventional way, I was to record these with fixed mics in front of the speakers using a separate stereo Nagra. That track would then become the new music master. I did point out that a stereo Nagra would only record two tracks and the music master would have to be mixed down from multitrack to two track which might not seem a good idea to the unfortunate rerecording mixers who had to handle the dubbing but Mr Cimino was not interested in any problems, even more serious ones that I tried to explain later.

The hi-fi equipment duly arrived and was set up with the speakers some distance from the extensive grounds of a college which formed the set. The music sounded wonderful, all over Oxford, and when the 60Hz tape had been replaced by a 50Hz pulsed copy one problem was solved, but there were others which Mr Cimino found irritating and eventually refused to consider or discuss.

The size of the set was enormous, the action which was to be covered by 5 separate cameras and crews, took place over a large area, all a considerable distance from the speakers with their fixed mics; and because the recorded output from those speakers was to become the new music master the playback would have to be kept going at a constant, loud level throughout the sequence. Inevitably all the actors at varying distances from the fixed mics, in front of the speakers, would have to be fitted with radio mics which would be mixed down to a separate Nagra IVS. However well the dialogue was picked up by the radio mics, it was certain that, sometimes at least. the extremely loud playback music would also be picked up on the actors' radio mics and because of the distance from the the speakers the music picked up on the radio mics would be - and was - out of synch with the music from the mics in front of the speakers. I pointed out to Mr Cimino that sound in air travels at a finite speed which was fixed by the Almighty and could not be altered, even by a film director or United Artists. He told me I was being obstinately obstructive, refused to discuss it and before long would not speak to or listen to me at all except through a third party, which was quite a relief.

Some years later, when working at Todd AO in Hollywood, I met one of the mixers who had been involved in the dubbing of Heaven's Gate, he told me that his experiences with Cimino had been infinitely worse and more prolonged than mine.

Thinking much further back to pre tape times when sound crews consisted of four or five people as a matter of course, playback was from 12 inch acetate discs cut to order in the studio sound department. Studio shooting could sometimes become quite boring, especially when a lot of guide track playback was involved and at the more enlightened and less regimented studios, such as Isleworth and Shepperton, the acetate discs made an important contribution to practical jokes which helped to relieve the boredom. For instance, the swarf produced from disc cutting could be made up into tightly packed little 'bombs' which when set to smoulder were lobbed into a sound truck, or office, where they filled the air with dense and smelly smoke - the wonder is that such activities never caused a serious, or even a minor fire.

Another trick, amusing to everyone except the the unfortunate playback operator , was to cut a disc from some totally irrelevant number, label it with the title of a production number and change the discs over on the turntable during the lunch break. In one such instance when playback was called after lunch Laurence Olivier was surprised to hear There's a Pawn Shop On The Corner instead of one of his solo songs from 'The Beggar's Opera', an unfortunate picture which was rechristened The Bugger's Uproar on the clapper board for several days until it was noticed by the 'management'.

On another occasion on the same picture a rather inexperienced and very naive young assistant, called in to deal with playback from disc, was told that, on location, he would have to operate the equipment mounted on horse back! The unfortunate lad spent several days trying to decide how he could possibly solve a problem which seems even more difficult than some of those so successfully dealt with by the Evita crew.

PETER HANDFORD