BEST SOUND ACHIEVEMENT
BEST SOUND EFFECTS EDITING
BEST FILM SOUND
Gary Rydstrom, Garry Summers, Richard Hymns, Ronald Judkins, Andy Nelson, and all the other sound crew members
The combined talents of all the sound people who created, and helped create, the horrifying war sound track accompanying the Normandy Beach landing and the scaringly, menacing atmosphere as our heroes awaited the onslaught of the rumbling clanking tanks, certainly deserves recognition and respect of the international film industry.
Everyone must have worked hard to get such realistic sounds of war but perhaps not at quite such risk of life as did AMPS' Hon Members Peter Handford and John Aldred during WWII while serving with the Army Film Unit.
Here are their all too modest accounts of recording photographic sound under real enemy fire......
PETER HANDFORD, AMPS Hon
My first experience of war, when serving with the BEF in France in 1939/40 had taught me how shockingly 'realistic' the sounds of 'Stuka' dive bombers, bursting bombs, shells, mortars and machine guns were. Recordings made at army ranges on Salisbury Plain or at battle schools by an Army Film & Photographic Unit sound crew based at Pinewood were not very effective and nothing like the real sounds of battle.
Having undergone training as a cine/stills cameraman and passed the trade tests and additional military training which all AFPU cameramen had to do to familiarise them with the methods of various army units, I was assigned to No 5 Unit which was to land on D-Day.
Some of the BBC technicians, working with war correspondents, did make heroic efforts to record something of the actual sound atmosphere of battle, but they were severely limited by their equipment which consisted of delicate MSS disc recorders that, using acetate discs could at the most and under ideal conditions, record for a maximum of about 3 minutes.
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| Picture shows Western Electric F-Channel on peaceful location in 1938 with Peter Handford (Mixer), George Croll (2nd Boom) and Steve Stevenson (Maintenance), both sadly no longer with us. John Mitchell was 1st Boom. The movie was A Window In London |
Having survived D-Day and after I began a vigorous campaign through the highest possible bureaucratic levels to get some 35mm photographic sound equipment sent out to me so that it would at last be possible to attempt to make some authentic recordings of the sounds of battle. My campaign at last succeeded and just before we crossed the Belgian border I was told that the Western Electric Company had generously donated one of their most portable variable density optical channels - an F Type - for 3 months use at no charge, if it was not destroyed meanwhile! This equipment was sent out immediately after the capture of Brussels. It was brought out by Sgt John Aldred who was a very old friend whom I had first met at Denham Studios where we were both sound loading boys in 1936/7. John's technical knowledge and ability was and always has been very much better than mine and was absolutely invaluable in this new adventure. The equipment fitted into a Ford Utility truck and with an AFPU driver we operated either from that truck or, on a number of occasions, from a dug-out or a derelict building.
Adventures were numerous, as were narrow escapes, but we did manage to assemble a good many hours of totally authentic sounds of battle, including such things as German multi-barrelled Mortar attacks, artillery barrages, tank battles and street fighting. Thank goodness for variable density Western Electric and the Light Valve, never mind the 'clashing', that simply added interesting harmonics to the explosions. RCA Galvos could not possibly have coped, they would have square topped the track most of the time. Miraculously we had only two light valves and only had to change once and that after weeks of robust use. We had two mics - both of them were the wonderful 630 type 'Ball and Biscuit'. One of them was destroyed when hit by shrapnel from a shell which burst (much too) close. We sent a signal back to Pinewood asking for a replacement 630 mic - it arrived quickly with a typically curt message from Capt DP Field, a well known character in British studios, "Don't expect a replacement every time you blow anything up".
A very famous war correspondent, the late Chester Wilmot, persuaded us to use our film recording equipment with it's 1000ft magazines and superior sound quality and recording time, to record a report of a night at Roermond where the British and German infantry units spent a night exchanging rifle and machine gunfire and mortar bomb attacks from opposite banks of the river Maas. Chester Wilmot, encouraged by the success of that night, later suggested that we should put the F-Channel inside a tank so that we could join in a tank battle with commentary by him. Fortunately it was discovered that interference from electrical and radio equipment on the tank caused havoc with an attempted recording rehearsal, so that escapade was abandoned, much to our relief!
Apart from the use made of those sound tracks for AFPU and other (official) war documentaries most of the tracks were copied onto disc by the BBC and the whole set went into the BBC record library and are still used now, as I know from occasionally recognising some tracks which are not easily forgotten. The film sound tracks are preserved at the Imperial War Museum.
The whole venture could not possibly have been undertaken without John Aldred's invaluable knowledge and assistance and rather unfairly, he is seldom given recognition for his work. Perhaps that is something so typical of the forces, simply a matter of rank. I can well remember receiving quite a severe rollicking from a senior officer who said: "If I am not mistaken I distinctly heard your sergeant addressing you by your christian name" and why not since, apart from our long standing friendship, none of those recordings could have been made without John's help. Goodness knows what that senior officer would have said if he had arrived a little earlier and heard John giving an excellent recital on a newly looted flute !
Note: Most of this article originally appeared in 1997 in DOPE SHEET, the Newsletter of the Army Film & Photographic Unit.
The war documentaries being produced at Pinewood for the Ministry of Defence and the feature film 'Desert Victory' relied heavily on synthetic sound effects, such as a thunderflash firework in a dust bin to simulate a 25 pounder gun. Eventually we went down to Salisbury Plain to record test firings of the (then) new 17 pounder, also a variety of tanks. But after the D-Day invasion of Europe in 1944, it was decided that we ought to get out there and record the real sounds of battle.
I arrived in France shortly afterwards aboard a Tank Landing Craft with a Western Electric Variable Density 'F' Channel, which had been loaned to the war effort. We hit the Mulberry harbour pontoon with such force that the bow doors jammed, and it was several hours before we could disembark. Good job there were no Jerries about. I felt rather foolish at being the only person on board without any transport, and I had to get a message to our stills unit in Bayeux to come and bail me out. It was several days later before I caught up with Captain Peter Handford, who by this time had advanced as far as Brussels. We were given a Ford Utility as our transport, and a REME carpenter fitted a bench for the recording channel. We were very surprised to find that the carpenter was an old friend Peter Butcher, who had been a boom operator in peace time back at Korda's Denham Studios!
Peter Handford devised his own method of working, which was to attend the daily briefings at Divisional HQ to find out where there was likely to be some action. Then using a large scale map we motored up to the front line and set up our 630 microphone to await developments. On one occasion we passed a line of infantry sheltering in ditches at the side of the road, and then a little farther on there was nobody. We turned back and asked a platoon sergeant if there was anyone in front of him. "Only you, Mate!" he replied. At this moment we aroused the suspicions of the enemy who pounded us with mortar fire!
After this lesson in fieldcraft we took up a position further back to record an artillery barrage as shells from both sides whistled overhead. Later we sat up one night in the hope of capturing the sound of the German 'Nebelwerfer', a six barrelled mortar which delivered screaming shells. We set up the channel in an underground bunker, which was just as well because the mortars landed extremely close and almost destroyed our microphone.
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| Sgt John laces up Western Electric F-Channel recorder in dugout |
On the day before Calais was officially liberated, the Germans had left and blown up all the bridges. Had they looked back they would have seen a Ford Utility scrambling along the railway lines in an attempt to enter the town. Peter and I claimed Calais on behalf of the Allied forces, but when the Canadians arrived the following morning to officially take possession, we had to convince them that we were not Germans in disguise. Fortunately we had been issued with passes signed by General Eisenhower which stated "Nobody must interfere with this man in the execution of his duties". We were not arrested.
We used this pass to great effect when raiding the American PX food store, which proved to be far better than the English rations. In addition to being sound camera operator/maintenance, I was also the cook. Using one of the small petrol burning pressure stoves we had some delicious hot meals surrounded by 10,000 feet of nitrate film! More peaceful assignments included recording the Halle Orchestra at Philips' factory in Eindhoven, an ENSA concert, the Carillon in the main square of Bruges, and Field Marshall Montgomery's Christmas message to the troops.
One day we arrived in the Dutch town of S'Hertogenbosh just as the Germans were leaving, and there was a lot of street fighting. Peter, as an accredited war photographer, went off to take some photographs whilst I parked our Utility in a garage. Having set up the microphone outside I had just started the recorder when the building received a direct hit from a German 88mm shell. Peter saw a cloud of smoke and debris rise into the sky, and his immediate thought was that I had been killed and he would have to write to my mother. I thought that this was probably as far as one should go to get authentic sound. This track has been used many times.
I can remember spending one evening in the hills above the town of Venlo which lies in a valley. The German forces were proving difficult to dislodge, and so the latest allied weaponry was brought into use. This was a multiple rocket launcher which pounded the town after dark. It must have been horrific down in the valley at the receiving end, but we recorded some excellent tracks.
All our exposed film had to be sent back to Denham Laboratories for processing. At one time we ran out of raw stock, but by some miracle we came across some Agfa sound negative in a basement. I suggested that we ought to have an exposure test developed before we used it, so we sought out the laboratories of Monsieur Dassonville in Brussels, who said that they could not develop it because they had run out of coal! A quick trip to Company HQ produced a 1 cwt bag of coal, and we got our test. Later on we discovered that the Canadians had found the Agfa film first, so we had pinched it from our own allies!
At the end of six months we had recorded a fair collection of machine gun battles, gunfire of all types, and tank battles in the snow of the Ardennes, sounds which were later used extensively by the BBC. and other organisations. Our amplifier system had no compression and no limiter, but we managed to record every thing on one light valve without breaking a single string.
Frank Capra's official film of the European campaign, 'The True Glory', contains a great number of our authentic sound effects.