CINDERELLA WENT TO THE BALL 

by ROSS LINTON, Past President of the

 Australian Screen Sound Guild

Sound often used to be referred to as the Cinderella of the film industry. Producers and directors used the term in a deferential tone as if to appease, or maybe as if to apologise up front for the fact that they were going to demand work in intolerable locations for impossible budgets. 

You don't hear the term used much now, thank heavens. In Roget's Thesaurus, Cinderella appears under the word servant. Excuse me! 

What exactly did they mean by the term anyway? Which part of the Cinderella story do we fit into? Do they automatically associate themselves with the wicked stepmother? 

They say something like "We know it's not a very good location for sound but we have to go with it because it's PERFECT for everything else we need: We can't AFFORD to find another suitable location." I say back to them that it's anything but PERFECT and AFFORD is the very thing that they will have to manage later when they replace the sound. 

Or in post they will say something like "This is a pivotal scene: it has to sound like THIS." I'll say sure, no sweat. How long have we got to track lay this scene, three weeks?... Oh, we've got three weeks to track lay the whole film.... 

Maybe they are the wicked stepmothers. 

Is it because like Cinderella at the ball we shine radiantly among our peers on the set? Could this mean that the rest of the crew, camera grips electrix etc, are our ugly step-sisters? I don't think I want to go any further with that train of thought. 

Maybe they think that we pity ourselves because we are constantly being asked to do the impossible. "Poor me, I'm only a sound person:.and sound is so misunderstood." Oh come on! We're over Kerouac and Ginsberg. And we do not need any Prince Charming to make it all nice for us while we do what we are paid for. 

I do not think that that they who called us the Cinderella of the industry really meant it this way either; but like Cinders, we do shine out at gala events like film awards nights when the producers, directors, distributors, actors, audiences and general public alike have all been uniformly knocked out by the impact which a good soundtrack delivers to the viewers of a finished film.

Extract from the December 1998 issue of 'The Heard News', the Journal of the Australian Screen Sound Guild.

(It's much the same here too, Ross - Ed)

AMPS MEETING REPORT - 20/8/99

WE CEDAR CLEVER STUFF

 A medium-sized turn-out of members saw a fascinating display of some of the cleverest technology around that can be applied to creating sound-for-picture at the August meeting at Anvil Post Production. Arranged by Anthony Faust under the title of 'A Little Treatment Goes A Long Way or The Right Sort Of Noise!!!' attendees had a practical demonstration of the noise removal power of the latest Cedar Audio hardware and software, plus the AGM TSS-1 Three Speaker Stereo generator. 

The meeting kicked off with Anthony demonstrating the capabilities of the TSS-1 box. This 1U unit has an absolute minimum of controls and simply takes a standard LR stereo signal and generates a centre channel. This is not just a sum of elements common to Land R but the result of some complex processing to create a unique signal. The generated centre channel generally adds to the stereo field and is identifiable as a separate source that doesn't reduce the width of the stereo image. Anthony also demonstrated that summing the three channels to mono left no unpleasant artifacts and was in fact totally identical to a summed LR signal. 

The TSS-1 comes in a couple of different versions - one of which can be controlled remotely through an RS232 port. The technology behind the processing resulted from psycho-acoustic work of the late Michael Gerzon. Unusually this an analogue unit, and around the £1000 mark. 

The meeting was then handed over to Clive Osborne and Tony Webster from Cedar. A fully loaded Cedar system was used to demonstrated the current clean-up capabilities of the various processing functions. DeClick was demo-ed first and the monitor screen was projected onto the theatre screen so seeing what was going on was easy. Initial examples used 78 discs where the crackles were removed - and the effect of altering threshold levels shown. It was also used to take a buzz off a voice track - the processing considers it a string of clicks rather than a set frequency. 

The Noise Reduction module allows the user to set attenuation at different frequencies and proved to be particularly good at removing aircon and ambient noise. 

Azimuth correction was also shown - the system tracks a stereo signal and auto-adjust to maintain optimum setting. 

The demonstration was just to show the audience the broad capabilities of the system and then try and work on problem tapes that the members had brought along but unfortunately Anthony was the only one prepared - with a DAT track troubled by intermittent hums and noise. 

The question that results from this meeting is just how good at removing problems is Cedar? It is a lot more powerful that the last AMPS' Cedar demo about 5 years ago. Undoubtedly it can improve almost every sonic noise problem to a degree and totally eliminate some. Better answers would have been found with more real life examples from attendees - a missed opportunity certainly or perhaps an opportunity to have another go in the near future. 

KSA