THE ESCAPE ARTIST LINER NOTES CASE STUDY:
The Restoration
In the early 1980s when Georges Delerue's score for The Escape Artist was originally recorded at Evergreen Studios in Burbank, CA, cinema sound reproduction was in transition. Optical Dolby Stereo prints had been in circulation for the previous few years, but the vast majority of movie theaters were still equipped with a single monaural loudspeaker placed behind the screen. The Hollywood film sound re-recording studios were just in the process of upgrading for 4-channel Dolby Stereo, but the equipment was generally old and lagging behind the technology and fidelity one could find in the music recording studio.
At Zoetrope, and now at our successor company ZAP (Zoetrope Aubry Productions), we have found that many spectacular film soundtracks from the 1970s and 80s were often degraded in the torturous path from original recording session master through film post production editing and mixing. Several analog generations were necessary in that process. The deficiencies of these recordings were less apparent to filmgoers in that era because cinema sound was still in a primitive state. But with the advent of better means of carrying multi-channel soundtracks on film prints, coupled with with better loudspeakers and sound systems in the cinemas (Dolby Digital, DTS and THX), the bar was raised. In the late 1990s the bar was raised further with the arrival of DVD and home theater. Now, the film viewing experience demands the best possible presentation of the soundtrack and we have begun to methodically revisit our older soundtracks, restoring them to the best possible quality.
The Escape Artist sessions were recorded on 2" 24-track tape at 15IPS with Dolby "A" Type noise reduction, though only 12 tracks were used to record orchestra, with 2 additional tracks used to record synchronization references. The sound remix and restoration process involved transferring all the original recordings into a digital audio workstation as discreet 12 track sessions, digitized at a sampling rate of 48kHz with 24-bit depth.
Re-recording mixer Kent Sparling describes the remixing process for the music: "Once all the original masters were digitized, we combed through the mix notes to determine which takes of each cue were used in the original film. We were able to replicate the music edits which were made in 1982 by Curt Sobel, by carefully comparing the original recordings to the music-only master from the film. These original recordings were beautifully made, and having the source tracks allowed us to reference the 1982 mix against our 2005 remix, duplicating the stereo placement, equalization and spatial effects as they were heard in the original mix, but with the added clarity and fidelity of the original recording finally presented for the first time. The result is that you hear the resin on the violin bows, the "plink" of the harpsichord, the clear tones of the celeste and the fingernails on the strings of the two harps. This will be the first time anyone outside the original scoring team has heard this music in all its subtle glory, and it reveals how George Delerue's delicate score perfectly supports the characters and story of The Escape Artist. Every effort was made to honor the intent of the mix from 1982, while providing listeners with a newly restored and remastered version of the score; the two notable exceptions are "Toucan Club - Burke and Sybil's Act" and "Ted's Rancho Muzak," which were mixed as "source" cues for the original film, and are presented here in clean, untreated mixes for the first time."
-Kim Aubry
