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I'm fascinated by "vintage" film making - the look, sound, acting, stories - from the early days of film. I'm especially in love with the sound of dialog and foley during the 40s and 50s.

I recently started watching Mad Men, the AMC series, and really enjoy the way they present the show - accurate set design, sound, even the cuts and fades are dead on with the style of the time period they are portraying.

Question is a two parter:

  1. What made films from that time period sound they way they do? Is it lo-fi recording? Heavy compression? The mics they used? Were foley and ADR techniques vastly different?
  2. What is the best way to recreate that type of sound? Using vintage gear? Batteries of compression and EQing?

Here is a good, brief example of what I mean by this type of sound.

Thanks!

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2 Answers

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The LA3A is an optical compressor...meaning it has a light sensor/attenuator inside of it which controls the gain reduction circuit. They usually sound vintage because they have a gentle release time. I'm sure opto compressors were used on older film dialog mixes.

Optical film sound is much different from optical compression. It is a strip printed on a film that is hit with a lamp on one side and a photodetector on the other. The photodector translates the light into sound. These photodetectors weren't all that well designed and often led to a warbled lofi sound.

Check out the Optigan, which is an organ made by Mattel in the 1970s that plays optical sound disks...a wonderful sound:

http://www.optigan.com/

In the 1950s optical soundtracks on film were replaced by magnetic soundtracks.

On the film Up, the Skywalker crew took the newsreel narration, music etc. and recorded it to an optical track, then recorded back to digital. It sounded great and spot on. I would think you could fake the sound or come pretty close using Audio Ease's Speakerphone or Izotope Vinyl.

A big part of the sound from that time I would think, is analog gear, old ribbon and tube microphones, the warble/wow/flutter of optical and mag sound, less dense fx cutting, and of course, mono.

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I'm going to go right ahead and hijack this question, without any kind of answer, and just say that one of my all time favorite film sounds are of early Disney choirs. LOVE THAT. I haven't really tried researching what was going on, (i imagine a tonne of people in front of one microphone,) but i love that early Disney choral sound.

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