Article 3216 of rec.arts.disney: Path: pt.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!rutgers!sun-barr!olivea!oliveb!felix!daver@felix.UUCP From: daver@felix.UUCP (Dave Richards) Newsgroups: rec.arts.disney Subject: Re: Fantasia Keywords: Fantasia soundtrack Stokowski's dead (I know!) Message-ID: <168617@felix.UUCP> Date: 16 Aug 91 02:22:06 GMT References: <510@ccop1.ocpt.ccur.com> <1991Aug6.181703.28690@yenta.alb.nm.us> <517@ccop1.ocpt.ccur.com> <91220.145036CC100PG@GITVM1.GATECH.EDU> Sender: daemon@felix.UUCP Reply-To: daver@felix.UUCP (Dave Richards) Organization: Humble Excerpts, Inc., Costa Mesa, CA Lines: 87 This is one of those subjects that won't die. In the past, people have even accused Disney of some kind of conspiracy regarding the replacement of the Stokowski soundtrack with the Kostal recreation. A few months ago I attended a lecture about the restoration of Fantasia in which ALL the aspects of this were discussed at length. About the same time there was a story on the same subject in American Cinematographer magazine. The following is a summary of the information from these two sources, which should tell you everything you want to know about the sound for Fantasia AND MORE. First, a little background: Fantasia started as a short, consisting only of The Sorcerer's Apprentice sequence which began production in January, 1938. Completed, it was two reels at a cost of more than $125,000. On top of that, Disney had invested $3 million in their new Burbank studio which they needed to recoup. They knew that a short subject would never return that amount of money, so they decided to expand the film to a feature. When Fantasia was made, tape recorders didn't exist (maybe experimental, but not in production). The precursor to tape was optical recording. The orig- inal orchestral recording was made by Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Philadelphia Academy of Music, said to be acoustically perfect. The recorder was an eight-channel variable-area optical type. The 8 channels were mixes from as many as 33 microphones. This was then mixed-down to three channels, with a fourth amplifier control track added for additional dynamic range. This fourth track consisted of a combination of three oscil- lator tones of different frequencies. When rectified, each tone provided gain information for one of the other three channels. For the road-show engagements, the four-track optical-sound film was reproduced from a machine separate from the picture film, but running in synchronization with it (a double-system). The standard sound setup had the output of each track fed through a relay fader system and then amplified by separate preamps. Each of the three pro- gram preamps fed into a variable-gain amp which fed a 20-watt driver amp. Each driver amp fed two 60-watt power amps in parallel, giving a rated output of 120 W per channel, but capable of 200 watts. The three speaker systems were placed on the stage at left, center, and right. Each consisted of four large high-frequency baffles fed by eight low-frequency speakers and one large cellular high-frequency horn fed by four high-frequency speakers. (That last sentence is almost verbatim from the article. I don't have a clue what it means.) The cost to produce Fantasia approached $2.25 Million. It premiered at the Broadway Theatre in New York on November 13, 1940. For that engagement, two additional 50-watt power amps were used, each driving 22 small speakers mounted on the sides, back, and ceiling. (It's not clear what signal(s) were fed to these speakers -- but it sounds like surround sound to me!) The sound setup was customized somewhat in each theatre. The original film length was 133 minutes including intermission. The film was put into general release in April, 1942, cut to 88 minutes and with a standard sound track. It was too heavy for the kids that were used to Disney fare and many of their parents as well, and was consequently a financial failure. Likewise for reisuues in 1944, 1946, and 1953. Disney's Buena Vista distributing company subsequently released the "Superscope" (pseudo wide-screen) version in 1956, with stereophonic sound. There were further reissues in 1963 and 1969, after which it finally made some money and stayed in release, because the new generation greeted it as a psychedelic experience. A new version with remixed stereo sound was released in 1977, but by this time the sound was pretty bad. You see, in 1955, after the road-show engage- ment the soundtrack was transferred to magnetic from the optical master. Unfortunately, by 1955, the only remaining Fantasound playback system was being stored at RCA in Burbank, which did not yet have the new 35mm magnetic recording equipment. So the transfer to magnetic was done from RCA to Disney OVER PHONE LINES! This was from a disintegrating nitrate optical print in poor condition, and re-recorded on magnetic equipment which was not yet a mature technology. It is no wonder that Disney decided in 1981 that this 30 year-old recording (that was a horrible transfer to begin with) was no longer useable. It really wasn't. At that time there was only one alter- native, and that was to record a new soundtrack, which resulted in the Kostal version used in the 1984 release, which we all know and hate. Since then however, the technology of sound restoration has improved to the point where the original soundtrack could be recovered. The work was done by Oscar-winning recordist Terry Porter. One of the tools used was the Quantec software which runs on a Mac (I have seen this system, and it is remarkable! It can remove almost any cyclic noise, such as hum, motor whine, etc.) That and eight other tools were used to create a new master that was up to current theatrical standards. Of course this was the soundtrack used for the recent re-release, and which will be used for the upcoming video release. That is the history of Fantasia and its soundtrack. I hope you'll appreciate hearing the original Stokowski version even more now. Dave