Frankenstein (1931) Audio Preservation

[monks19]

If someone here could reach out to the guy and see if that could end up being a viable option, I'd appreciate it. I already have my work cut out for me on this one and have a sh*t-load of sources. Yes, that one would be great to have, but I'm not getting my hopes up or waiting on that. If it becomes available, great and if not, this reconstruction will be completed anyway.

On side note: I have been trying to track down a copy of the actual original release trailer for a long time but all I have ever found is those damn re-release trailers. Shooting scripts exist out there, but their authenticity is a hazy matter. Any old radio interviews with cast would be freakin sweet!

About those sound discs, can anybody access the copies held at the Library of Congress (according to a correspondent on Nitrateville, LOC may have a copy of those) ? If they're accessible there, it might be easyer to get thant trying to reach a collector.

[monks19]

@jerryshadoe & crissrudd4554: Ok, News about this. Aside of the LOC I might have found a potential lead for a potential collector. Althought, it might be under some conditions (and fees perhaps). Feel free to ask me more details (by PM) if you're interested and I'll provide them ASAP.

[jerryshadoe]

In my pursuit of finding more audio sources, I have found the original Portuguese dub and the "new" re-dub as well. The reason I mention these, is because they contain nearly all of the same extra sound effects as the Spanish and Italian dubs and they contain the music as well. But, when it comes to the music, the quality is the best of all the sources, so I might end up re-doing some of the beginning, if it's needed.

Naturally, this might end up adding a little bit of time to the reconstruction process, due to the fact that I will have to be switching between more sources. I also found another Russian voice-over release, that contains two different Russian tracks and am in process of acquiring that now. Wonder if there will be anything of extra use to me there. I will keep you guys updated.

When it comes to sources, the more - the better. It might make it more of a hassle to go through, but it gives me more to work with to make everything as seamless as possible...

On topic of Vistafone discs: These would be fantastic to have BUT there is a good chance that they will NOT contain anything extra to what is already available on the LD/DVD/BD for the English track. I have been doing a lot of reading about all of this and according to a thread I just went through, the recently restored "god" line came from a guy that had access to the original discs back in the late 60s, copied them to reel-to-reel tapes, eventually digitized them and then passed it on to someone that was working on the audio in the studio. That guy, apparently, just quietly re-inserted the line back into the audio track... this is where the info came from: http://monsterkidclassichorrorforum.yuku...Or-Fiction

I want to see if I can get in touch with that guy that has the reel-to-reel tape copies and see if he'd be willing to assist with the project.

@ monks19 - The suggestion for LOC is a really good one, although I have no idea how I would go about that
Please feel free to PM me with anything important to this project that needs to be kept private

EDIT: To answer an earlier question - the LD track has been synced for a while now. Granted, I haven't gone back and fixed the recently restored "god" line on there yet to make it a seamless transition, but besides that the entire track is synced and ready to go. Why were you asking about it? If you just wanna see how it turned out, I understand but I was hoping to make it available once I also have a "cleaned" version of that track made too and then just release an entire audio "pack" containing "raw" and "cleaned" versions of the original LDPCM and the reconstruction tracks

[crissrudd4554]

Messaged the guy. He only had the image. He found it years ago online on hes guessing ebay. I wonder if you guy you speak of jerry is Donald Glut or someone he knew. Donald was interviewed for the documentary on the Frankenstein DVD and talked about the line and mentioned that a friend of his had the disc back in the 1960s. And lastly about your last question I was just curious. I wasnt sure how you were going about this. Syncing one at a time and posting or just doing them all together and then posting. You pretty much answered my question.

[captainsolo]

I wouldn't bet too much on the early sound discs-even if they were somehow in good shape. Firstly think about the extremely poor quality of pre-RIAA era vinyl, plus it's likely 78rpm which requires a dedicated table and stylus to be honest, plus you'd need one hell of a good rig to get something listenable out of it.
And then you'd have to deal with all the inherent noise and defects.

Still, it's good to know they're floating out in the wild.

[SilverWook]

I wonder if anyone in Hollywood has invested in one of these to deal with rare early sound era discs?
http://elpj.com/
And no, they are not cheap!

[crissrudd4554]

I dont think an original sound disc is necessary for this type of project. I agree with captainsolo, quality wise it probably wouldnt serve justice to the other sources due to its age and the amount to invest in not only optaining one but to find a way to properly to capture it would be insane. We're not talking your basic LP capture here folks. In the end we'd be kidding ourselves. If anyone here is willing to take that route thats your choice but I think we're pushing things too far up against the wall there guys.

[jerryshadoe]

Well, it would be a lot easier to contact the guy that had them transferred to reel-to-reel back in the 60s, as those are already digitized so, I am trying to figure out the correct way to approach the guy so as not to scare him off.

I was just "wishful thinking" when I mentioned the "original" Vistaphone discs and the problem with those is that, although the "god" line might be present in full, (which would be nice to have access to) to the best of my knowledge based on all the research I have done on the subject, they all are from a 1938 re-release anyway, hence why I put original in quotation marks. It's hard to determine what is actually original, since a lot of the film was chopped up, including the intro funeral procession scene actually being cut directly from the original nitrate negative and used partially in BRIDE. There is also evidence that other scenes have been cut and the movie has been "re-done" from the word "go" with things like the addition of the prologue, which is not a part of the 1931 actual original theatrical version, as well as the ending also not being part of the original, as originally Frankenstein was killed by the monster during the the windmill scene which there is lot's of evidence for, both in certain scripts that float around, but moreover, with actual photograph stills from that scene which are not in the "final" (as we know it now) version of the film. There is also evidence of other things missing, such as the dialog around the 24th minute, (which I mentioned in a prior post and it turns out that all of this dialog is also present of BOTH Portuguese dubs [they have an ""original" version and a later redub]) shots featured in the original trailer, but absent from the "final" version and a few other changes throughout the film. There is also the matter of the jump cut that is still present during the Maria drowning scene, where there is a few shots missing there. What is an absolute tragedy here is that most, if not all, of these can't be restored because there are permanently lost.

Maybe that's why I am taking my time with the reconstruction effort (besides the actual time-consuming process) because I am also doing a lot of research and making sure that I have as many sources as possible for this. Turns out that the Portuguese dubs, especially because there is two of them, will end up being EXTREMELY useful and one of them appears to be from a source that suffered a lot LESS degradation than any other master that I have so far. I was actually blown away with the clarity of the track, which is why I'm glad I'm not that far into the reconstruction track, because it looks like I might have to go back over the last couple of minutes and re-splice a few things. During certain instances, the track is superior even to the LDPCM track which is what really shocked me, because the track is a 384kbps lossy AC3 track. (I'm not talking about when there are differences in the tracks, I mean the quality is superior during parts that are the SAME)

BUT... this is a double-edged sword because now I have to reconfigure the noise-plain that I am inserting to keep transitions seamless... So, it's a little bit of "back to the drawing board" moment for me. IMHO this is a GOOD thing, because when trying to do the reconstruction, I want to use the best quality sources, while keeping everything sounding "the same" because it would suck for the transitions to be obvious even if the audio sounds better. I have to re-find a "happy medium."

Both of the Russian voice-overs, although different from the one I already have, are useless because one uses the same audio as the VHS/LD and the other uses the same audio as the BD... Both of the Portuguese dubs will be a huge help in the reconstruction process, especially during the music segments. The redub is sourced from the 2004 Brazilian R4 NTSC DVD release and the original dub is sourced from a HiFi SVHS tape master of a 35mm archival print in Brazil. The guy that gave me the original Portuguese dub, said a friend of his had access to the print some many years ago and managed to get it transferred to tape. Years later, the tape was digitized and I have a copy of this capture. What is interesting about this dub is that, unlike the redub which contains just the thunder during the "god" line, (just like the English LD audio) the original dub contains the entire dialog uncut and all of it is translated into Portuguese which might help me determine what sound effects were used here originally (and it does sound different than the other tracks, but similar to the Spanish dub on the BD, which has that part re-inserted in English but has thunder in background that sounds like it belongs and is not just overlaying the old "censored" audio) What's interesting about these two dubs, is that the original dub contains a lot of the same sound effects found on the LD and a lot that are on the Spanish/Italian dubs, while the redub does not have almost any of the sound effects that are on the LD, while it does share a lot of the other ones with the Spanish/Italian dubs. However, the music is nearly identical in ALL of the dubs I have that contain the "extra" music elements that are not present on the English version. This makes figuring out which parts are "original" and which are not a little easier and harder at the same time because I'm not sure which master is correct and I am still having to conduct tests as to what matches best to what's onscreen and go with my gut on some of these. Admittedly, I just gave myself a whole lot more work to do, but I am even more confident of my ability to reconstruct the entire audio track properly.

Am in the process of matching the audio tracks to the rest of the sources I have that I'm using for the reconstruction right now... Wish me luck guys

[crissrudd4554]

Based on what I've gathered on IMDb, the 'God' line and the ending to the Little Maria scene were permenantly cut in 1937. If I'm not mistaken these were intact during the initial 1931 run but the 'God' line was soon covered by a crack of thunder, as it appears on the LD. Since the full line was not discovered at the time, this was used in place of the line for the films initial restoration in 1986. So the 1938 reissue would not have the full 'God' line so we must assume the 'original' disc the line was sourced from had to be pre-1937. The Edward Van Sloan intro was added a few months into the films initial run when it was feared the films subject matter might be too frightening to audiences during the early days of the Depression. Some time later in the films original run the 'happy' ending was added but cut shortly before the release of Bride of Frankenstein. It remained this way until the film was released to TV in the 1950s where the 'happy' ending has remained ever since. Anyways from what you gathered it sounds like we should have enough to create a proper restoration. I leave it to your magic hands and ears. Also you may wanna check out how the music during the end credits sounds. On the 1980 VHS, the music, while the same, sounds like a different recording which also cuts when the credits go to black.

[captainsolo]

The God line and other bits were censored on the original run by various state censorship boards. Each state back in the day could perform their own edits and this led to many different edits of early talkies both pre and post Code enforcement.