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Making sure classic films look and sound as good, if not better, than when they were first released. By Christine Bunish As increasing numbers of classic films and audience favorites make their way onto Blu-ray disc, the need for sound and picture restoration to meet consumer demand for high-quality product keeps restoration specialists busy. THE SOUND OF MUSIC Thanks to the efforts of Hollywood’s Mi Casa Mul- timedia (www.micasamm.com), the hills are alive with a bigger sound of music than ever before. For the Blu- ray disc release of the iconic 1964 f eature, The Sound of Music, Mi Casa was char ged with restor ing the audio on the original print master and performing a 7.1 remix as well as a new 5.1 theatrical mix. The company worked from the original mag print master that had never been previously restored. In 2004, Fox released a 40th anniversary edition of the movie. At that time, the original mag was believed to be unplayable due to vinegar damage caused by aging and to instability in the geometry of the mag itself. Therefore, Fox was forced to use an analog X-copy made in 1964. In the meantime, engineer Nicholas Berg devel- oped a process to enable the original master to play back.“He designed and built his own head-stack as- sembly with a plate that pressed down on the back side of the mag to ensure continuous pressure as the mag traveled over the playback head,” explains Mi Casa president/chief engineer Brant Biles. “He also washed the mag and sprayed it with a special silicone.The difference in quality of his 24-reel trans- fer, versus the previous one, was like night and day. It was just fantastic.” Once this super ior source was tr ansferred to 24.96, Mi Casa performed the initial noise reduction passes with Cedar’s DeNoise and Retouch plug-ins. “Some reels played better than others,” Biles recalls. “One spot coming into the ballroom scene had a lot of warble to it. Nicholas Berg went back and changed aspects of the playback machine to get most of the wow and flutter out, and I used our proprietary methodology to eliminate the rest.” Once all the elements were transferred to 48K, 24-bit files and loaded into Avid’s Pro Tools, the “surgi- cal part” of noise reduction began with the Sonnox Restore suite of plug-ins. “Cedar’s DeNoise did a good job on the overall mag noise, but we used Son- nox in very specific instances,” says Biles. The issue of “how far into the augmentation process do you go” elicited many conversations, he points out. Sometimes Biles was successful in making a case f or inter vention, such as adding rev erb to scenes that had none, including the first half of a con- versation during a courtyard walk-and-talk among the nuns before they launch into singing,“How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?” The Sound of Music was originally mixed with five channels across the front and a mono sur round.That formed the starting point for Mi Casa’s 7.1 mix. “We also had a 24-tr ack music stem compiled some time in the ‘80s,” says Biles.“I was able to go in and take some of the orchestral elements and work with them. So [we got] a true 7.1 mix with the five in the front represented properly.The two side channels have supplementation by the original music stem, and the rear has a little bit of that pulled into it and also the mono sitting back there.” To avoid flanging and phasing from layering the strings on top of the original print master Biles used a Bricasti Design reverb to correct and de-corolate the additional orchestral elements that were put into the side channels of the 7.1 mix. Sound of Music fans may have an opportunity to experience Mi Casa’s restoration in a completely new way. “I understand they will also be releasing a sing- along theatrical version with our 5.1 mix attached to a new digital cinema transfer,” says Biles. THE AFRICAN QUEEN,ALIEN A sound post production company specializing in mastering and remastering, Burbank’s Audio Mechan- ics (www.audiomechanics.com) has many restoration credits, including the entire I Love Lucy library for Para- mount/CBS; the classic films Sunset Boulevard and Roman Holiday for Paramount; Marilyn Monroe titles for Fox; plus the iconic Red Shoes and Rashomon, which have netted restoration awards for the company. One of Audio Mechanics’ latest projects is the restoration of 1951’ s The African Queen, starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, for Blu-ray release by Paramount. A print in the Academy Film Archives turned out to be the best-sounding source material for the restoration. “The movie was done right before magnetic recording was introduced to films in the mid-‘50s,” says president John Polito. “So The African Queen had the distortion, pops, clicks, crackles and broadband noise associated with optical sound for film.” A Sonic Solutions emplo yee bef ore opening 24 Post • November 2010 www.postmagazine.com