Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1512183
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S 17 documentary about that scream. I had always felt bad that by being the first to publish the scream's story on the internet way back when, I'd taken something Ben (Burtt) and Richard (Anderson) did for fun—a little thing that was "under the radar" thing for themselves—and helped turn it into something a little overwhelming. I really didn't want to do that anymore. But it was actually something that Gary Rydstrom told me that made me reconsider. He said that so many people know about the scream now, because of what I've done—and it's a great opportunity to share more about the craft of film sound. It can be a doorway to shedding some light on our work. Also, Anna's take on her documentary was really good. It really sounded like she was going to do this right. And as we got to know each other, we really clicked, personally. So, I decided to help. ANNA: I planned and executed a crowdfunding campaign that raised more than $14,000 and enabled a week-long film shoot in Los Angeles this summer. I've done so much more than I ever could have dreamed would be possible, all because this story has excited me in a completely unique way. From the beginning of this project, I've envisioned this as a feature- length documentary. People have asked me how I could drag this out into a feature but the truth is, it's much harder to condense the story into a short film. The more questions I answer, the more new questions pop up. For example: "Where is the original recording of the Wilhelm Scream now?" Some people have attempted to answer this recently, saying that the original recording was saved from near extinction by a CalArts professor digitizing the USC archives. However, this account has proven false. STEVE: Not long ago, the Wilhelm was posted to the Internet Archive, along with a collection of many other sounds—but unfortunately, an inaccurate story of how it got there was shared on several internet media sites … and a piece aired on a major television network's morning show that unfortunately, continued to propagate erroneous details about the scream and its history. They even used a picture taken from one of The Hollywood Sound Museum's websites without making any contact with us. ANNA: USC archivist Dino Everett told me that a 35mm nitrate copy of the recording, which would have likely been a copy of the original optical film recording, was part of a sound library that was donated to the college. From there, students (including legend Ben Burtt himself) helped to transfer the nitrate to tape. Most recently, the USC archives have been working to have their tapes fully digitized, which is how the aforementioned professor came upon the scream recording. In the words of Dino: "There was never a point where the material was ever in jeopardy of being thrown away." STEVE: But the funny thing is, everyone went nuts, thinking that "the master recording" had just been discovered! Okay, how is that possible if we had been using it all these years before…? Several years ago, I did an interview for the podcast Twenty Thousand Hertz, a great show run by Dallas Taylor that I highly recommend. I told the story of Wilhelm, and it turned out to be one of their most popular shows. When they heard about the misrepresented stories that were recently being spread about it, they released a "remix" of the episode, Steve Lee F ROM TH E VAU LT O F TH E H O L LY WOO D SOU N D M U S E U M