The Innovative Audio Restoration of "Burden of Dreams"

PLUS: You Can’t Blame Everything on AI

Author

Steve
September 10, 2024

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The Innovative Audio Restoration of Burden of Dreams

Big news, friends: I actually found something of value on LinkedIn! And no, it’s not the standard issue grindset B2B sales cringe post you would typically find at r/LinkedInLunatics, it’s an in-depth look at a new model of audio restoration from Endpoint Audio founder and audio restoration expert Nicholas Bergh.

Specifically, Bergh describes the audio restoration process for Burden of Dreams, the Les Blank-directed documentary about the difficult production of Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo. The restored Burden of Dreams is currently having a limited theatrical release.

Bergh writes:

Burden of Dreams is the first of a series of restorations from Endpoint Audio employing a unique sound restoration approach using original “camera negative” source recordings instead of multi-generational copies. This included the roughly 130 Nagra production tapes recorded in Peru, as well as the source music elements. Instead of using digital tools to remove common problems like noise, distortion, and [pitch variation], new software tools were developed to help re-conform and forensically remix audio sources to simply avoid the need for this type of restoration processing and to preserve the amazing original audio fidelity. The fidelity of the source recordings are often so good that they can sound contemporary even though they were recorded almost 45 years ago.

Although somewhat radical for sound, this workflow is not unlike what is used today when going back to camera negatives and retiming them to match a reference print. This workflow is especially helpful for independent films like Burden of Dreams that were mixed on 16mm mag and/or endured a high number of sound generations. For example, compared to previous work, most music in the new restoration has five fewer analog generations and most dialogue has four fewer analog generations.

Not gonna lie: it was shocking to me that this isn’t a standard practice for film restoration. It’s indicative of the still-present disregard for the importance of sound in motion pictures that the typical restoration workflow was “carefully acquiring the original camera negatives from which to make a new scan. Also just throw the audio channels into ProTools and see what you can do.”

Hopefully this level of care and detail will make its way into future film restorations!

You Can’t Blame Everything on AI

Speaking of larger-than-life directors whose troubled productions have resulted in their own highly-regarded documentaries, Francis Ford Coppola’s self-funded Megalopolis releases later this month, and has already been the subject of significant controversy.

When its US distributor Lionsgate released the below trailer, which featured quotations from critics who had bashed some of Coppola’s classic films over the years, Lionsgate had to pull it the next day. Why might that be?

Well, it’s because the quotes in question didn’t exist. They were made up! How did imaginary writing from Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris make it into the trailer? The answer is depressingly unsurprising:

The idea for the trailer was to lean into Megalopolis’ negative press by showcasing bad reviews of other Coppola films that proved to be cinematic tours de force. But the AI engine used to dig up examples of those sorts of reviews took creative license…

The Hollywood Reporter is mainly focused on the palace intrigue at Lionsgate’s marketing department as far as who is most to blame for this mess, which is far beyond the purview of this newsletter. What is concerning to me, however, is this section of the article:

…after just one day, when it was revealed that the critics’ quotes being cited in the teaser were bogus. Lionsgate apologized for the mistake — “We screwed up,” a spokesman offered — but it’s what happened next that is still irking some folks in Hollywood; Lionsgate fired Eddie Egan, a longtime marketing consultant who’d been working on the film and who, like everybody else at the studio, had been duped by an AI bot into believing the quotes were real.

An AI bot cannot “dupe” you into “believing the quotes were real.” ChatGPT is not a Star Trek-esque talking computer to aid you in your research. It’s more like your blowhard coworker who always has an opinion but may or may not know what he’s talking about at any given time. Full disclosure: I am often that coworker.

Over the past year, I’ve become less concerned about AI taking jobs than I am AI taking brains. Treating AI like a superintelligence with all the answers instead of a statistically-generated bullshit machine does not augur well for us. That well-paid people in marketing are just opening up ChatGPT and copy-pasting its responses into movie trailers is very concerning!

This wasn’t an AI problem, it was a “human understanding of AI” problem.

Here’s a round-up of cool and interesting links about Hollywood and technology:

The backstory of the Disney power struggle. (link)

This summer’s box office successes were more than tentpoles. (link)

Chatbots are primed to warp reality. (link)

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