Creative Anomalies
soundtrack deconstruction 101

The single most popular question asked by site visitors, with regard to the new soundtrack, is, "how did you do it?". The following brief tutorial gives the basic procedure for creating a new soundtrack from an existing one. This tutorial assumes that the source material (video and audio) has already been imported into the desktop video editor. If you don't know how to extract video and audio from a dvd, all the information you need can be found at www.videohelp.com.

Desktop video editing requires a computer with the suggested specs of a Pentium 4, or AMD equivalent, processor; 1GB RAM (min 512mb); quality graphics card; sound card; separate hard drive (min 80GB) for the digitised media; a library of sound effects.

The Never Say McClory Again project was edited on an Avid Xpress Pro non-linear edit (NLE) package. Other quality editing package can be used (e.g. Sony Vegas Video, Adobe Premiere et al). All good NLE's will feature a Timeline style layout similar to the one in the images of the tutorial.

This is not a guide on how to edit or on how to use your preferred esktop editor. It's purpose is to give the basics of deriving a new soundtrack from an existing one. The method outlined herein is just one of many available to the editor.
 

The cornerstone of the Never Say McClory Again soundtrack is the two-channel audio track of the official DVD of Never Say Never Again. I did not have access to isolated dialogue tracks (quite obvious in a few passages of the re-edited soundtrack). The Dolby Digital (AC-3) 2.0 soundtrack was extracted from the NSNA dvd using Smart Ripper - a free utility that can be found on the 'net; the ripped AC-3 track was then converted to .wav format using another freeware utility called 'AC3 to WAV Convertor'. The .wav file was then imported into my non-linear editor (NLE i.e. desktop video editor) where it was layed into the editing timeline. From there the editing of the soundtrack could begin.

The example used in this short tutorial is a timeline containing a two-minute extract from the larger 123-minute Never Say McClory Again timeline. The segment begins where Bond returns to his villa after a night at the casino and ends where he gives chase to Fatima Blush.

SECTION 1 - REMOVING EXISTING MUSIC

Figure 1.1, below, is how the timeline looks with just the original video and audio tracks which have been extracted from the Never Say Never Again dvd i.e. one video track and two audio tracks (the audio of the dvd was 2-channel stereo).

Click here to listen to the uncut original soundtrack (mp3, 1.6mb) - note that the Never Say McClory Again edit of this scene is shorter than the original version.

FIGURE 1.1

This raw segment (fig 1.1, above) of original NSNA soundtrack contains music and as the purpose of the exercise is to replace the original music with a new selection, the first task is to remove the existing music.
 

By playing the timeline, the frames where passages of music begin and end can be found and marked (fig 1.2).

FIGURE 1.2
 

These unwanted sections are then lifted out of the timeline leaving blank space (fig 1.3). The exact same process would be applied in scenes in which music underscores dialogue i.e. only frames that contain parts of words are kept, everything else is lifted out - even single frames between words should be removed. You may be surprised at how little impact music under isolated words can have when the surrounding frames have been removed.

Having removed all the music from the original soundtrack, A1 and A2 will now be left as is, i.e. the holes are left unfilled. This is our basic 'clean' soundtrack against which new audio (edited onto new audio tracks) will be balanced.

Click here to listen to how the cut audio track sounds (mp3, 1.45mb).

FIGURE 1.3
 


SECTION 2 - LAYING NEW MUSIC AND SOUND EFFECTS

Having removed the music from the original soundtrack (A1 & A2), new audio tracks can be created (A3 & A4) onto which new music selections can be layed (pink segments represent passages of new music).

FIGURE 2.1

Click here to listen to the composite of edited original soundtrack (blue segments) and the new music track (pink segments)
(mp3, 1.45mb).

It's often forgotten that when original music is lifted out of the original soundtrack, all audio elements go with it - including sound effects. It's not until one sets about replacing sound effects that the time and painstaking effort required to build a convincing effect track is appreciated.

'Foley' is the audio-for-film buzzword these days thanks to myriad documentaries which grace the supplemental sections of blockbuster dvd's, but in the domestic and even prosumer arena's real-time foley effects recording is not an option. In the realm of desktop video editing, effects work is all about the tried and true method of manually laying-in sound effects sourced from stock effects libraries - a laborious and time-consuming process.

The goal of the Never Say McClory Again project was to integrate new music and effects with original soundtrack in as aurally smooth a manner as possible. To achieve this brief, new effects and music had to blend seamlessly with the style and sonic qualities of the original soundtrack. For example the dynamics of the original two-channel soundtrack of Never Say Never Again is quite subtle in comparison to modern 5.1 soundtracks; so it would be aurally distracting if there suddenly came a passage of strident, dynamic multichannel sound which, after a minute or so, just as suddenly gave way to the original subtle two-channel environment.

Depending on the scene, the number of effects required to do the job properly ranges from a few to many dozens. In the example scene (fig 2.2), the finished timeline has ten audio tracks, six of which are for effects. Some scenes had sixteen (16) effect tracks.

FIGURE 2.2

Click here to listen to the composite soundtrack of the above timeline (mp3, 1.45mb).
 

Although this is not a tutorial on how to edit, it has to be said say that isolation of audio elements is the key to creative flexibility in this type of project. Isolated effects can be altered, replaced or filtered without affecting any other component of the soundtrack. Never compromise the flexibility of your soundtrack by mixing several tracks of unrelated coincident effects together into one effect because you won't be able to unpick them later. There's nothing more frustrating than mixing six tracks of coincident effects down to one and then realising, much later, that a single effect hasn't been panned correctly.

Figure 2.3, below, is an image map featuring links to mp3 files of timeline audio.

FIGURE 2.3
  Once the music and effects are layed-in, the soundtrack needs to be balanced and eq'd. Most NLE's come with a basic set of audio tools with which a workmanlike soundtrack can be produced. The entire soundtrack of Never Say McClory Again was produced within the confines of Avid Xpress Pro and while the result is far from reference studio quality, it is a respectable soundtrack nonetheless.

Third-party applications and plug-ins such as Adobe After Effects and Sony's Sound Forge will be needed if advanced visual and audio effects are required.

When your project is finished, it can either be exported directly from the NLE for later re-encoding as a media file of your choice; or can be played-out to a camera, vcr or dvd recorder via firewire.
 

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