American Cinematographer - February 1991 - 64

One of Porter's

strongest

the SAE 5000. "It's
actually called a depopper. You lo¬

weapons was

cate the pop to the exact frame and
then automate it in and out for just

that one frame, almost a
worth

sprocket's

very tedious work. These
pops are very, very small - we're
talking about a fiftieth of a second
and generally it couldn't be de¬
-

-

tected that something was being
removed. But sometimes, espe¬
cially if there was a series of pops,
they would leave a hole or a glitch
that you could actually hear. In that
case,

I would program in a very

short

piece of reverb, the same
length of the pop, to fill it in. That's
a little of the smoke that
you use.
You're not hurting or changing the
music at all. It just samples that
fraction of sound right before the

and fills it in."
Although the material was
never
actually in the digital do¬
main, certain pieces of digital
equipment had a place in Porter's
process. "In order to deal with

pop

Above:

Chernobog, the
dark god of

some of the hums and hiss, I used
Quantec, which is run by a Mac
computer. They have what's called
a
high-low pass, which cuts off the

ancient Russia, in
the amazing

interpretation of
Moussorgsky's
"Night on Bald

extreme low and

Mountain." Bela

Lugosi panto¬
mimed the action
for the animators
to

Porter's

experienced ear
frequency of a pure
hum. With the frequency pin¬
pointed, a few adjustments are

study. Right:

estimates the

Animation

supervisor Bill
Tytla, working
from eerily lighted

made to the Macintosh, which then
removes that sliver of the band¬
width. Again, the absence is unnoticeable.
For noise that is spread

models, takes on
some

of the

demonic aspect of
his subject as he

develops the

frequencies, Porter em¬
ployed several pieces of equip¬
over more

sequence.

ment. "As

it

as

ater

if I

were

the audience in

a

the¬

environment, instead of

working in a small control room
looking at graphs and meters. If I
ran across a
pop or some sort of
system problem within the music,
but the music still gave me the
emotional impact it was supposed
to, and removing this pop some¬
how hurt that aspect - I left the

able to make

good judgment.
partner
[Mel
Metcalfe] and I were tempted at
a

"My

times to do

little 1990s work to
crude forms of panning that
a

a

result of the

primitive

recording techniques, there was the
general hash, this broad banded
surface noise-like pink noise, like
a

waterfall. The Cat 43, as it's called

in the

business, is

been around

a

device that's

they did," he admits, "but we
stayed away from that. This is a
piece of history, something they did
50 years ago. Our goal was to

long time, made by
Dolby. It's a four banded noise re¬
duction device. We use it in dialog
cleanup quite a bit. It works great
with camera and generator noise,

some

a

present it in 1990 like an audience

and broadbanded air conditioner

in. It's not worth hurting the
music. Being in the theater, I was

would have heard it in 1940. And
we stuck
by our guns on that."

noise, the kind of

American

February 1991

pop

62

high frequencies,

and notch filters, which you can use
to notch out some of the hums."

Cinematographer

counter with

problem you en¬
production tracks.
American Cinematographer - February 1991

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