I remember my first ever encounter with audio editing. This was well before Pro Tools, DAWs and computers ruled the post production floor.
Slating VO takes these days is very much an option and usually only done upon request. Without it, no one’s head would roll and as an audio engineer, you wouldn’t risk being chewed up and spat out only to be tossed into the meat grinder by an irate producer. In comparison to yesteryear, you can now pretty much tell if there are multiple takes of a line or paragraph by simply looking at the waveform in your DAW. Much can be said about how particularly unforgiving the film industry was in those days (and perhaps still is today in varying degrees), when the constant barking of producers was a norm, overtime pay was unheard of and wherever you went, hours were s#itty. I mean, 7am today to 7am tomorrow. Yup, you get it. On top of that, most of us had no formal film education and relied on work experience to learn, so we quite readily put in the hours for a pittance.
Anyway, back to tape. The year was 1991 and I remember editing a VO recorded by the late, great Duncan Watt. It was for a short documentary on the restoration of the National Museum’s dome that was carried out in 1990. Mr. Watt (rest in peace, Sir) was an author, newscaster and radio presenter in the 80s and 90s. He used to read the primetime news on Channel 5 for what was then known as the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation and also presented classical music on Symphony 92.4 FM until 2004. He was born in Northern Rhodesia, then a British protectorate in south central Africa – what’s now Zambia.
The VO was recorded on 1/4 inch open reel tape, slated at every take by the VO artist and was handed to me with a correspondingly marked up script. Editing on a TEAC editing machine like this one, I had to ensure that all the selected takes were put together to form the master VO tape. The rather painstaking process referred to as ‘splicing’, involved spooling a new reel (which would eventually become the master VO tape) starting with leader tape and then joining that with the selected take of the first segment then continuing to play the recorded VO tape, stopping to physically cut out any bad takes and then join the next segment’s good take with the master reel using splicing tape. You would’ve seen this in action in the earlier link.
It all brings to mind a couple of things that we take for granted today. First, without slates, there would’ve been no way to tell one take from another, and, if you weren’t organised, meticulous and focused, you could’ve easily ended up completely messing up the edit by taping ends of the wrong reel together especially if you were working with multiple reels. No laughing matter then – take it from me. I have to admit though, it was part of the fun, as long as you spotted the error on your own and it wasn’t discovered by the producer when putting the final video edit together.
Times have changed considerably and technology has certainly powered the industry on – though it can also be seen as a double-edged sword. Thirty-odd years after my maiden edit, I look back on those early days very fondly. Production processes used to be very tactile and in hindsight, I think that getting my hands ‘dirty’ and then seeing and hearing the end product, and feeling the immense sense of satisfaction after weeks or months of slaving away (and at times, getting screamed at), was what made me fall in love with the film industry. Having said that, it also makes me appreciate the relative ease that technology now affords us.