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Fantasound

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Fantasound was an early stereophonic sound process developed by sound engineer William E. Garity and sound mixer John N.A. Hawkins for the Walt Disney studio in 1938-1940 for the motion picture Fantasia, making Fantasia the first commercial film with multichannel sound. It led to the development of what is today known as surround sound.

The idea for Fantasound came from Walt Disney himself, who was displeased with the quality of conventional optical motion picture sound recording and playback systems, and from conductor Leopold Stokowski, who had participated in experimental stereophonic recordings in 1932 and a live, long-distance demonstration of multichannel sound in 1933. Stokowski had already recorded onto a multi-track sound system during the making of the movie One Hundred Men and a Girl in 1937. Walt had been present on the sound stage in January 1938 as Stokowski conducted studio musicians for the recording of the music score for what was intended as a short Disney cartoon, The Sorcerer's Apprentice. As work progressed on the animation of the cartoon and the mixing of the soundtrack, Disney decided to expand the concept into a feature length motion picture. He had also fallen in love with the rich sound he had heard during the recording. He asked his sound engineering team, led by William E. Garity, to come up with a better solution than the standard sound-on-film processes then available, all of which Walt felt sounded too tinny and un-dynamic for the experience he wanted Fantasia to be. The reason for optical film's limited dynamic range was its high surface noise, which necessitated the use of audio level compression, boosting quiet sounds so they could be heard over the noise.

Garity and his team worked painstakingly for many months before finally completing the process that they dubbed Fantasound. In the Fantasound process, different microphones are used to record different parts of a soundscape (in this case, a performing orchestra) to separate tracks. All of the music, except for The Sorcerer's Apprentice and the vocal portions of Ave Maria, were recorded in 1939 at the Philadelphia Academy of Music, home of the Philadelphia Orchestra. The sound was recorded onto eight variable-width optical tracks: six were individual sections of the orchestra, the seventh was a mix of those six tracks, and the eighth was the entire orchestra. These tracks were later mixed down to three double-width optical sound tracks. The three audio tracks, and a fourth "control" track, were printed on a 35 mm filmstrip that was synchronized to a separate Technicolor release print.

The resulting film was run in a theatre that was equipped with (depending upon available resources) anywhere between 30 and 80 individual speakers, set up behind the screen and around the perimeter of the theatre's ceiling. Fantasound also featured a wider dynamic range than conventional sound film, allowing for a fuller, stronger sound. This was achieved by recording a control track alongside the three audio tracks. The control track consisted of varying tones which corresponded to different volume levels. These audio signals from the control track automatically adjusted the volume levels of the amplifiers used to reproduce the sound. Adjusting the volume at the reproducing end also adjusted the noise level so that quiet passages were no longer drowned out and loud passages could be boosted without distortion.

The Walt Disney studio purchased eight Model 200B oscillators (at $71.50 each) from Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard for use in certifying Fantasound installations in theaters, thus becoming one of the first customers of the Hewlett-Packard Corporation.

Walt had also wanted other groups of engineers at the studio to rig up a widescreen film process (which would have had an aspect ratio of about 2.20:1, the same aspect ratio as Walt's later widescreen film, Sleeping Beauty (1959)), and also a perfuming system that would spray different scents into the theatre at the appropriate times — during the Nutcracker Suite segment, for example. These plans were never completely carried out.

The Walt Disney Studio's distributor at the time, RKO Radio Pictures, balked at the extra expense of rigging each venue Fantasia would play in with extra audio equipment, and backed out of distributing the film. Walt Disney was therefore forced to become, for the first time, his own distributor, and he and the studio planned and financed a roadshow exhibition release for Fantasia.

When Fantasia and Fantasound finally debuted in New York City on 13 November 1940, Fantasound was hailed as a technical marvel. But Fantasound never expanded beyond the initial roadshow engagements in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, San Francisco, Baltimore, Washington, Minneapolis, Buffalo, Pittsburgh and Cleveland. Disney's William E. Garrity and RCA's Watson Jones later gave these reasons:

(1) The amount of equipment required and the time necessary to make the installation.
(2) Because of the time element attractive theaters were not available to us, as the first-class houses in the various communities had established policies and the installation of the equipment would generally require darkening the house for a few days.
(3) The advent of wartime conditions precluded the possibility of developing mobile units that would have lessened installation time and costs.
(4) The variation in the regulations throughout the country, both as to operating personnel and local ordinances, materially affected the operating and installation costs.
(5) Space factors of the projection room in particular were problems of major importance.

Therefore, in April 1941, when Disney allowed RKO to assume distribution of Fantasia, the first thing RKO did was to have the film remixed into monophonic sound.

In 1942, a special Academy Award was given "To Walt Disney, William Garity, John N. A. Hawkins and the RCA Manufacturing Company for their outstanding contribution to the advancement of the use of sound in motion pictures through the production of Fantasia."

Stereophonic sound was not restored to Fantasia until its 1956 release, when it was also cropped to fit the dimensions of a widescreen SuperScope frame. The two most modern re-releases of Fantasia (1990 in movie theatres, 2000 on DVD) also faithfully restored the original intent of the Fantasound system. The original optical sound masters were believed to have been destroyed, so the restorers used copies that had been made on magnetic sound film for the 1956 reissue.

The transfer had taken place over special high-quality telephone lines, because the optical Fantasound equipment and the magnetic recording equipment were in separate buildings and could not be brought together. This resulted in some loss of treble response, but the copies retained the original dynamic range.

See also

Sources

Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers:

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