Out of sync again 1967

In the Spring of 1967, Dick Clark, head of UPIN, called me into his office and told me that our landlords, Rank Laboratories were in a spot of bother and that Dick had told them that I could solve their problem.

Apparently, they had been commissioned to make multiple prints of an old film for re-distribution.  The film had been made in 1947 and was a film noir with Robert Mitchum and Dean Jagger.  It was called “Pursued”.  The problem that Rank Laboratories had was that the picture they had was obtained from Holland (but with original American titles) and the sound track was from an English version, the picture of which had been lost.

However, the real problem was that both the picture and sound tracks had multiple sync marks on the leader and the Rank negative department did not know which ones to use to synchronise the track and the picture for printing.

Dick thought that I could solve the problem.  I said “Thanks, Dick, it might have been a good idea to ask me first”.  Dick, who was “well in” with Rank had his reputation to consider and asked me if I could do the job.  I said I would try.

Image by Victory of the People via Flickr

So I borrowed a Movietone News cutting room and their 35mm Moviola and set about synchronising the nine reels of picture and sound.

I put the picture and sound of Reel One on the machine and found a sync mark that suited me, I ran the film back to the head and replaced the picture with a brand new leader and put fresh spacing on the head of the sound track.  On this, I made a sync mark, the only one on the leader so that there was no mistake.  I also remembered to advance the track by nineteen frames for printing.

After a day and a half, I handed the nine reels of picture and nine reels of sound back to Rank Laboratories negative department.

They were amazed and they asked me how I did it.  I replied “I waited for someone to close a door, or fire a gun, in the picture and then I found the sound on the track and put them together, then I checked that I had got the right door closing with the right sound and then went back to the head of the film and replaced the leaders”.

For some days afterwards, I noticed Rank Lab technicians pointing me out to one another as the man that had put “Pursued” into printing sync.  Dick was relieved.  I was amazed that the great Rank Organisation could not have done it themselves.

But then, I suppose it as an editing job.

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