Century 21 Sound Effects

I have a question that someone out there might know. I posed it to
Chris Bentley, but never got a response.

I'm trying to discover the history, and possible whereabouts of the
Century 21 sound effects library.
Due to the spectacular nature of the visuals, apart from Barry Gray's
music, the sound seems to have been almost forgotten.
 

> Anyone got any clues?

I think that SPACE:1999 was the only series where they could still
find the separate music/effects/dialog tracks, and as such some
of the episodes on the NETWORK DVD release feature music-only
tracks.

For UFO and the earlier series, the best that is available are
music + effects tracks. Most of these tracks can be found on
my website for UFO.

As for the original source tapes for these effects, I have no
idea about that. It'd be interesting to hear though!

Also, since the sound effects from Anderson series also show
up in other productions (e.g. James Bond movies), the sound
effects library must be more general than just "Century 21".

Marc

I wonder if Pinewood and/or ITC had a particular sound FX library, as I recall hearing the same sound FX in a great many shows. In fact, there was a stock film shot of a bird and the cry of the bird was used in the scene of Roper's wife chewing her thumb nail in the "Flight Path" episode. So some of the sound FX may have come off stock film library footage. Just my two cents worth.
Z.

Marc Martin <[hidden email]> wrote:
> Anyone got any clues?

I think that SPACE:1999 was the only series where they could still
find the separate music/effects/dialog tracks, and as such some
of the episodes on the NETWORK DVD release feature music-only
tracks.

For UFO and the earlier series, the best that is available are
music + effects tracks. Most of these tracks can be found on
my website for UFO.

As for the original source tapes for these effects, I have no
idea about that. It'd be interesting to hear though!

Also, since the sound effects from Anderson series also show
up in other productions (e.g. James Bond movies), the sound
effects library must be more general than just "Century 21".

Marc




Send instant messages to your online friends http://au.messenger.yahoo.com 

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

> As for the original source tapes for these effects, I have no
> idea about that. It'd be interesting to hear though!

Perhaps if anyone at Fanderson has access to the original
sound effects recordings, a "Gerry Anderson Sound Effects"
CD could be produced... I know that there were Star Trek
sound effects LPs, so why not one for Gerry Anderson
productions?

Marc

> I dont know the spec for the new HD DVDs but I
> assume the audio is stereo, and probably 5.1, so someone must have had
> the original stuff as I think they were all in glorious mono.

Note that most of the "surround sound" (5.1) that was used with the
old Anderson series sounds terrible. They did NOT have the original
elements to do the job properly, so instead they did cheesy things
like add echo, turn the balance from left to right, etc. I recall
that the Space:1999 ones turned out the best, but in that case they
had separate music/dialog/effects tracks to work with.

Fortunately, UFO was released in mono in most countries. I have
the 5.1 mix on the Japanese DVDs, and it sounds terrible.

Marc

Say, that's not a bad idea at all!

Jim Main
--- Marc Martin <[hidden email]> wrote:




____________________________________________________________________________________
Get your own web address.
Have a HUGE year through Yahoo! Small Business.
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/domains/?p=BESTDEAL

With reference to sound effects....the following is from the authorised
biography of Gerry Anderson..."John and Jean Peverill created over 500
sound effects from Supercar to Thunderbirds, this was sold as a
seperate business to Ralph Rogers for £10,000".
I suspect that post Thunderbirds series would have had access to this
sound effects library and would account for some of these effects
cropping up in other feature films.

Howard Davies.

Tnaks Marc, but the sounds on your website are just lifted from the
final soundtrack, which as I said, are essentially useless as a lot
are obscured by other sounds, dialogue, music etc. I would like to
find the originals "in situ", and dare I say it optimistically, in stereo.
If Gerry had the foresight to film Thunderbirds in colour when
everyone had black and white TV's, maybe they did stereo soundtracks
as well? ;o)

Interesting info there, Howard, so it seems I was on the right track.
As I suspect, John Peverill's work was probably intermixed with Stock
ITC material. So the question now arises: "Who is Ralph Rogers, and
where is he, and those elusive sounds now"?

> Tnaks Marc, but the sounds on your website are just lifted from the
> final soundtrack, which as I said, are essentially useless as a lot
> are obscured by other sounds, dialogue, music etc. I would like to
> find the originals "in situ", and dare I say it optimistically, in
> stereo.

Actually, the sounds on my "music and effects" page are NOT obscured
by dialog. However, they are certainly degraded by the mixing
process, music, volume changes, and truncations from editing.

I do have the "raw recording" of the UFO noise created by Barry
Gray, and I *think* that's what is featured on my sound effects
page. I don't think I have the raw recordings for anything else,
though... perhaps some electronics effects that Barry Gray did... (?)

> If Gerry had the foresight to film Thunderbirds in colour when
> everyone had black and white TV's, maybe they did stereo soundtracks
> as well?

That's just wishful thinking... :-) ...the soundtracks were
definitely done in mono, not stereo. Fanderson was able to
create stereo versions of the music because the had access to
the multi-track (4 track?) tapes.

Marc