The Story of The Audio Restoration Of Neil Young's Human Highway To The Original Director's Cut | The Pro Tools Community

Reelin' in the Years ...

Neil Young's Vaults of Human Highway 

 

Back in 2016,  Neil Young's cult classic film Human Highway was re-released as "Director's Cut" with a new updated soundtrack.

It turns out that the restoration of  film Human Highway was much more complicated than anticipated due to the passage of time and technologies.

From an in-depth article on  The Story of The Audio Restoration Of Neil Young's Human Highway To The Original Director's Cut - Pro Tools Expert - The Pro Tools Community:

They found some 2” 16 track analog masters which were transferred to 24 bit at high resolution but it become clear that music and dialog were not on separate tracks and despite extensive searching they were unable to track down the master dialogue tapes.

So as a final step, the search was on to find the original reels to get clean dialogue. The dialogue reels were located, and incredibly - the original Nagra IV-S machine was found as well – the exact same machine that had actually been used on set. Now the team had to identify the exact takes that were used in the film, transferred at high resolution and pain staking rebuilt the dialog tracks. Will Mitchell from Shakey Pictures described the process…

As I listened through boxes of Nagra reels, I really felt like a fly on the wall of the set” said Will Mitchell of Shakey Pictures “Often tape was rolling wild both before and after takes, so I got to experience the process and understand just where the crew was in capturing the master performances. As with many films, the improvised lines on alternate takes were incredibly creative and fun. It was clear that this was a fun shoot.

Full  article on  The Story of The Audio Restoration Of Neil Young's Human Highway To The Original Director's Cut - Pro Tools Expert - The Pro Tools Community.

More on  Neil Young's cult classic film Human Highway re-released as "Director's Cut"in 2016.

 

Neil Young's Human Highway

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