Drucker wrote:I watched the main feature last night, and while I've never seen the Flicker Alley restoration, the sync of the sound was indeed noticeably perfect. In the 5th section, where the machine operators are being highlighted and things like boxes and newspapers are churning out, the percussion crashes sync up perfectly with the video. I can imagine even the slightest adjustment here would throw it off. The video presentation is absolutely gorgeous.
Vertov's films are still perhaps the ultimate example of the fusion of soundtrack and visuals to convey meaning, so anything that detracts from that experience can be problematic. This reminds me that the same issue of de-syncronisation was also a major issue with Vertov's sound film Enthusiasm: Symphony of the Donbass, apparently until the 1970s restoration of it. There's a fantastic extra feature on the
old German Filmmuseum DVD in which Peter Kubelka talks about, and runs through, the painstaking work involved in re-syncing the soundtrack by isolating sounds and pairing them with images (for example the political pronouncements hitting on the soundtrack with the impact of each blow of a hammer on the film image). Its such an outstanding documentary piece because of the way it shows how the soundtrack changes in meaning, magnifies meaning or conversely muffles the impact if just a few frames off.