Full House Productions: Trackwise: Audio Restoration

trackwise® - about us

Fran Bowen, Partner & Director

I think Roger Ebert sums it up what we're all about. In the Chicago Sun Times, 1992 - on the 50th anniversary re-release of 'Casablanca', with our restored soundtrack, he said:“Movies are, in a sense immortal. In another sense, however, movies are fragile. They live on long flexible strips of celluloid, which fade, and tear, and collect scratches every time they travel through a projector. And sometimes films burn or disintegrate into dust.”

Trackwise, a part of Full House Productions is an audio restoration facility run by Fran Bowen, who has been in the business of restoring audio “forever”. Below is an excerpt from an article that was written in response to the restored version of “On the Waterfront,” that was engineered by Trackwise.

“It turns out Marlon Brando wasn’t really mumbling all those years,” jested Columbia Publicity Chief Steve Klain after the screening of the 1993 restored version, “it was just a bad soundtrack.” –NEW YORK POST

Fran and her engineers, Richie and Walter, are all devoted to the neglected art of film audio preservation and are invaluable fixtures in this highly creative and technical field. The Trackwise client list includes Anthology Archives, B&B Opticals, CBS Worldwide Distribution, Cineric, Cinema Arts, Florentine Films, The Guggenheim Museum, MOMA, NBC News Archives, New York Public Library, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal Pictures, and many more.

In addition to “On the Waterfront,” Trackwise has restored the sound for the following classic film’s: “Casablanca,” “The Big Trail,” “Citizen Kane,” and “Good Night and Good Luck.” Anthology Film Archives honored George Clooney on March 26, 2007 for “Good Night and Good Luck.” Kenn Rabin, “Good Night and Good Luck’s”: archival scene researcher wrote how original elements were adapted and used in the film. “The 16mm kines were carefully scanned to create HD tapes by Technicolor, New York. CBS kines were then shipped to Fran Bowen at Trackwise at Full House who cleaned up the optical sound to create DATs from the optical soundtracks.”

Fran is a member of AMIA (Association of Moving Image Archivists), Anthology Film Archives and Film Society at Lincoln Center.

Walter Koehli, Engineer

Walter Koehli’s been in the business for more than 37 years and he’s known for his creativity and his mastery of audio preservation and restoration. “I started in 1971 as a music and sound-effects editor. At that time things were still cut on magnetic film. Editing with splicers and razorblades, I felt like a sushi chef using a guillotine splicer,” remembers Koehli. "In order to prepare tracks for a mix, you had to literally "build" physical tracks using synchronizers. It would not be uncommon to have 12 - 15 sound-effects tracks, especially for animated commercials. So in order to actually do a complex soundmix, the mixing studio would have to have at its disposal dozens of mag machines. For longer projects, elements would have to be shipped by truck or van" he added. By 1980, Walter co-owned Transfermation Studios, a sound transfer facility doing sound dailies for hundreds of movies and some of the best known commercial producers in NYC. With the advent of video and computer technology, Koehli got heavily into digital audio post and now utilizes his extensive experience with the older medium to solve the problems with much of today’s transfers and restorations. A recent favorite activity of his is DVD authoring, which he considers a nice diversion from the sometimes tedious task of manually correcting assorted imperfections in vintage material.

Richie Weigle, Engineer

It has always been Richard’s goal to temper the technical side of his work with an artistic sensibility and common sense. He started his career at Ross-Gaffney in 1970 in the machine room of the re-recording studio and worked his way through the ranks to mixer by 1973. Ross-Gaffney was a zany place, but had some top film people on staff and drew in some very famous clients and many more that would become famous. It was a “One Stop” facility that offered services in all facets of production through post-production, unique at the time, giving Richard the opportunity to learn it all. The 1970’s were a time of transition for the film business; independent films came into their own and the old Hollywood system was fading away. For Richard, it was a perfect time to learn both worlds and work with the people who made it happen. Knowing the “Back Story” on how things were done would prove an invaluable resource for evaluating archival materials later on, some of which he had worked on originally. During his 21 years there, he did just about everything; mixing, optical and magnetic transfers, Foley and voice over recording, sound effects, dubbing, music recording, and location recording. His 41/2 years in the Electrical Engineering School of City College of New York gave him further insights into the purely technical aspects of his work.

Of particular interest to him is the “Black Art” of optical sound recording and reproduction, so important now in his current endeavors.

Richard’s association with Track Transfers/Accurate Labs, which would later evolve into Trackwise, began in 1970 as a client. In 1992 He began work at Track Transfers and added soundtrack preservation and restoration to his repertoire. He has worked at Trackwise since 1998 and now employs digital techniques to his strong background in analog recording to preserve/restore archival sound with a high degree of integrity.

Additionally, Richard has designed and taught a course at NYU Continuing Education and taught a semester at Hunter College, CUNY.

Equally at home in both the analog and digital world, Richie also functions as the company's technical guru, repairing stuff at a component level.