One of the early scenes in the Dead Ringer movie is called the Conspiracy Scene. This is the scene that is intended to explain what happened to Paul and how the Beatles arrived at a plan to deal with it. That is, Paul was in a car crash and did not die (as the Paul is dead tabloids read) but instead got amnesia. The Beatles had to respond in a manner that kept the Beatle image in tack by substituting Paul with a look-alike named Billy Shears. At this moment the real Paul takes on the identity of Ringer. Here's Greg's (director) original script for the scene.
Greg asked Anthony to record a voice-over of the scene to use in the movie using the appropriate actors in his recording studio. The idea is that the corresponding video would be dark and ambiguous and the audio would explain the movie idea. In the process of understanding Greg's script, Anthony suggested that we roll Yoko and Brian Epstein into the discussion and fix some of the issues with the original script. Here's Anthony's version of the script with a few ideas from Ant Earl thrown in.
Ant Earl was raised in England on the other side of the River Mersey from Liverpool. So, he knows all about the Scouse accent and phrases from the area. Ant revised Anthony's script to exchange some of the phrases with phrases that were more authentic. Here's the final script.
In this script, John Lennon gets a phone call from Brian Epstein (Beatles Manager) to inform John and the other Beatles that Paul has been in an accident. John takes the call and then informs the other lads of the situation and discusses a possible plan with George, Ringo and Yoko at party.
CAST:
Brian Epstein Anthony Walker
John Lennon Shawn Tybor
Ringo Shawn Tybor
George Harrison Ant Earl
Yoko Ono Miho Nari
We recorded this in Anthony's recording studio. Anthony engineered the project while performing a very bad version of Brian Epstein and Ringo in the control room. Miho, Ant and Shawn performed several takes of Yoko, George and John respectively in the performance room. Then Shawn did overdubs to record Ringo's part with a different voice which replaced Anthony's scratch take during the mix.
The laughter at the end of the script sounded really contrived. So Anthony read excerpts from Ant's scouse phrase book and got some genuine laughter while the tape was rolling. On a follow-on session, Anthony recorded a respectable Brian Epstein.
During the mix of the project, Anthony added party noises recorded at a Tina Marx & The Millionaires gig at the Mount Vernon County Club west of Denver. Then the best takes of each part were combined and balanced. Finally, Brian Epstein's part was run through a ProTools Cosmonaut-Voice plug-in to get the telephone quality and a British telephone ring sound effect was added. Actually, it was just Anthony's cell phone.
Take a listen to various versions of the final audio below by clicking the files below. There are three versions. Anthony's original mix, a mix w/o the crowd party noises, and a mix of only the crowd party noises:
7.6 megaByte MP3 Low Resolution Audio:
54.9 megaByte 24 bit/48 kHz High Resolution Audio:
Please note that the mp3 files above are actually high resolution mp3 which is about twice the size of a typical song you would download. However, the resolution is not as good as the .wav file which is about 15 times the size of a typical song you would download. For the movie, Greg Hasyn should download the larger .wav files so that the movie is of the highest quality.
To download the .wav files into the video editing system, right click on the .wav file of interest and select Save As...
FEEDBACK: Please give me feedback on the performance and mix. I can easily adjust the mix if necessary to make a better result.