- Long ago, for six very intense and interesting months,
I was a hands on, minority partner in a then struggling motion picture
sound editing studio.
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- Our offices were on the 13th floor of New York City's
then decrepit Film Center building on Ninth Avenue, two blocks north of
the Port Authority bus terminal.
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- I won't mention the name of the company or my then partner
because he is not only apolitical, he also finds my opinions horrifying
and "negative", However, if you've ever seen "Like Water
for Chocolate" (the highest grossing Spanish language film of all
time) or "When We Were Kings" (Academy Award winner for Best
Documentary), you know his sound editing work.
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- Anyway, in that brief period, I learned quite a bit about
the practical details of manipulating the sound that accompanies film and
video so that it seems not only plausible, but *perfect*
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- Here's some of the things I learned:
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- First, creating a movie *always* requires the meticulous,
step-by-step cobbling together of audio and visual materials to create
the illusion of reality. A good percentage of this work takes place *after*the
film is shot. It's called post production.
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- Second, sound editing (or sound manipulation) is a profession.
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of people all over the world who
practice it every day of the week. It's no big deal. Digital tools have
made it easier, but the principles have been in play since the first "talkie."
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- Third, every television program and motion picture you
see depends of aural as well as visual manipulation. In fact - and note
this well - of the two, sound manipulation is the more essential.
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- Here's what I mean. Have you ever seen a godzilla movie
where the dubbing is off? The lips are moving, but no sound comes out and
then suddenly you hear the person speak with his mouth closed. It kills
the "suspension of belief" doesn't it? You're instantly reminded
that you're watching a movie, a fake. On the other hand, visual blemishes
are routinely overlooked by movie goers and TV watchers. Black and white,
for example, does not look real, but within seconds we accept it and become
engrossed in the story.
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- Because of this phenomenon, huge quantities of time,
money and energy are spent to manipulate audio tracks (sounds effects and
dialog) in the post production process so that they sound "right."
It's not at all unusual that due to production problems (a plane flying
overheard, a faulty microphone, a muddled line) an entire dialog track
has to be re-recorded long after the movie is "in the can." This
process is known as "looping" or ADR (automatic dialog replacement)
and *every* film actor and film studio is familiar with it.
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- Any time you see a movie and are not jarred by audio
discrepancies, you're experiencing a masterpiece of audio manipulation,
the product of HUNDREDS of hours of minute attention to creating, modifying
and matching sound to picture so that it is experienced as "real.".
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- Think about the number of film and TV movies you've seen.
How many times have you experienced an audio error? Answer: With the exception
of the godzilla flicks, never. The reason: Audio errors are intolerable
and they are virtually always fixable. (Audio is far more malleable than
visuals.)
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- Let's get practical.
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- If the Osama bin Laden "confession" was a faked,
how would it have been done?
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- Before I answer, let me say that I'd love to have a copy
of the video for further study. I'd ESPECIALLY love to have the very video
that was purportedly found in Afghanistan. It would be pretty easy to detect
manipulation of the audio track on the original. It may even be possible
to do it from a copy, but the closer to the original the better.
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- Given that no one is going to give me the original, let
me suggest how I, as a former audio manipulation professional, would have
created this particular tape. I'll start with an easy method and advance
to more complicated ones. However, keep in mind that nothing that I'm describing
is rocket science. It is done every day in Hollywood and anywhere else
where there are people who make movies for a living.
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- - The easy way
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- First: Find some footage of bin Laden. Muddy the video
and darken it so it's not easy to match his lip movements with what comes
out of his mouth.
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- Second: Muddy the audio so it cannot be heard clearly.
Obscure any passages where he says things that create a context that does
not support the "confession" interpretation of what he is saying.
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- Third: Hire friendly interpreters to create subtitles
that interpret everything he says in such a way as to support the "confession"
story.
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- Fourth: Thank Allah the whole thing is in Arabic so the
intended audience won't have the faintest clue as to what he was or was
not saying.
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- - A somewhat more involved way
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- First: Hire an Osama bin Laden look alike. Intelligence
agencies are gifted in finding and using such people.
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- Second: Dress him in a green US Army field jacket. (On
second thought, scratch that. A fanatical fundamentalist Islamisist wearing
the uniform of his sworn enemy is too absurd to be believed even by TV-addled
idiots.)
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- Third: Give him a script.
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- Fourth: Shoot and then muddy the audio and video to make
the tape seem more like something that would have been found in rough condition.
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- Notice that except for some relatively recent digital
tools that make it much easier to muddy audio and video to taste, nothing
I've described requires skills or equipment that wasn't available in the
1930s.
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- Now some people have claimed that the voice on the video
has been analyzed and verified to be bin Laden's. Therefore, the idea that
a live actor or a voice over specialist was used is out of the question.
Or is it?
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- First, there's no reason to believe the authenticity
of the audio without additional evidence especially given the reputation
the source has for frequent lying. Second, voice analysis is not an insurmountable
problem. The "easy way" shows how this whole matter could have
be handled with no need for fancy fakery.
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- However, for those who love techno-conspiracies, here's
the "hard way" it could have been done.
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- - The hard way
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- First: Find an existing Osama bin Laden video.
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- Second: Muddy the audio and video as in the "easy
way"
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- Third: Whenever you need Osama to say something that
sounds incriminating, go to the audio file of bin Laden recordings collected
over the years by various intelligence agencies and select useful clips.
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- (Rent the movie "Primary Colors" to see how
easy it is with editing to put words into the mouth of someone you've been
surveilling for any reasobable length of time.)
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- Fourth: Match the replacement clips with the movement
of Osama's lips and insert them over what he actually said. To make this
task easier, make sure you insert new comments only when it is difficult
to read his lips. This will give you the leeway you need to slip in any
new comments undetected.
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- I understand that the found tape was rather long, over
an hour. This would have given a skilled sound editor an abundance of lip
movement patterns to chose from in order to find a compatible section to
insert choice sound clips over.
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- Fifth: When done, muddy the thing again to smooth away
any rough edges.
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- Assuming that voice analysis was done of every single
frame of the tape shown to the public, then the above is the way such a
feat could have been accomplished. A pain the the butt, but nothing beyond
the ability of a professional audio editor. We used to do things like this
every day of the week.
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- My guess though is even if a voice analysis test was
conducted by someone credible ("to dream, the impossible dream...")
I doubt that the audio of the ENTIRE tape was analyzed. It would have been
a simple matter to given an honest man a SECTION of the tape for voice
analysis in order to get his thumbs up and then make alterations to other
sections with the voice over artist (thousands of them are available in
all languages). Taking this approach, the painstaking cut and paste method
I described above ("the hard way") wouldn't have even been necessary.
It would be a simple ADR job (looping) and there isn't anything more bread
and butter in the world of film making than looping.
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- Ask the Hollywood folks the Bush administration was meeting
with so intently not that long ago.
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- I hope I haven't made a simple matter into something
more complicated than it needs to be, but the point I want to leave you
with is that there are many, many tried and true ways to fake a tape like
the bin Laden "confession" and, with the exception of "the
hard way" described above, none of them are terribly difficult to
pull off. Even the "the hard way" is well within the range of
common, garden variety audio editing practice even before the digital revolution.
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