Sunday, August 26, 2007

1-18-08 Trailer Audio Analysis



There has been a lot of discussion about the audio in the 1-18-08 trailer since my "Cloverfield On Five News" post.

Specifically, in the piece, you don't hear the monstrous roar, but instead you can hear Rob say "Shut up" in response to "Looks like you should have left town a little bit earlier". Some people were wondering if there was a different trailer in the UK. In fact, the creator of the piece for Five News, Philip Bloom, left a comment here stating:
I shot and edited the report for Five News. I downloaded the trailer from the Apple Website and edited it in Final Cut Pro, I only took one channel of audio which is the only explanation as to why the roar isn't there and you can here Rob clearly. I guess the stereo mix is quite separate. Try it for yourself.
Well thank you Philip, I did. Not being a Mac person, I loaded the HD 1080P version of the trailer into Adobe Soundbooth, and separated the channels into individual tracks. As you can see above (click for larger image), the trailer has 5.1 surround sound audio, which consists of 6 channels (from top to bottom): Left, Right, Left Surround, Right Surround, Center, and Low Frequency Effects (LFE). As you can visually see, there are some big differences between the tracks, so I invite you to listen for yourselves.

Here are 256Kbps MP3s of each of the tracks (3.4MB each):

Left
Right
Left Surround
Right Surround
Center
Low Frequency Effects

* Lower quality clips are available here.

And here are some interesting quotes that I didn't notice before:

"Anybody seen Jason?"
"Anybody seen Jeff?"
"Shut up." (or is it "should have"?)
"Get in the subway!"

Please leave a comment if you find anything else interesting (and let me know the time and which track you heard it on)!

UPDATE: I have created a BitTorrent for the files here: http://www.mininova.org/get/859322

47 comments:

  1. Hmmm... first thing I really noticed on this trailer was the sound quality... things hit the buildings screams explosions and the roar... Now when we seperated the sounds we hear all sorts of new things... hmmmm... Did you notice the MAC refrences? Garage Band, Final Cut pro all audio editing software...

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  2. meh'...i heard him say "shut up" when i watched it...this whole thing requires allot of patience, this is my first arg, and I'm wondering if this is an arg...if it is it should last for another 4 months, but i don't know how long they last...

    to sum it up- i don't think Abrams hid anything in a piece of audio we need to separate to hear.

    but i still wanna say that more on 1-18-08.com will come even though i cant say anything it has given us is significant...only the trailer gave us slush, which we all assume is the back story for the monster(s)

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  3. I did say way back when the trailer came out over here there were no differences, i saw the trailer in the cinema and the ONLY difference was the ending when instead of saying "1-18-08" it said "2008"

    Thus confirming the film will not be called 1-18-08

    NOTE: im in UK

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  4. at 1´26´´ the woman in a black dress says something like:

    ethan, ethan,... wait...... inside.

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  5. Which track?

    If you're talking about the Center channel, it sounds more like "Jason" to me.

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  6. dear god, dont say Ethan, that'll just conjure up loads more random and silly discussion about LOST links.

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  7. Hey here's an idea, nothing important. But Satoshi is the name of the guy we e-mail customer feedback to at the Slusho Website. Look at the latest article on ARGN.com it is about some new game coming out. It's a link to an old Perplex City thing about a Japanese guy called Satoshi. At the bottom of the page there is a link to findsatoshi.com And is all about finding the guy called Satoshi.

    I KNOW it is unrelated but maybe its the way that they chose the guys name for the e-mail - taking the arguably the biggest ever ARG's character name - so perhaps this Satoshi guy in Slusho! is missing or something. I dunno just randomly found it and thought i would post it. However the satoshi website (for PXC) talks about SIX Degrees of Separation

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  8. Satoshi is a fairly common name in Japan. In fact it is the 76th most common name for men and women.

    Noriko is 97th on the list, and Ryouta and Ganu are not in the top 100.

    For comparison, Dennis was the 317th most popular name in the US in 2005

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  9. Interestingly JJ Produced a TV show in 2006 about the connections between a group of people in New York called "Six Degrees"

    Ah okay, but still it links in :p

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  10. Someone in an old line of comments mentions a few men getting jumped by something that came down from over the SUV. I think that's just debris from the building the Statue's head hit. There'd be an explosion sized cloud of debris raining from that impact and it looks like gold ball sized pieces of rock hitting them

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  11. Britian,

    I think that was me :) Here's the comment:

    If you look at this screenshot, you can see two men running from the SOL head. If you keep watching the guy on the left, he will jump over the car on the left and tackle the two people on the sidewalk, which you can see here. It goes by really quick - it's only 2 seconds long. You can see it better in the trailer, if you are looking for it - at 1:35 to 1:37.

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  12. i can clearly hear a roar in the left audio track, it doesn't sound much like a explosion.

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  13. Regarding these 6 different audio channels:

    Wow, this monster must be freaking huge - just listen to all the noise in the subwoofer channel, it sounds really awesome, i'd now convinced that this is a whale-like creature of some sort.


    The part where you say someone says "where's Jeff?" - I think that's actaully "Where's Jason", but the "ason" sound has been faded out of that channel. I can't find it in any other channel though, but when it gets faded back into this channel, someone responds, very insistently with "i don't know"


    Finally, regarding the subway bit: I think I might have heard "It's in the subway" - maybe lending credence to the theory that the monster causes the explosion as it bursts a gas pipe as it busts of the ground? After listening to it a few more times, it sounded more like "he's in the subway", but that would be a crazy place to hide out during a monster attack I guess :?


    I think that's all for now, I'll post back after listening to them again if I notice anything else. ;-)

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  14. Some other things I've noticed:

    Rob seems to be saying: "Should have..." rather than "Shut up"

    If you listen really carefully to the center channel, the $11 guy actually says "Tonight's gonna be the best night ever", rather than "It's gonna be the best night ever." Not a huge semantic difference in what he's saying, but something that hasn't been noticed before (afaik).

    Right after the first monster roar in the right and left audio channels, when the car alarms are going off, around 45-46 seconds in, you can hear two dog barks - kinda cool sound effects I feel. 8-)

    In the left and right audio channels, right before the cameraman asks "what animal sounds like that?", you can hear people discussing what might be going on. I think some guy says something along the lines of "You guys don't think .... it's just an accident, right?". Then, after the cameraman speaks, the same guy says something like "there's sirens coming from all over the place it's something historic".

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  15. I cant be the only one that hears the womans voice before and during the roars am i. Im going to try and run it through a few different programs i use for my recordings and i will let you know what i find.

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  16. hmmmm... six channels. You Can't Hear Just Six? Can you? hehe There is, after all the number 6 themed across much of the clues. I'm no audio techie but I believe 6.1 and 7.1 surround sound is available. Like the drink, wonder what happens when you hear more than 6 channels?

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  17. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  18. ditto the_dark_side. "The specified item cannot be found or its XML is unparseable..."

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  19. that link shows me this:
    "The item you have requested had an error:

    Exhausted all choices for locator URLs. Item cannot be found.

    which prevents us from displaying this page."

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  20. It looks like Archive.org is having server problems today.

    I just tried it and it seem to be working now.

    As a backup, I have created a BitTorrent of all the audio files: http://www.mininova.org/get/859322

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  21. Has anyone else noticed that you can "throw" the pictures off the screen. Most times they bounce on the edge, but if you click and drag at the right speed they fly off the screen. I've thrown them all off the page and waited for the roar but nothing happened. Is this a part of the Flash design or an accident you think?

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  22. Good question CBOY. I'd also like to find out if the pics were always able to be turned over from the start and we never wiggled them fast enough to find out, or if they got that updated feature later on.

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  23. i hear in the right channel "simon's covered all over in something that smells like strawberry." which kinda makes me laugh.

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  24. c_b_o_y said... Has anyone else noticed that you can "throw" the pictures off the screen. Most times they bounce on the edge, but if you click and drag at the right speed they fly off the screen. I've thrown them all off the page and waited for the roar but nothing happened. Is this a part of the Flash design or an accident you think?

    I think it's probably a flash bug.


    capcom said... Good question CBOY. I'd also like to find out if the pics were always able to be turned over from the start and we never wiggled them fast enough to find out, or if they got that updated feature later on.

    You could not flip the photos until they added the 5th picture. They actually switched to a new underlying flash file - photos_8.swf - which allows flipping, and adds friction when you drag the photos.

    BTW, You can still get to the old one - photos.swf. But, there are only 4 photos in it, and you can't flip them.

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  25. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  26. Having a brother called Jason, I think the guy is saying "anyone seen Jace?", not 'Jeff'. It's just sort of an abbreviation of the name and I used to call my brother that in high school, so I'm almost certain that's what I heard.

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  27. also, if you actually watch the trailer, Rob actually does appear to be in the midst of saying "shut up". he was kind of exchanging banter with the camera man right before the explosion, and I just think if he'd been saying "should've", he would've looked a bit more serious.

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  28. You're right i just listened to it again.

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  29. Hey, Dennis ... On the RIGHT audio track at 50seconds, you can hear (Hawk?) say, "You don't think that's sluzew, do you?" - I know the shirt has "Slusho!" on it, but ...
    Right before he says this, a girl asks, "you still wearing it?"
    Anyway, Sluzew is a subway station in Warshaw.
    Since someone else says (later on) they should head into the subway, I thought it interesting.

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  30. OMG!!! if you watch the trailer, just before the first monster roar you hear a woman say,"THEY LIVED."

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  31. I didnt hear it.Can you hear it on the audios above?

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  32. no. you have to listen to the actual trailer. http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/11808/large.html

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  33. It load for me canyou find it on youtube.

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  34. Also can someone look at Rob's pics? I think he has two new pics but i dont remember if they were there before.Beth too and it looks like the same place as Rob's pics

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  35. Has someone tried to play this sound backwards? Seems weird that they would release this without any hints at all.

    Also, are there any zooligists who can maybe listen to the sound and distinguish what it might be from?

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  36. Thanks Dennis for the answer. I'd hate to think that they were flippable all that time without us ever noticing it. :-)

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  37. Jacob ... First of all, the voice before the roar says "The Myth" and you can hear it on the LEFT audio cnannel.
    Also, you can hear the 1-18-08.com roar backwards here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Pkqjv1jva5c
    There's a hidden message of "...Scared to Death..." embedded in the audio signature.

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  38. @ronadam; i agree with you that it sounds like "the myth", but it's certainly up for interpretation.
    I don't hear a thing in the roar backwards.

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  39. maybe it is the myth lol...but still no one mentioned it before so...

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  40. Hey, Dennis ... (and all)
    At 1:11 on the LEFT SURROUND channel ... Someone shouts "Godzilla is coming!"
    Now, I personally wouldn't mind another Godzilla movie, but others do not like the idea.
    However, the dialogue is, there. It may have been done intentionally, I don't know.
    Maybe the guy yells this because he doesn't actually know that it is not the capital G.

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  41. I don't really hear that... but maybe he is saying "Oh god, it's coming!" - sounds simlar

    And it's not that others "don't like the idea" of Godzila, rather JJ Abrams SAID it is not Godzilla, it is not King Mong.

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  42. If it does say Godzilla is coming (which im pretty sure it doesnt) The character probably doesnt know what to say and says it sarcastically, Being an extremely sarcastic person i can pretty much Guarentee if a monster ran riot in my hometown, at some point i would laugh about it being Godzilla...However, that would come after the screaming and running for my life part but meh.. That gyu might like to die first :D

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  43. Actually, after hearing the supposed "woman's voice" before the roar, it sounds more like stress from something bending or moving, possibly the sound of the entire apartment building moving from the vibration during the roar. Maybe someone could listen to it again and see if I'm right or not.

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  44. Dennis ... I've posted something of interest on YouTube.com:
    http://youtube.com/watch?v=Pkqjv1jva5c
    I am currently working up a new video with a lot of the audio signatures.

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  45. I know these audio clips came out a long time ago, but I just go around to taking a look at them. I have only analyzed the Left clip, but I found some quotes that are interesting and some that are irrelevant (at least I think they are). Firstly, between 48 seconds and about 54 seconds right after the dog stops barking after the first roar, before the whole "it's just and accident, right?" bit, two girls are talking and the second one says "That's what's wild."

    Between 56 and 1:00, a man says "Simon has (can't tell what this word is) all over the place" then there is indistinct muttering and then a voice that sounds like a newsreporter says "underwater". That's much more interesting.

    Finally, at 1:25 a man says "Yo, yo, I'm getting (in the subway?)" and a woman screams "over here, this way!" Might be important, might not.

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