Why Digital Audio Restoration Software Is So Important To Music, Film, And TV
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Forbes.com reports that there’s a film available for streaming on Netflix right now entitled The Conversation. You may have seen it; it’s a classic Francis Ford Coppola picture, released in between The Godfather one and The Godfather II.
The film follows Harry Caul (played by Gene Hackman), an audio surveillance expert who, hired to tape and transcribe a conversation held in San Francisco’s Union Square, uncovers a murder plot.
As well as displaying classic 70s paranoia tropes, the film features a panoply of scenes in which Hackman futzes around with his tapes: he cranks knobs to filter out unnecessary noise; he strains to make the conversation intelligible.
Hackman frequently uses hefty pieces of analogue equipment to meet this task, and the more work he does (the more time he puts in, the more knobs he twiddles) the closer he gets to demystifying the tapes, and the closer he gets to figuring out who’s going to die.
It’s a great picture, but it’s dated in one respect: Hackman’s job would be undeniably easier now, in 2014, than it was in 1974.
