INDEX
Vintage Sound Quality: Deliberate Degradation and Atmosphere
The same orientation applies to the treatment of the sound. As the author of this series, I was even more deeply impressed by this aspect of the film.
In an interview with the film information website Flickering Myth, Mark Orton, who was in charge of the original score for this film, stated the following
Even before I was looking at the picture, he spent a week up here in Portland, Oregon, where I live in this very messy studio. We just spent a week talking about the music of the time period taking place in 1970. It is critical to his work on this one because he wanted it not only to feel like a film that was taking place in 1970 but truthfully to feel like a film that was created in 1970. I mean, he put those limitations on himself on the sound on the music side, even to go as far as to have an optical soundtrack, you know, with the film when you see it in a mono theatre, as it would have been in 1970. So opposite of Dolby Atmos and that aesthetic.
From https://www.flickeringmyth.com /exclusive-interview-composer-mark-orton-on-the-holdovers/
As the discerning viewer will immediately notice, the film’s soundtrack sounds quite lo-fi compared to most modern productions. It’s almost as if one is experiencing a film screening of a 1970s film. According to the article ” The “Film Look” and How The Holdovers Achieved It ” in Filmmaker Magazine, the soundtrack was rolled off at a low 8khz sampling rate in order to resemble the “Academy Monostandard” standard of the time. The roll-off process was done at a low 8khz sampling rate to resemble the “Academy Mono Standard” of the time. The effect is remarkable, and the low-fidelity of the audio gives it a sense of authenticity that is paradoxical in today’s media environment.
In addition to such technological exploration, the music selection is also thoroughly inspired by the “1970s” style. Let us list some of the existing songs used in the film.
The soundtrack features songs like The Chambers Brothers’ ‘The Time Has Come Today,’ Shocking Blue’s ‘Venus,’ Lalo Schifrin’s ‘Crying, Laughing, Loving, Lying,’ The Allman Brothers Band’s ‘In Memory of Elizabeth Reed,’ Tony Orlando & Dawn’s ‘Knock Three Times,’ Cat Stevens’ ‘The Wind,’ and more. Additionally, reflecting the Christmas season in the film’s setting, easy-listening versions of Christmas songs by The Swingle Singers, Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, Andy Williams, and others are generously used. Some contemporary artists like indie folk singer Damien Jurado and indie rock band Khruangbin are also featured, fitting seamlessly into the vintage-inspired sound that has garnered high praise for blending perfectly with the film’s mood.
A similar trend is evident in the original score by Orton. As mentioned above, Orton and director Payne had a lengthy discussion prior to the production of the film, during which they listened to Carole King’s masterpiece “Tsuzure-ori” (1971) and studied other specific works from the early 1970s. Fans of rock and pop music of the time will immediately recognize the results of this research. In particular, the folk-rock “Candlepin Bowling” has such a “look” that I myself believed it to be an existing song by an artist from the 1970s until I checked the credits.
