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See No Evil
15-Aug-2010, 02:04 PM
Hi All,

I made the below post about 12 months ago, and a number of people seemed quite hostile to the whole idea, even if I was simply trying to publicise my project and get it an official legal release, so I ended up removing the thread. Well all these months later it's still sitting on my shelf gathering dust, and I thought I may as well stick it back up here as a last attempt to do something with it. I've contacted DeWolfe (via the website email, and a couple of people directly), Cinevox, Johnny Trunk of Trunk Records, among others and I've never had any replies whatsoever. I got in touch with Neil/HPOTD webmaster a few months back, and my soundtrack cue listings pages have now been integrated into the HPOTD Dawn page. I recently found out that DubiousComforts/Zero Day Releasing may/will be releasing their own official Dawn score at some point, so I even PM'd him to see if the information I had assembled would be of any help in that project, but no real interest there either.

Anyway, regardless of what people may post, I'll leave this up here, and hopefully someone in a position to do something with it, will see it and make contact.

__________________________________________________ ______

Project Background Information

For those of you who have never heard about this, this was a project to research & edit the fullest soundtrack possible to the 1979 Extended cut of the George A Romero film Dawn Of The Dead. There are actually three versions of the film, each with a slightly different score; the Theatrical version, the European (AKA Argento) cut, and the Extended (AKA Cannes) cut. All three were mainly scored using edited & mixed tracks from stock library music from the De Wolfe, Rouge, & Hudson catalogues, and up to now, it wasn't general knowledge which out of the thousands of existing cues were used.

A number of the cues could previously be found on official & unofficially released albums (including some sampler CDs released by De Wolfe), although all these albums put together only cover about 25% of the total number of cues used. The fullest soundtrack previously available was a 49 track 2 CD release tailored to the Theatrical version of Dawn Of The Dead called 'The Complete 1978 Soundtrack' running at 1 hour 19 minutes 17 seconds, created by an American fan, Chris Stavrakis (webmaster of LivingDead.com, now defunct) some years ago. He had found a number of the cues and edited the most complete soundtrack he could. Unbeknownst to him, this was pirated, and then became widespread once uploaded onto the internet. In 2004, Trunk Records released a 14 track CD running at 38 minutes 44 seconds, called 'Unreleased Soundtrack Music to the George A Romero's Dawn Of The Dead', although this was simply 14 cues which played in full, rather than the edited & mixed form in which they appear in the film. Music specifically written for the film by Italian band Goblin was also used, but is quite different in tone to the library music and has been available as an LP and later CD running at 51 minutes 47 seconds, since the film's theatrical release.

It was only fairly recently that the original library albums became available to the wider public. Up until about 5 years ago, such listing were still being removed by Ebay. Some of the library companies (fortunately not De Wolfe) objected to "just anyone" being able to buy their material as it was never sold commercially. Massive interest forced them to change their stance. Now, many library LPs are held by private collectors, and that's where this project began. On the 12th of April 2009, I made contact with an Ebay user Boogiejuice69, who was selling large collection of assorted library LPs on Ebay. He had already recognised & prominently noted selected Dawn Of The Dead cues on a number of the LPs he was selling, that weren't on any of the released CDs. I decided it would be worthwhile to work with him and others, to make a complete list of every single cue used in all three versions of Dawn Of The Dead.

I decided to take a more technical approach than just trying to find random tracks I liked. I took the Dawn Of The Dead R1 Anchor Bay 'Ultimate Edition' four disc DVD box set, and copied the audio track from each of the three films to my hard drive. I then used Reaper (an audio multi sequencing program) to edit every single piece of music used, into it's own individual sample file. Then I gave each track it's own listing in an index text file. Approaching the project from this angle meant that nothing could be missed, if I still had unidentified tracks left at the end, then I knew hadn't identified everything, and I had a sample of exactly what I was.

While doing this I, was also working the project from the opposite end; making various other online contacts to try and get copies of all the likely tracks & albums I thought I might need. It was only once I had started, that I found that someone else had already attempted much the same sort of project. Chris Stavrakis had posted a cue sheet to his website LivingDead.com around March 2001, giving a supposedly 'complete' list of all 58 cues used. A few months later around October 2001, the Chris was contacted by Library LP collector & avid fan; John Toman, and using his information some entries on the list were removed, some added & some corrected, making a revised list of 67 tracks.

I made contact with both Chris and John, and with their help, and that of other likeminded collectors, I went beyond Chris's earlier work and created a master list which identified the majority of the tracks used in all three versions of Dawn Of The Dead. This final list puts the number of library cues used across the three films (both identified & unidentified) at about 86 (not including any of the 17 released Goblin tracks), although 12 of those 86 cues still remain unidentified. I now know, that there were still some errors in that revised 67 track LivingDead.com list. There were some little mistakes in naming & reference numbers, Some tracks were mistakenly listed, which turned out not to have been used, and others notable tracks were left off the list altogether. That said, the cue sheet did put me far ahead of where I would have been, and due credit goes to Chris Stavrakis, Dawn fan Patrick Doody, Music Supervisor Llyswen Vaughan and the assistance of DeWolfe's New York manager Mitchel Greenspan who collectively assembled it. I did recognize one of the old LivingDead.com's cue sheet tracks; 'Barry Stroller - Speed' as actually having been used in the George A Romero 1973 Dawn pre-cursor; The Crazies, although I haven't taken this any further, but might in the future as I know The Crazies also used many similar unidentified library cues.

Once I had taken the project as far as I could, I assembled all my findings in a listings website, which I hosted on own webspace for a few months, before it was taken up and integrated as a sub-site of HomePageOfTheDead.com, where you can see the cue listings themselves, along with more information about the project.

Using my cue list, along with copies of the newly identified library tracks themselves, kindly given to me buy the collectors I was working with, I spent around 6 weeks mixing a soundtrack to the Extended cut of the film. You can read more about this below. I currently have no plans to make soundtracks for the European or Theatrical version soundtracks, but owning most of the raw source cues, that option is perfectly possible and remains open for the future. Major credit for this project must also go to Boogiejuice69 (Darren), John Toman, & Chris Stavrakis. Without their input (and large collection of library LPs) this project would not have been possible.

__________________________________________________ ______


Dawn Of The Dead - Extended Cut Ultimate Soundtrack

This is the first 1.0 release of this soundtrack for the Extended (AKA Cannes) version/cut of the 1978 George A Romero film; 'Dawn Of The Dead'. It covers virtually all the library cues used in the film, and some parts of the Goblin score (where used). It has 71 tracks and runs for 109mins 29secs. There is also a bonus track not featured in this cut of the film.

Tracks 29 and 57 are deliberately empty/blank. They are both made up from single cues, but the two source cues used to produce these have not yet been identified. Another 4 short cues in addition to these also remain unidentified, but for the purposes of this soundtrack, they have been 'faked' either by using samples from the original film soundtrack, or from sound effect samples, or by careful audio editing, meaning the final tracks sound as identical as I can make them.

Depending on how the tracks played in the film, I have either let my tracks play in full, edited them or mixed them. Of my 71 tracks, 2 are missing, 14 have been left unedited and play in full as per the original source cues, 13 have been either edited down, shortened or mixed, but still made from a single source cue, and 42 have been mixed from 2 or more source cues. In certain places a little licence has been taken from the original film audio, in order to smooth over some edits & cue starts or finishes. In the film these maybe overlaid with speech or sound effects, but listened to in isolation sound quite jarring.

It would have to be released as a 2-CD set. When written to 74min/650mb audio CD-Rs, The most appropriate place to split the soundtrack is after track 32, with track 33 being the first track on CD2, This will put around half the running time on each CD (CD1 - 55m 07s & CD2 - 54m 38s). You can see the full track listing below;

01. We're Losing It (4:10)
02. Three Minutes Martinez (0:48)
03. Wooley! (2:01)
04. Shoot It, Man (2:44)
05. Soon, They Be Stronger Than You (0:49)
06. Stop The Killing, Or Lose The War (0:29)
07. It's All Done, Man (1:30)
08. Straight Up (4:31)
09. It's Everywhere (0:51)
10. Twenty-One Bottles Of Beer! (2:51)
11. Get The Gas Tank! (0:09)
12. Guess They All Took Off (1:18)
13. Run! (2:36)
14. Why Do They Come Here (2:28)
15. Hit And Run (1:22)
16. Keys To The Kingdom (1:21)
17. Fat City Brother (0:43)
18. How About A Little Music? (1:45)
19. You Game? (1:41)
20. They're Maniacs! (0:29)
21. We Ain't Doing This For The Exercise (1:38)
22. What The Hell Was That? (0:48)
23. Let's Get Him On Our Side (0:46)
24. Run For It! (2:29)
25. What Do We Do? (2:41)
26. The Old Okie Doke (0:42)
27. One Stop Shopping (0:40)
28. Don't Shoot! (3:35)
29. (Missing) (0:00)
30. Pure Motorized Instinct (1:44)
31. Too Tall, Too Slow, Two (2:50)
32. Roger Move! (2:37)
33. Perfect, Baby (2:10)
34. It Got Him! (1:35)
35. We're Coming & We're Ready (1:54)
36. Gotta Lock Those Main Doors (1:19)
37. The Keys! (1:54)
38. You Get The Latches, I'll Get The Locks (1:40)
39. Going On A Hunt (2:19)
40. We Whipped 'Em And We Got It All! (0:21)
41. This Place Is Going To Be Rotten (2:00)
42. Mall Musak Montage (We Are The Champions) (2:16)
43. Mall Musak Montage (Ragtime Razzamatazz) (2:45)
44. Mall Musak Montage (Tango Tango) (0:59)
45. Mall Musak Montage (Fugarock) (1:26)
46. Mall Musak Montage (You're Breaking My Heart) (0:47)
47. There's No More Room In Hell (0:46)
48. You'll Take Care Of Me (1:02)
49. It's Really All Over (1:07)
50. We Can't Stephen (0:59)
51. It Wouldn't Be Real (2:53)
52. Hurry And Do Your Shopping (0:37)
53. What Have We Done To Ourselves? (1:31)
54. Tonight (1:17)
55. Just Three (0:57)
56. Downstairs First (0:24)
57. (Missing) (0:00)
58. Let's Not Make It Easy For Them (1:12)
59. They're In (1:07)
60. It's Ours, We Took It (1:17)
61. I See You! (3:02)
62. I Know He's In Here! (0:56)
63. Son Of A Bitch (1:23)
64. I'm Coming! (0:29)
65. Flyboy! (0:56)
66. Maybe He's Alright (0:50)
67. He's Coming Up (2:02)
68. I Don't Want To Go (0:34)
69. Get Out Of Here (2:18)
70. How Much Fuel Do We Have? (1:26)
71. The Gonk (1:51)
72. Bonus Track - Goblin Zombie Jump (0:16)

TOTAL RUNNING TIME = 1:49:45

Here are two sample tracks from the soundtrack for people to listen to, to give you an idea of the quality of the whole project;

Sample Track 1 (http://www.bookofthedead.ws/dotd/images/17.%20Fat%20City%20Brother.mp3) (17. Fat City Brother)

Sample Track 2 (http://www.bookofthedead.ws/dotd/images/52.%20Hurry%20And%20Do%20Your%20Shopping.mp3) (52. Hurry And Do Your Shopping)



Here are the CD covers I put together for this project, you can click on them to open larger versions, although the original uncompressed images are far higher in resolution (600dpi);

http://www.bookofthedead.ws/dotd/images/Small%20DOTD%20-%20Extended%20Cut%20Ultimate%20Soundtrack%20CD%20C over%20%28Front%29.jpg (http://www.bookofthedead.ws/dotd/images/Large%20DOTD%20-%20Extended%20Cut%20Ultimate%20Soundtrack%20CD%20C over%20%28Front%29.jpg)
Front Case Image (Click to enlarge)

http://www.bookofthedead.ws/dotd/images/Small%20DOTD%20-%20Extended%20Cut%20Ultimate%20Soundtrack%20CD%20C over%20%28Back%29.jpg (http://www.bookofthedead.ws/dotd/images/Large%20DOTD%20-%20Extended%20Cut%20Ultimate%20Soundtrack%20CD%20C over%20%28Back%29.jpg)
Back Case Image (Click to enlarge)

http://www.bookofthedead.ws/dotd/images/Small%20DOTD%20-%20Extended%20Cut%20Ultimate%20Soundtrack%20CD%20C over%20%28Inside%20Back%29.jpg (http://www.bookofthedead.ws/dotd/images/Large%20DOTD%20-%20Extended%20Cut%20Ultimate%20Soundtrack%20CD%20C over%20%28Inside%20Back%29.jpg)
Inside Back Image (Click to enlarge)


Currently, the only people who have this soundtrack is myself, a couple of close friends, and the three people with large library LP collections who kindly assisted me on the original listing project. The reason I am posting this here, is so that other dawn fans will know of it's existence, to generate interest, and to see if there is a distributor out there willing to properly pay for & licence the music from De Wolfe & Goblin, and distribute it. Given that the finished soundtrack is nearly 2 hours long, it would cost a whole heap of money to licence if paying by the second. That said, it doesn't hurt to put this project out there, and maybe some sort of deal could be worked out. I would only really see big potential in releasing the (finally) complete ultimate soundtrack, not just another edited down version, assuming the two missing tracks could be identified & included.

For more information please see these two links;

http://www.bookofthedead.ws/online_portfolio/ost_dotd_extended_cut_ultimate_soundtrack.html
http://www.bookofthedead.ws/dotd/

Anyway, feel free to post your interest or thoughts on this. If anyone wants to contact me, please PM me through the forum

axlish
15-Aug-2010, 05:45 PM
This sounds legit enough to keep the thread around. You are correct about Dubious though, he does intend to get something out there, but if memory serves, not in an edited capacity. More of a collection of key tracks, really.

DubiousComforts
16-Aug-2010, 04:28 AM
Hi All,

I recently found out that DubiousComforts/Zero Day Releasing may/will be releasing their own official Dawn score at some point, so I even PM'd him to see if the information I had assembled would be of any help in that project, but no real interest there either.

Honestly, I still don't really understand what you would like to do with your compilation.

No distributor can release an "ultimate" DAWN CD the way that you have envisioned it. Sorry if you see that as being "hostile" but it's the reality of licensing music. For starters, you can't change the legal cue names to match usage in the film which is why even the Trunk release kept the original cue names. This is just the first of several hurdles which will be impossible for any soundtrack producer to overcome.

There's no reason why your research can't exist as is and be left at that. As I mentioned before, the updated cue lists and library LP cross-reference contained on the web pages is an incredible resource for fans of DAWN of the DEAD. Congratulations on the outstanding work. So what else is it that you are trying to achieve here?

MikePizzoff
16-Aug-2010, 04:54 PM
Ugh, I wish this could become a reality. I'd love to have every track.

DjfunkmasterG
16-Aug-2010, 05:01 PM
Sometimes you just have to catch Taso's brother Chris at a convention... he has a CD collection of all the drop cues that he could find and has the discs available to pickup.

I grabbed one years ago at Horrorfind and have had it ever since. Every drop cue is pretty much there, aside from maybe 2 or 3.

To See no Evil, have you tried contacting Richard Rubinstein? Since he owns the rights to Dawn of the Dead no matter if you get DeWolf library's permission you would still need his as well.

He owns and operates New Amsterdam entertainment based out of NYC. He is your best bet to get the rights you need... but be prepared to pay a hefty licensing fee. DAWN is his bread and butter.

DubiousComforts
16-Aug-2010, 08:06 PM
To See no Evil, have you tried contacting Richard Rubinstein? Since he owns the rights to Dawn of the Dead no matter if you get DeWolf library's permission you would still need his as well.
And therein lies probably the greatest hurdle to overcome. ;)

All of the major CD soundtrack producers/distributors seem to hang out on the Film Score Monthly forum (http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/messages/index.cfm), so that would be a good place to ask about interest in a licensed release.

Yojimbo
16-Aug-2010, 09:15 PM
Not to be a dick, but I remember the original post regarding this which has since been deleted, and I find the characterization of folks being hostile towards the project to be a bit misleading and revisionistic.

Personally, I would love to see your project completed and distributed and I would spend good money on the disc. I wish you only the best of luck on this project and welcome you back to the boards.

BTW: Dubious, who is well versed in the business, knows what he is talking about and could potentially be a good person to consult on these issues. He is also a decent dude, so perhaps you should consider contacting him for advice, as long as you are willing to hear what he has to say. Cheers, brother!