Just saw "The Cage" on TOSR- Help me out here...the Keeper's voice...

[GSchnitzer]

Therin of Andor wrote:

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No, the b/w & color compile was a direct-to-video release. Then the lost color negatives were found. Then the all-color restored version was aired on TV, as part of "From One Saga To the Next", to kick off Season 2 of TNG, and then was released on VHS.

Well, not exactly. The early b/w & color compile was not just a direct to video release in 1986. While the all-color version was indeed aired as part of the special "The Star Trek Saga: From One Generation to the Next" in October of 1988 to kick off TNG's second season, it was actually about two full years before that--shortly before the black and white copy Frankenstein version was released on VHS (and to help promote its release and sale)--that this b/w & color complie with Gene Roddenberry's special introduction "Star Trek: The Unseen Pilot" was made available to local stations and was actually aired in some markets. If I recall correctly, I watched this b/w & color complie in September of 1986 on KTLA (Channel 5) in Los Angeles as part of a Star Trek 20 year celebration--well before Furmanek even found the color versions of the excised "Cage" pieces--and a year before The Next Generation premiered.

FYI: US commercial VHS release contained a single episode per tape and tapes were issued in production order. (The b/w & color compliation version of "The Cage" was #1, "Where No Man..." was #2, "Corbomite..." was #3, etc. When a full color version of "The Cage" became possible after color footage was found (after the VHS releases were already out on the market), the new full-color version of "The Cage" was given a somewhat arbitary number in the series of "#99."

So, at any rate, we seem to be saying pretty much the same thing--except that you're saying that I'm wrong and that the "Direct-To-Video" version was never aired on television. I say it actually was aired in some places shortly before it was released to the general public on VHS.

[Christopher]

GSchnitzer wrote:

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But the Keeper's voice in those two "Cage"-only scenes (Malachi Throne) was digitally monkeyed with (amazing what we can do nowadays) to make it sound higher pitched--like Vic Perrin's overdubs in the rest of the Menagerie.

No. No. It is not Vic Perrin. It doesn't sound a thing like Vic Perrin, and I have no idea how that myth got started. As stated above, it is Malachi Throne's own voice, his original voiceover recording for "The Cage," electronically reprocessed with a higher pitch. It's not just "nowadays" that we can do that. They had the same capability in 1964, although it was done by analog rather than digital means. (And it's not speeding up either; I recently saw a 1974-ish Mission: Impossible episode where Nimoy played a dual role, and his near-lookalike had his voice electronically raised in the same way, but it obviously matched the speed of his on-camera line readings.)

Compare the Keeper's voice to Vic Perrin's and there's no resemblance. Perrin's voice is about an octave lower than the Keeper's and much more resonant, and his cadence and delivery are different too. Compare the Keeper's voice to other cases of male voices electronically raised in pitch, such as most of the Asgard from Stargate SG-1, and there's clearly a similar timbre. Compare it to the unaltered Malachi Throne voiceovers from the original "Cage" and the Keeper's high-pitched voice has the same cadence and intonation.

For the Remastered edition, the audio of Throne's voice from "The Cage" is raised in pitch to match the audio from "The Menagerie."

[QuasarVM]

Deleted.

[ClayinCA]

Christopher wrote:

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No. No. It is not Vic Perrin. It doesn't sound a thing like Vic Perrin, and I have no idea how that myth got started.

I'll check this when I get home tonight, but I believe this idea may have originated in Allan Asherman's excellent Star Trek Compendium, in which Asherman speculates that the "Menagerie" version of the Keeper might have been voiced by Vic Perrin. As I said, I'm not entirely certain of this - I'll check my copy of the Compendium when I get home tonight.

[number6]

ClayinCA wrote:

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I'll check this when I get home tonight, but I believe this idea may have originated in Allan Asherman's excellent Star Trek Compendium, in which Asherman speculates that the "Menagerie" version of the Keeper might have been voiced by Vic Perrin. As I said, I'm not entirely certain of this - I'll check my copy of the Compendium when I get home tonight.

You're right about that.. It was only speculated that it was "probably" Vic Perrin.. As an audio engineer, myself, I can tell that it is simply Throne's voice pitch manipulated. You can really tell when you compare the B&W version with the DVD version. The inflections of voice and tone are identical..just pitched slightly higher. It would also make sense from a financial standpoint, having Throne voice the Keeper in the Menagerie when he is speaking directly to Captain Kirk, thereby only paying one actor to voice both parts. The Keeper's voice was pitch shifted to avoid confusion by sounding too similar to Throne, who apeared in the two parter.

[Praetor]

Thanks for confirming that, number6. Even I (a non-audio engineer ) could still hear Malachi's inflections in the revised audio.

[GSchnitzer]

number6 wrote:

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You're right about that.. It was only speculated that it was "probably" Vic Perrin.. As an audio engineer, myself, I can tell that it is simply Throne's voice pitch manipulated. You can really tell when you compare the B&W version with the DVD version. The inflections of voice and tone are identical..just pitched slightly higher. It would also make sense from a financial standpoint, having Throne voice the Keeper in the Menagerie when he is speaking directly to Captain Kirk, thereby only paying one actor to voice both parts. The Keeper's voice was pitch shifted to avoid confusion by sounding too similar to Throne, who apeared in the two parter.

How do you "pitch manipulate?" I understand how Ross Bagdassarian and George Martin had to do it for the Chipmunks and the Beatles respectively. But how would they have done it on Star Trek?

[number6]

GSchnitzer wrote:

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How do you "pitch manipulate?" I understand how Ross Bagdassarian and George Martin had to do it for the Chipmunks and the Beatles respectively. But how would they have done it on Star Trek?

Tape speed manipulation. TOS created so much with something that simple. They did the same thing with Mira Romaine in Light's of Zetar, only they slowed the tape down slightly. I can't remember if the electronic process was available as it was in later years, but I do, in fact, recall some delay and pitch units made in the seventies with basic analog circuitry. Whether this was available in 1965-66 is not known. We're not talking a huge jump in pitch, just 10-15%, if that, depending on the tape speed used in the audio dubbing process. If they were using tape speeds of 7.5 ips, 10% would be drastic.

[GSchnitzer]

number6 wrote:

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Tape speed manipulation. TOS created so much with something that simple.

Well, if you speed up the tape with "tape speed manipulation" in order to also increase the pitch, then the sped-up dialog wouldn't match the actor's lips. I still don't get how you speed up the sound without speeding up the sound.

[gastrof]

But since the speed that The Keeper spoke at didn't change, the speed the recording is played back at isn't what produced the different sound. I believe it's something else.

EDIT:
This was a reply to "number6". Guess I type slow.

[number6]

GSchnitzer wrote:

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Well, if you speed up the tape with "tape speed manipulation" in order to also increase the pitch, then the sped-up dialog wouldn't match the actor's lips. I still don't get how you speed up the sound without speeding up the sound.

At percentages like 5-8% it wouldn't be that noticable. It's not like a chipmunks record where the pitch shift is that drastic.

gastrof wrote:

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But since the speed that The Keeper spoke at didn't change, the speed the recording is played back at isn't what produced the different sound. I believe it's something else.

EDIT:
This was a reply to "number6". Guess I type slow.

It's funny you say that. It sounds slightly sped up to me. I could be wrong, and that's why I speculate that there may be some other pitch process involved. One thing is for sure.. That's Malachi Throne's voice and not Vic Perrin's.

I'm not sure if even primitive pitch shift circuits were easily made without the tape process...But also keep in mind that technology is much more sophisticated today. People can resample and pitch shift things without any kind of audio artifact to give it away. The pitch of the echo and reverb on the Keeper's voice is consistant with a pitch shift. Whether it was done by some kind of "project box" circuitry or through Tape manipulation is anyone's guess.. I believe it was the latter, simply because it would be the easiest thing accomplish, and so many sound effects of that pilot were created with tape speed manipulation and tape echo.

[GSchnitzer]

number6 wrote:

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At percentages like 5-10% it wouldn't be noticable. It's not like a chipmunks record where the pitch shift is that drastic.

Well, I'm not a physicist and I'm not much of a musician, but I think increasing the voice by exactly one octave would require the tape speed to be exactly doubled. How many octaves' difference do you think there are between Throne's original Keeper voice in "The Cage" and the new higher-pitched Keeper voice from "The Menagerie?"

I know how you do it today. But I still don't get how it could have been done in 1966 with Throne's already existing recorded dialog.

[number6]

GSchnitzer wrote:

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Well, I'm not a physicist and I'm not much of a musician, but I think increasing the voice by exactly one octave would require the tape speed to be exactly doubled. How many octaves' difference do you think there are between Throne's original Keeper voice in "The Cage" and the new higher-pitched Keeper voice from "The Menagerie?"

The Chipmunks were pitched exactly one octave. As you can hear, that is a drastic change of pitch. With the Keeper, we're talking a few semitones at best. You'd be amazed at how much that changes someone's voice.

Throne's original Keeper voice isn't shifted at all. That's his performance. You can hear that tonality when he speaks as Commodore Mendez, but speed that up just a little bit, and then you get the Keeper we know from the Menagerie.

[GSchnitzer]

number6 wrote:

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The Chipmunks were pitched exactly one octave. As you can hear, that is a drastic change of pitch. With the Keeper, we're talking a few semitones at best. You'd be amazed at how much that changes someone's voice.

Throne's original Keeper voice isn't shifted at all. That's his performance. You can hear that tonality when he speaks as Commodore Mendez, but speed that up just a little bit, and then you get the Keeper we know from the Menagerie.

A few semitones apart--so maybe three or four? So three semitones would require that the tape speed be increased by 25%. I think that would be a noticeable difference between what you heard and what you saw on the actor's lips.

[number6]

GSchnitzer wrote:

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A few semitones apart--so maybe three or four? So three semitones would require that the tape speed be increased by 25%. I think that would be a noticeable difference between what you heard and what you saw on the actor's lips.

At Most three semitones..Most likely less..

I believe the pitch variance to be more like 10-15%...or even less.

Have you ever heard Led Zep's "Song Remain's The Same?" The tape is pitched down just a semitone or so when Robert Plant is singing those silly high notes.. When played back he sounds quite silly.

What I suspect they did was redub the Keeper voice at a slightly slower speed on the tpae machine, so that when it played back at sync speed, the pitch would be slightly higher.

It would have to be a small percent, otherwise the lip movement wouldn't line up. As such , the lip movement doesn't line up on a lot of the dialog throughout. Loads of passages were looped. Most of Majel's dialog was looped, as was some of Susan Oliver's dialog.

With the Keeper, I am certain that if they used this technique, they did it in small sections, so that lip sync inconsistancies would be less noticeable.