Discuss all things Ghostbusters here, unless they would be better suited in one of the few forums below.
#4937325
910dohead wrote: July 17th, 2020, 7:50 pm
Marcus B wrote: July 17th, 2020, 3:52 pm Took another stab at isolation. I cut a lot of BG noise out, though at the expense of taking some of the voice out as well. Still, it may help decipher it.

https://soundcloud.com/marcus-brannon-6 ... montalban2
It looks like your tracks got nuked?
Try this link https://soundcloud.com/marcus-brannon-6 ... rwI52PG6B5
#4937327
"Plus, you may be right. If so, we've been heard based on our vote."

However, I am also hearing "....If so, we've been heard by the fishers of the boat."

At this point, I am hearing too many different things. If it is "BOAT" that he's saying, then it could just be some random dialog from a random Fantasy Island episode involving a boat. How many seasons were there of Fantasy Island now? 7 Seasons and two made-for-tv movies? Great...

Two episodes to check out first come to mind.

Season 2 - Episode 20: Birthday Party/Ghost-Breaker.

"Carol Gates gave up her twins for adoption and now wants to be present for their birthday; and librarian Elliot Fielding can't get his ghost-busting guide published so he wants to exorcise a real ghost to prove his skills. "

*EDIT* - (NOT THIS EPISODE) Season 5 - Episode 22: The Ghost's Story/The Spoilers.

"Baltimore secretary Amanda Parsons must stay a full night in a haunted house in order to prove her knowledge of the occult; and bounty hunter Harry Bodine sets out to catch wily and elusive bank robber Nick Tanner. "
#4937329
910dohead wrote: July 19th, 2020, 6:17 am "Plus, you may be right. If so, we've been heard based on our vote."

However, I am also hearing "....If so, we've been heard by the fishers of the boat."

At this point, I am hearing too many different things. If it is "BOAT" that he's saying, then it could just be some random dialog from a random Fantasy Island episode involving a boat. How many seasons were there of Fantasy Island now? 7 Seasons and two made-for-tv movies? Great...

Two episodes to check out first come to mind.

Season 2 - Episode 20: Birthday Party/Ghost-Breaker.

"Carol Gates gave up her twins for adoption and now wants to be present for their birthday; and librarian Elliot Fielding can't get his ghost-busting guide published so he wants to exorcise a real ghost to prove his skills. "

*EDIT* - (NOT THIS EPISODE) Season 5 - Episode 22: The Ghost's Story/The Spoilers.

"Baltimore secretary Amanda Parsons must stay a full night in a haunted house in order to prove her knowledge of the occult; and bounty hunter Harry Bodine sets out to catch wily and elusive bank robber Nick Tanner. "
That's a negative on S02E20. Just watched through.
#4973220
So I don't know if any of you have attended one of the symphony screenings, but you can hear this audio a lot better, if not for the actual symphony (hah!) due to the mix they use that cuts out the score.

Anyhow, I'm way more confident after last night that the last word is GHOST and not boat.

So, I think the phrase might be "You may be right. If so, we better get ourselves a ghost."
Wafflerobot liked this
#4973229
These are the types of threads I love on this site. This was a fascinating experience.


People coming together trying to solve a mystery. This is what makes being a fan so cool sometimes. It reminds me of the Roger Ebert “GB2 print review mystery” that this websites members solved and put to bed.

This mystery will be solved one day too. I hope I’m around to read about it. For anyone whose into audio there’s a program called “audacity” and might help us isolate the exact part we want and remove every but the dialogue you want to hear. There’s all sorts of tricks you can try to for sure get exactly what’s being said.

Of course people can hear the exact same thing but think it’s saying something completely different. Doesn’t anyone remember the “Laurel” and “Yanny” audio clips that went viral a few years ago? Half people heard the clip says “Laurel” and the other half heard “Yanny”. Very fascinating how our brains work & process information
robbritton, Wafflerobot liked this
#4973252
RichardLess wrote: October 9th, 2022, 6:29 pm These are the types of threads I love on this site.
Yes me too. This thread has sent me down a rabbit hole, like a few other people here, trying to find the source of that dialogue. I too think the voice is Ricardo Montalban and went through some random episodes of Fantasy Island, a show I'd only ever heard about before but never watched until now. So far I have not turned up anything but by funny coincidence I watched an episode that happened to star Ernie Hudson in it. I also watched though an episode of Columbo with had Montalban as a retired matador in it, but no such luck. At this rate I'm at a loss but like you said, it'll be found for sure.

And if it is of any help to anyone here, I made a slowed down recording of the clip about 5 years ago to help me work out what he is saying: https://youtu.be/U2_ydQC9Szw
#4973269
sirphobos wrote: October 9th, 2022, 8:42 am So I don't know if any of you have attended one of the symphony screenings, but you can hear this audio a lot better...
Oh wow, I've been dimly aware of the existence of those 'with live orchestra' showings of the film, but it didn't occur to me that it means the studio must have a scoreless version of the entire film.

I wonder if we could reach out to them for that snippet 'in the clear'?

After all, this thread is now over a decade old!

In the first post from January 2012, I stated that I hoped we'd find the answer that year. Here it is over ten years later and we still haven't got the original source audio ID'ed.

Sorry to make everyone obsess along with me for these past ten!

Alex
#4973276
I keep hoping they’ll do a home release of the orchestral version! :walterpeck:

In all seriousness, I wonder what sort of work was involved in prepping the movie for this? Were elements rerecorded? Was this something already around for the BluRay mastering?
#4974135
Sometimes, depending how a movies audio is mixed, you can use 3rd party software to rip individual tracks from the films soundtrack. This sometimes works especially well with 5.1 or 7.1 tracks. With older films they'll remaster the audio and go back to the original audio sources and reconstruct it from a 2 channel stereo track to a more expanded track like 5.1 or higher. This always works best when they use foley as one track, vocals for another, music as a third and so on. A lot of times though they just build upon the stereo track and add sound effects to it and that's when it isn't so helpful.

I've been able to isolate unreleased music from films this way. I've never tried it with Ghostbusters since the scores and soundtracks are available to us as released retail offerings. You can also even use AI for audio to isolate vocals and instrumentation. I have already done this with the Barnes clip. However, it isn't an exact science and the results aren't very helpful. It still doesn't fully make out what he is saying on the tail end of the clip.
#4974152
To go a little further with I was mentioning above this comment, Ghostbusters 5.1 is exactly just what I had feared. It isn't a rebuilding of the original sound files but the additional channels of audio contain only added sound effects to the 2.0 mix. Lame if you ask me.

Anyways, I ran chapter 5 (where the sound clip happens) of the latest blu-ray into Handbrake and set it up to extract the 5.1 audio. I then had to use Adobe Audacity to uncompress the 5.1 into individual tracks. I then extracted the audio into a wav file and edited a clip in SoundForge. Then I ran it through an online AI service to see how well I could remove the Elmer Bernstein score. From there I had a decent vocal file but then re-ran it back in Soundforge to enhance some of the lower end audio. Almost like normalizing the levels so clear speech could be heard. I could've passed it through a noise filter to remove some of the foley but honestly it's pretty minimal. This is probably the clearest we're going to be able to hear this clip unless a better source comes along?

https://soundcloud.com/ojf/prickers-of- ... al_sharing

To me, I am still hearing "Buzz, you may be right. If so, we've been hurt by the prickers of a rose." Buuuuuut.... it also might sound like it's saying "Buzz, you may be right. If so, we have here ourselves a ghost."
#4974165
I’ve listened to this a couple of times, to me it sounds like:


“Barnes, you may be right.
If so, we better rehearse our roles”

Or maybe:

“<For> once you may be right.
If so, we better rehearse our roles.”


The line of dialogue before this one was:

“Lets split up.
Yeah we can do more damage that way.”

Which would kind of make sense in terms of syntax as to why they chose that line.
deadderek liked this
#4974166
Of all the silly mysteries of the movie, this one fascinates me the most.
robbritton liked this
#4974168
Because I apparently have nothing better to do this evening I just downloaded the subtitles for every episode (all 7 seasons) of "Fantasy Island" and scanned them for any lines which sounded even close to what was written here in this thread.

Zero results.
I tried "Barnes" and "Buzz", I tried "if so", "we'd better" and "we better", even "rose", "rows", and "roles" and "rehearse" and "reverse"...
No idea what else to look up across these 150-something episodes. I realise that subtitles may not exactly match the dialog but there's enough clear words here that I should have found something by now.

It definitely sounds like "Barnes, you may be right". As far as I can tell there's only been one character named Barnes on the show (and it didn't seem to be in that episode). I scanned IMDB for any combination of "Ricardo Montalban" and "barnes" hoping it might suggest another TV show or Movie to look up but no such luck.

Maybe my subtitles are mislabeled and skip the one episode this clip is from.
Or maybe it's from an entirely different show.
Maybe it's not even Ricardo Montalban.
Maybe this dialog was recorded by the sound engineers just for the movie and doesn't exist anywhere else? :lol:
robbritton, Wafflerobot liked this
#4974170
I think we should take 910dohead's recording and perform a blind study of sorts. Find a relative like a parent or grandparent who never saw Ghostbusters, play the audio, and ask them who that sounds like and/or what show that could be from.

Anyone who has Shazam ever try it for this mystery? I forget if it's still music or if they expanded on what they scan for.

Or upload it to YouTube to see if their copyright engine detects and ids it.
One time, deadderek liked this
#4974173
I’m almost 100% sure it’s:

“We better rehearse our roles” but spoken with a Latin accent.

Initially the “Right” threw me because it has such a rounded “R”, at one point I thought it was Michael Ensign. But his voice is a lot higher in movies of the early 80’s.

Montalban does use rounded “R”’s when he says “Right”. Also “better” sounds quite Latin. Also his accent on “rehearse our roles” is (in my opinion) what caused this line to be a mystery for so long.

The “Barnes” or “Burns” at the beginning sounds cut off initially. So it could be “Barnes”, “Burns” or “[For] once” or “[Law]rence” or “[Lo]rentz” or anything. But it would be weird for a sound editor to cut a line mid-word.

If I had to bet money I would say it’s definitely Montalban in a scene where he has an authoritative role. But he’s been in so many movies and tv shows it’s going to be tough to check them all for a scene where he says “rehearse our roles”.
Last edited by One time on November 3rd, 2022, 1:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
deadderek liked this
#4974177
Another vote here for "We'd better rehearse our roles" now I've heard it cleaned up. One day one of us will just stumble upon it while watching something utterly unrelated and all of our minds will be blown!
#4974179
I, too, now think he's saying "We better rehearse our roles". That just makes the most sense to my ears. The first word is the only head scratcher as to what is actually being said. I also think it's Ricardo Montalbán. He has a very specific voice and it's practically a dead ringer, but it also could not be.

That said, I caught myself watching an episode of Columbo on YouTube yesterday where he played as an ex-bullfighter that goes by the name Luis Montoya. I didn't watch the entire episode though. Mostly the ending (it's split up in parts for some reason) but I also had to leave to meet up with friends for a concert. If it is Montalbán and it isn't something from Fantasy Island, this is the type of stuff where I think it's going to be found.

TCM called Montalbán, "Handsome, erudite and blessed with an exceptionally rich, sonorous voice..."
#4974181
Here's a random theory that just popped into my head. Who was responsible for mixing down the sound for Ghostbusters? I ask that because maybe this is a little inserted piece of former work that they had done? An easter egg if you will. Sound guys like to insert hidden nods of their work just as much as they like to slip in the occasional Wilhelm scream. I think going off of that assumption might tie Ghostbusters to a previous piece of work that included Montalbán and would narrow down the search?
One time liked this
#4974182
Seeing as Montalban’s filmography would almost be shorter if it listed the movies and tv shows he hasn’t been in, shouldn’t the guy have a fanclub somewhere?

Maybe we should ask them

PS: it could also be Burns instead of Barnes
Last edited by One time on November 3rd, 2022, 1:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
#4974183
No clue? The only mention on imdb that I could find and link to one of the people who worked on sound on Ghostbusters to a production that included Ricardo was The Love Boat. I guess he just played a horse announcer so it may have just been a voice over role? I haven't been able to put to much time into search though. Maybe there's another link?
#4974184
910dohead wrote:Here's a random theory that just popped into my head. Who was responsible for mixing down the sound for Ghostbusters? I ask that because maybe this is a little inserted piece of former work that they had done? An easter egg if you will. Sound guys like to insert hidden nods of their work just as much as they like to slip in the occasional Wilhelm scream. I think going off of that assumption might tie Ghostbusters to a previous piece of work that included Montalbán and would narrow down the search?
See an older post of mine here:
viewtopic.php?p=4937111#p4937111

Also, the Production Sound Mixer listed was Gene Cantamessa. But he passed away in 2011.

EDIT: There's a site called Pop Mystic where you can input a quote and see if it matches up to a movie or show. I tried my latest guess and Barnes but nothing yet.

So the line implies it's from something like a spy show or a show that involves a stage play or filming a movie.

Curious if the sound editors were restricted to only picking audio from a Columbia title or they could pick from other movie/television studios at the time. If the former, that would tighten the net a bit more.
#4974820
Here's a thing that may well be a dead end as usual! I was just working while I had the movie playing on my headphones and because I wasn't concentrating my brain was picking up stuff I don't usually hear, and I think the voice on Dana's TV before the Ghostbusters ad comes on could be Montalban (or whoever it is that sounds like him!) as well. Does anyone have the skills to remove the dialogue from that bit - there's a lot more TV dialogue in that scene that could be helpful in identifying the other.

Of course, I could be totally barking up the wrong tree, but it's at least possible they used the same piece of archive sound for both scenes.
#4974830
This is a great suggestion and most likely from the same source. I looked into it and there is some audio that can be made out. There are about 4 spots where you can hear clear dialog being said but unfortunately it's not enough to lend a clue. If the full clip could be separated then maybe our answer would be hiding there? Someone would have to be an absolute audio wizard to remove the Moranis/Weaver dialog from it. Though I see it as an impossibility without having access to the clean audio and the film wasn't mixed to where its available.
robbritton liked this
#4974832
910dohead wrote: December 2nd, 2022, 8:39 pm This is a great suggestion and most likely from the same source. I looked into it and there is some audio that can be made out. There are about 4 spots where you can hear clear dialog being said but unfortunately it's not enough to lend a clue. If the full clip could be separated then maybe our answer would be hiding there? Someone would have to be an absolute audio wizard to remove the Moranis/Weaver dialog from it. Though I see it as an impossibility without having access to the clean audio and the film wasn't mixed to where its available.
Ah, I’ve never been enough of an audiophile to really understand how the separating of audio tracks in released films works - that’s disheartening.
#4974838
robbritton wrote:
910dohead wrote: December 2nd, 2022, 8:39 pm This is a great suggestion and most likely from the same source. I looked into it and there is some audio that can be made out. There are about 4 spots where you can hear clear dialog being said but unfortunately it's not enough to lend a clue. If the full clip could be separated then maybe our answer would be hiding there? Someone would have to be an absolute audio wizard to remove the Moranis/Weaver dialog from it. Though I see it as an impossibility without having access to the clean audio and the film wasn't mixed to where its available.
Ah, I’ve never been enough of an audiophile to really understand how the separating of audio tracks in released films works - that’s disheartening.
The film playing while Louis and Dana talk in the hallway is called "Lost Horizon", it's a 1937 Frank Capra film.

I found this by isolating the 5.1-DTS audio right when Dana shuts the door, Louis says "I gotta have a shower" and walks away. There's a good 3 seconds of clear audio here. There was a spot earlier in the scene where I thought I could hear something about a plane, so my first thought was "Oh, it IS Fantasy Island", but my search of all the TV episode subtitles came up empty.

After amplifying the audio for the 3 seconds, I could clearly hear the words:
"(something) doing a thing like that"
"...on the other side of the hill".

A quick Google search and the script for "Lost Horizon" popped up:
https://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/Lost_Horizon.html
Image

Edit: Here's a YouTube clip of the film at 35 minutes and 49 seconds where this scene takes place:
https://youtu.be/ZiNVerU1hBA?t=2149
So, another mystery solved...but it's the wrong one. Sorry!

Interesting that they chose a film from 1937 though. Maybe the film playing in the Sedgewick was something from around the same time? (Maybe it was cheaper to license the rights to the audio?)
An important note here is that "Lost Horizon" is ALSO a Columbia Pictures film like "Ghostbusters".
So, one could guess that the Sedgewick audio also comes from something from Columbia?
There can't be that many of those, can there? :lol:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_ ... ures_films

(And yes, I know 1954's "The Saracen Blade" stars Ricardo Montalban and was produced by Columbia Pictures, but that was ruled out on a prevous page in this thread)
robbritton, Alex Newborn, mrmichaelt and 3 others liked this
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