Dawn Of The Dead - Extended Cut Ultimate Soundtrack
Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 12:33 am
For a good few months now I've been running a pet project to locate & name all the library tracks used in the George Romero film; Dawn of the Dead. I've gone as far as I can with that, and have put together a listings website which you can view here;
http://www.bookofthedead.ws/dotd/
In addition to that I've also been working away evenings & weekends for quite a while assembling a soundtrack, and I've now finished it. Its a soundtrack to the Extended/cannes cut of Dawn. Here is a little blurb I wrote about it;
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.
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.
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 (17. Fat City Brother)
Sample Track 2 (52. Hurry And Do Your Shopping)
Here are the CD covers I put together for this project;
Front Case Image (Click to enlarge)
Back Case Image (Click to enlarge)
Inside Back Image (Click to enlarge)
Currently the only people who have this at the moment is myself, and three of the people who assisted me on the listing project, along with a couple of others who have contacted me since
I had hoped to generate enough interest to see if there is a distributor out there willing to properly pay for & licence the music from De Wolfe & Goblin, and distribute it, but given I have got nowhere in the few years since I created this and that the finished soundtrack is 1 hour & 50 minutes long which will cost a whole heap of money to licence if paying by the second, I doubt this will ever happen. 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.
Anyway, feel free to post your interest or thoughts on this. If anyone wants to contact me, please either PM or email me via my profile.
I had hoped to generate enough interest to see if there is a distributor out there willing to properly pay for & licence the music from De Wolfe & Goblin, and distribute it, but given I have got nowhere in the few years since I created this and that the finished soundtrack is 1 hour & 50 minutes long which will cost a whole heap of money to licence if paying by the second, I doubt this will ever happen. 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.
Anyway, feel free to post your interest or thoughts on this. If anyone wants to contact me, please either PM or email me via my profile.