Dawn Of The Dead (1978) Ultimate Soundtrack

Some of you might remember I posted a while back on a 12 track / 21min Parallax View score I created using the audio from the US DVD. A number of users contacted me on that and I had some good feedback. Well, for the last few months of evenings & weekends, I've been working on this pet project to locate & name all the library tracks used in each version of Dawn Of the Dead (1978), and I've now finished it as much as I can. I've put all my findings all together on a website I created.

http://www.bookofthedead.ws/dotd/

(Please Note: this is just an informational text listing site, it has no downloadable music files! It simply tells you what the original cues were called, so you can find them yourself. Anyway the problems before wasn't so much being able to get the original tracks, it was knowing exactly which of the 1,000's of De Wolfe, Rouge or Hudson library tracks they actually were.)


In doing the project I mixed a proper version of a complete Extended Version Soundtrack. For anyone interested in how that came out, its 71 tracks altogether at 1 hour & 50 minutes long, although tracks 29 and 57 are missing as 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 my 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. You can read more about that here;

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

I have already contacted De Wolfe to see if they'd be interested in doing something with my Extended Version Score, but they never even replied! The reason I'm posting this 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 1 hour & 50 minutes long, this will 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.

Given the likely costs involved and the limited number of potential sales, it's doubtful anything will ever come of it, but feel free to post your interest or thoughts on this. If anyone wants to contact me on this, please email me.

Cheers all, Rob.

rob, August 31, 2009; 12:35 PM