PB+J wrote:here's a video about the "Ressikan Flute" which shows the actual prop and explains how it was made: it was machined out of aluminum and does not play. Apparently the tune was dubbed in later, played on a Clarke
https://youtu.be/55Y1_Do2wNI
Thanks for that!
I does seem to be the same prop, or at least very similar, to the one seen in the screen-shots I posted.
Interesting the narrow rims around the fingerholes. I wonder why they did that.
They must have used photos of an Overton-style whistle as the basis for the head, because it exactly imitates the shape, including the subtle inward slope on the front of the head just below the window. It would be impossible to duplicate such a complex and specific shape by coincidence.
BTW I've seen "authenticated" props auctioned of this whistle that have fat silver donuts stuck on top of the fingerholes. As we can see the original prop only has quite narrow rims there.
PB+J wrote: Apparently the tune was dubbed in later, played on a Clarke.
Yes all the music and other sounds you hear in films (footsteps, doors closing, glasses clinking, background conversation, crowd noise, traffic noise, everything) is dubbed in later. A movie set is an eerily silent place. The only sound they want to record is the dialogue of the principal actors.
In many scenes that's dubbed in too! Thus not a single sound you hear in the final version was recorded on set.
I do wonder if it was Chris Bleth who did the soundtrack. More than likely.
About which sort of whistle was used, how these things go is that the tune would be written in such-and-such a key (in this case D Major) and at the recording session the musician might play as many different flutes and whistles as he's brought to the session, that work in that key, for the composer. The composer will decide which sound he likes. So you might get a film that takes place in Ireland but the composer liked the Chinese flute you brought! I guess the composer liked the Clarke.
Chris shows up with duffel-bags full of flutes and whistles, hundreds of the things. Makes sense, he's a flute guy.
But the opposite can happen, where the "reed guy" (who is playing Sax, clarinet, and Boehm flute on the score) finds out when he arrives at the session that the composer wants a whistle for something, and then it's a case of whatever the musician happens to have. Most "reed guys" have several beat-up Generation whistles in various keys in their gig bag. They might only have one D whistle.
Anyhow I don't see Chris listed for this episode
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1259350/
though there are things I know he did, because I worked on them too, that aren't listed there. He would know who did that show.