The samples include voice/spoken word/dialogs, sfx/foley and music. Many of them can be further divided so you can have some fun yourself ;-).

Generally, these samples are not pristine audio because they are old and sometimes poor recordings that suffered from the passing of time and of the quality (or lack of it) of the source digital copy. And when restoring audio, there's a trade off between noise and audio restoration artifacts.

The samples in the MC packs are not mapped in any way, they only contain wav files. Also don't expect that every sample in them will be useful to you. But I am sure they will be fun!

 ... in the autumn of 2009. At the time, I wanted to add some fun and different Holidays themed sounds to the samples I was offering. The idea to use old Public Domain movies was inspired by my love of old movies and an inclination to archive stuff. I also wanted to give a shot at audio restoration and I like sampler programs that map together a bunch of diverse sounds in order to create audio collages / montages.

The original MC pack 01 was a relatively small affair with 378 samples with a price of $3.33. It was a nod to the 33 1/3 rpm long playing record. I had no idea that it would grow to 10 Memory Collection packs and 5 smaller free packs! Some packs are themed, Horror, Sci-Fi, Crime and Holidays movies for instance.

Here are the current stats:
21,617 samples (roughly 10.7 GB) from 63 movies, 39 TV shows, 164 ads, 31 documentaries, 13 shorts and 1 serial.

When planning the creattion of a new Memory Collection pack, the first thing I usually do is deciding its theme (Sci-Fi, Horror, Crime, Holidays for instance). Then I will begin the selection process of the movies.

I look for:
- Movies that I want to watch
- Movies I think will have interesting sounds
- Production values, either good, bizarre or low budget can all be interesting
- Sound quality of the copy
- Picture quality of the copy

Then I will browse through the movie to have a general of its soundtrack, to check if dialogs, music and SFX are interesting.

I verify that the source videos are in the Public Domain by searching the web, there are lists of PD movies and websites dedicated to them. Before I decide to use a video, I find at least 2 sources that say it is Public Domain. Of course I try to avoid errors but I am not giving any legal guarantees about the PD status of any source video either.

Also, here in North America, there are bargain-price DVD labels that offer PD movies.

Some samples may reflect stereotypes and prejudice of their times and original creators. They may express racial prejudice, sexism, social stereotypes, ignorance and/or poor knowledge of other cultures (for instance accents that are deemed insulting today).

The views and opinions expressed in these are those of their original creators and do not necessarily reflect my opinions.

Here are some comments and reviews made over the years.

- Len Sasso featured MC 01 in the What's New section of the February, 2010 EM Cast (Electronic Musician magazine's podcast). Here are quotes from it: - interesting fun to play with collection... just going through the library will make you laugh!

- Tim Webb from Discchord wrote about MC 10: These include a lot of great and goofy samples.

- Doug from The Sound Test Room made this great video showcasing MC 10 and how to use it in a composition : Free Slate Kits and more from Les Productions Zvon

- PulpStereo (Torsten Krill) wrote: Uses quite a lot of samples from @ProductionsZvon ‘s lovely Memory Collections. I really love these samples, they are a great source of inspiration. Listen to one of his tracks featuring Memory Collection samples HERE

- Nu-Trix The Synth Guy made a great video review of Memory Collection 10, watch it on YouTube ! 

Told you, nothing now... but there maybe later !!!