Sound film
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
A sound film (or talkie) is a motion picture with synchronized sound, as opposed to a silent movie. Although not the first, the most famous of the early talkies was The Jazz Singer in 1927.
In the early years after introduction of sound, sound films were called "talkies", from "talking picture" on the model of "movie" from "moving picture".
The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is nearly as old as the motion picture itself; Thomas Edison commissioned the development of a motion picture system in 1888 as a visual accompaniment to his cylinder phonograph. However two major problems soon arose that led to motion pictures and sound recording largely taking separate paths for a generation:
- Synchronization problems — The pictures and sound were recorded and played back by separate devices, which were difficult to start and maintain in synchronization.
- Audio volume & fidelity problems — While motion picture projectors soon allowed film to be shown to large theater audiences, audio technology before the development of electric amplification could not adequately play sound to fill large spaces.
Various elaborate devices were attempted to get around these problems, and some films with synchronized soundtracks on oversized amberol cylinders or "Cameraphone" systems were marketed to small audiences in large cities with moderate success between 1900 and 1915, but these were a very small fraction of the motion picture business. Because electronic microphones had not been invented, and sound recordings were made by performing in front of a large acoustical recording horn, most sound films made before the 1920s were actually of performers lip-synching to previously made sound recordings. The technology was imperfect, and most studio heads did not see the benefit, or even the possibility, of producing sound films. Thus they were relegated, along with color photography to novelty acts.
Two technological developments in the 1920s triumphed over the earlier problems:
- Sound on film — In 1923, Lee De Forest produced the first commercially distributed "De Forest Phonofilms", where the sound track was photographically recorded and printed on to the side of the strip of motion picture film, making it almost impossible for the sound and picture to go out of synchronization. President Calvin Coolidge and many of the top vaudeville acts of the day appeared in the dozens of short Phonofilms made to 1927, when the system was sold to Fox Pictures and became Movietone.
- Fidelity electronic recording — In 1925 the Western Electric company introduced a greatly improved system of electronic audio, including sensitive electronic condenser microphones and electronic amplification of sound which allowed recordings to be played back over loudspeakers at any desired volume.
The production of The Jazz Singer did much to change the industry's perception of talking pictures. The technology had advanced little in the past five years, but the production was first feature length talking picture to feature a star singer and actor, Al Jolson, speaking and singing on screen. The film, though made with the phonograph-based Vitaphone system, featured synchronized score and source music, sound effects, and was edited with cutaways during the synchronized musical sequences. Vitaphone was systematically flawed, but Warner Bros. committed themselves to selling sound features and shorts, and found a partner in Western Electric to develop and market the technology to exhibitors.
The demand for The Jazz Singer was immense, almost unprecedented, and other studios immediately began to produce sound films of their own to capitalize on what at the time they saw as a fad. Silent films that were awaiting release, such as F.W. Murnau's Sunrise, were given a synchronized music track and sound effects. Warner Bros. released the first all-talking feature, Lights of New York (1928), nine months after The Jazz Singer. Walt Disney's Steamboat Willie (1928) was one of the first animated cartoons produced with synchronized sound. As audiences saw more sound films, expectations quickly changed, and the "fad" of 1927 had become standard procedure by 1929. The transition from silent to sound films can be seen as one of the first examples of technological network effect.
Initially, the introduction of synchronized sound caused immense difficulties in production: cameras were noisy, so a soundproofed camera booth was used to isolate the loud equipment from the actors, at the expense of a drastic reduction in the ability to move the camera. The necessity to place microphones just so meant that actors often had to limit their movements unnaturally; and of course, some silent-era actors simply did not have attractive voices. These kinds of problems are spoofed in the 1952 film Singin' in the Rain.
These problems were soon solved with cameras made with modified casings to suppress their noise, the invention of boom microphones, which were essentially microphones on long poles to be held just above the photographed scene but out of the frame and could be moved at will by the sound personnel, and post synchronization sound recording techniques.
The phenomenon of the "talkies", coupled with the rapid evolution of silent to sound in the movies, had an adverse effect on the careers many motion picture actors of the time who had heavy accents or bad speaking voices. New performers were hired from the stage who were accustomed to the demands of dialogue like Mae West and The Marx Brothers.
