Sound film

A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound (that is, sound synchronized with image), as opposed to a silent movie. Although not the first, the most significant of the early talkies was The Jazz Singer in 1927.

In the early years after the introduction of sound, such films were called "talkies", from "talking picture" on the model of "movie" from "moving picture".

History

Early History

The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is nearly as old as the concept of the motion picture itself. On February 27 1888, Thomas Edison met with Eadweard Muybridge who proposed a scheme for sound film — well before film itself had been introduced to the general public. Muybridge's version involved combining Edison's recorded sound technology with his zoopraxiscope as a visual accompaniment. However, later that year, Edison commissioned the development of the kinetoscope as a visual accompaniment to his cylinder phonograph. 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 and 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.

The "Talkies"

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 release of The Jazz Singer in October 1927 did much to change the industry's perception of talking pictures. It was successful due largely to the appearance of popular singer, Al Jolson. Most of the film does not contain synchronized sound — relying, much like a silent movie, on a musical score and sound effects. When Jolson sings, however, the film shifts to sound recorded on the set, including both his singing and a few adlibbed lines of dialogue. Although this limited use of synchronized sound does not qualify The Jazz Singer as the most innovative or the first "sound" film, it was enough to lure audiences to the theaters and prove to the industry that sound was worth investing in.

Warner Bros. created The Jazz Singer with the Vitaphone process, which was systematically flawed, but they committed themselves to selling sound features and shorts, and found a partner in Western Electric to develop and market the technology to exhibitors.

Despite the success of The Jazz Singer, other studios were initially slow to produce talking features of their own. No other studio released even a part-talking feature (FBO's The Perfect Crime) until August 1928, ten months after The Jazz Singer. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Hollywood's top studio, waited fifteen months before releasing its first part-talking feature (Alias Jimmy Valentine) in January 1929. Meanwhile, Warner Bros. released the first all-talking feature, Lights of New York in July 1928. The film cost only $75,000 to produce, but grossed over $2,000,000. Al Jolson's second part-talkie The Singing Fool (1928) also made a huge profit. Paul Terry's Dinner Time (1928) was one of the first animated cartoons produced with synchronized sound. After watching this cartoon, Walt Disney decided to make one of his Mickey Mouse cartoons, Steamboat Willie in sound as well. As Warner Brothers began making huge profits, due to the popularity of their sound films, the other studios quickly converted to sound. Expectations quickly changed, and the "fad" of 1927 had become standard procedure by 1929, leading many film reviewers to give quaint descriptions of silent films that were now considered old-fashioned. The last silent feature released by a major Hollywood studio was a Hoot Gibson western called Points West, which was released by Universal Pictures in August 1929.^[1] The same year saw the release of the first all-color all-talking picture: On with the Show.

The introduction of synchronized sound caused immense difficulties in production. Cameras were noisy, so a soundproofed camera booth was used in the earliest talkies 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, boom microphones (essentially microphones on long poles to be held just above the photographed scene but out of the frame), and post-production sound recording techniques. Thus, by 1929 the camera was liberated from the booth to allow fluid movements again. The film Show Girl in Hollywood (1930) provides a good behind the scene look at some of the techniques involved in shooting early sound films.

The phenomenon of the "talkies", coupled with the rapid evolution of silent to sound in the movies, had an adverse effect on the careers of many motion picture actors of the time who had heavy accents or bad speaking voices. Performers from vaudeville and the legitimate theater, who were accustomed to the demands of dialogue, were hired by major studios, including Eddie Cantor, W.C. Fields, Al Jolson, Fanny Brice, Marilyn Miller, and The Marx Brothers.

Reaction of the Musicians Union

In the 1920s, when the first talkies came out, especially The Jazz Singer in 1927, theatre orchestra musicians were being replaced with mechanical music which cost the loss of many jobs.^[2] The American Federation of Musicians took out ads in newspapers, protesting the replacement of real musicians with mechanical playing devices, especially in theatres. The statement from a 1929 advertisement, said, in part:

[Picture of a can with a label saying 'Canned Music — Big Noise Brand — Guaranteed to produce no intellectual or emotional reaction whatever'] Canned Music On Trial. This is the case of Art vs. Mechanical Music in theatres. The defendant stands accused in front of the American people of attempted corruption of musical appreciation and discouragement of musical education. Theatres in many cities are offering synchronised mechanical music as a substitute for Real Music. If the theatre-going public accepts this vitiation of its entertainment program a deplorable decline in the Art of Music is inevitable. Musical authorities know that the soul of the Art is lost in mechanisation ... Has it remained for the Great Age of Science to snub the Art by setting up in its place a pale and feeble shadow of itself?
American Federation of Musicians (Comprising 140,000 musicians in the United States and Canada).

Joseph N. Weber, President.

Broadway, New York City.^[3]

Notes

^ The last wholly silent feature produced in America for general distribution was The Poor Millionaire, released by Biltmore Pictures in April 1930. Four other silent features, all low-budget westerns, were also released in 1930. Patrick Robertson, Film Facts (2001), p. 173.
^ American Federation of Musicians. Cf. History - 1927, 1928. "1927 - With the release of the first 'talkie', The Jazz Singer, orchestras in movie theaters were displaced. The AFM had its first encounter with wholesale unemployment brought about by technology. Within three years, 22,000 theater jobs for musicians who accompanied silent movies were lost, while only a few hundred jobs for musicians performing on soundtracks were created by the new technology. 1928 - While continuing to protest the loss of jobs due to the use of 'canned music' with motion pictures, the AFM set minimum wage scales for Vitaphone, Movietone and phonograph record work. Because synchronizing music with pictures for the movies was particularly difficult, the AFM was able to set high prices for this work."
^ Canned Music on Trial, 1929 advertisment by the American Federation of Musicians

External links

[1] The last wholly silent feature produced in America for general distribution was The Poor Millionaire, released by Biltmore Pictures in April 1930. Four other silent features, all low-budget westerns, were also released in 1930. Patrick Robertson, Film Facts (2001), p. 173.

[2] American Federation of Musicians. Cf. History - 1927, 1928. "1927 - With the release of the first 'talkie', The Jazz Singer, orchestras in movie theaters were displaced. The AFM had its first encounter with wholesale unemployment brought about by technology. Within three years, 22,000 theater jobs for musicians who accompanied silent movies were lost, while only a few hundred jobs for musicians performing on soundtracks were created by the new technology. 1928 - While continuing to protest the loss of jobs due to the use of 'canned music' with motion pictures, the AFM set minimum wage scales for Vitaphone, Movietone and phonograph record work. Because synchronizing music with pictures for the movies was particularly difficult, the AFM was able to set high prices for this work."

[3] Canned Music on Trial, 1929 advertisment by the American Federation of Musicians

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