Week 4 [Lecture/Seminar Notes]

Transition to Sound

It affected all 3 branches of industry.

1925-31 --> Transitional Sound Era

Period of radial technological change, affecting all 3 branches of the cinema industry (P/D/E)

--> Temporary shake-up of Hollywood’s established stylistic norms
--> Profound long-term consequences for the organization of the industry
--> Myth of The Jazz Singer (WB, 1927)

The film after the Jazz Singer by Al Jolson in 1928 which was much more successful was The Singing Fool which was a combination of a musical and talkie

Aesthetic Objections to the Sound Film

The automatic introductionn of pre-recorded synchronized sound

--> Inaccuracy of term ‘silent cinema’: films always experienced with (live) sound, delivered at point of exhibition.

--> Transition to sound - brings automatic reproduction & synchronization of sounds that have been pre-recorded.

--> Sound fixed at source: intensifies mechanization & standardization of cinematic experience as well as relations between sound and image (soundtrack physically ‘married’ to image track in sound-on-film systems)

--> Eisenstein & Pudovkin - Talkies threatened visual sophistication of the art of film.

--> Danger of 'canned theatre', it contaminated the medium

--> Film theorist Rudolph Arnrnheim (1938); film "cannot become the servant of speech without giving up its own self (SEE POWERPOINT FOR QUOTE)

--> Inherent stylization of the silent film owing to lack of synchronized sound

BUT

- Sound allows showcasing of styles of (e.g. musical or comic) performance not available to film in the silent era .

- Power of the voice – actual voices replace “dreamed voices” of the silent era (Michel Chion, Voice in Cinema, p. 8) - e.g. vernacular speech..

The Transition to Sound & The Hollywood Cinema Industry

- Concept of the sound film predates advent of silent movies. 

e.g. Thomas Edison conceived of film as a medium that would "do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear" (qtd. S. Neale, Cinema & Technology, 63). 

- Vitaphone sound-on-disc system.

Griffith's Dream Street synch sound in open cinema

De Forest amplifying tube device bore the industry known as phonofilm. Sound could be amplified in huge musical halls and theatre's. He then went into sound production.

In 1925, since radio was so popular, to bring back audiences, studios started to produce films in colour with bigger budgets, also they created bigger screens for the films to be exhibited on. but they didn't try to synch sounds, the only studio that hopped on it first were Warner Bros.

Technical Problems with the Transition to Sound

- Recording – e.g. microphones with poor sensitivity 

- Synchronization – smooth coordination of sound & image 

- Amplification – ensuring sounds were sufficiently audible in large auditoria

Limitations of exclusively technological explanation:

• Can't explain gap between solution of technological problems & adoption of technology.
• Can't account for particular (ideological) uses to which the industry put the technologies of sound recording, mixing and reproduction.

The Technology of Sound Film

--> Technological change part of a broader industrial and institutional process in Hollywood

--> Sound technology developed in corporate research labs of:

-  American Telephone and Telegraph Co. (AT&T – owned Western Electric) &
-  the Radio Corporation of America (RCA – division of General Electric, until 1930) 

Industry Opposition to Sound Technology

The dominant film companies in the mid 1920s were:

1. Famous Players

2. Paramount

3. Loew's MGM

4. First National

(i) Failure of earlier sound systems.

(ii) Cinema business already highly stable & successful, after a period of intense competition.

(iii) Sound-film promised long term economic advantages, but conversion would be very costly in the short term.

(iv) Worry about box-office prospects of major silent-films and movie stars (e.g. Clara Bow).

(v) Sound-film threatened international distribution empire - addition of speech introduces linguistic boundaries. 

Laurel & Hardy filmed all sequences in different language to keep up with the international market with the endorsement of sound.

Warner Bros.

- Myth of WB’s reckless gamble on sound
- Gomery: investment in sound technology as part of long-term strategy of corporate expansion masterminded by Wall Street financier Waddill Catchings
- Attempt to challenge majors by exploiting sound film as differentiated product
- WB partnership with Western Electric in the Vitaphone Corporation (1926)
- Proprietary Vitaphone sound sound-on-disc system
- Exploiting of: (a) prerecorded performance as USP (‘canned vaudeville’) + (b) prerecorded soundtracks 

Fox

ß Fox set up Movietone company in 1927 to exploit sound-on-film system developed by Theodore Case

ß Released several films with Movietone soundtracks (e.g. Seventh Heaven, Sunrise)

ß Fox also competed with radio & newspaper journalism by adding sound to newsreels (cf. huge success of newsreel of Charles Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight)