Tweet Ever hear camera noise in an early talkie?

Odd question, but I swear I have in a couple of post-booth era early talkies. One was particularly noticeable as it happened when an actor entered a room. As soon as he opened the door, I could hear the whir and clatter of the camera. As soon as he closed the door, it stopped. Set acoustics must have been the cause and it managed to get past editing into the finished film. I have to dig though some disks to find the film, but I watched it not too long ago.

Absolutely yes, although I can't cite any particular title. Camera noise can be heard in one shot, then goes away only to return when the first setup is repeated.
Cameras were noisy, microphone setup not yet refined, ability to edit sound not yet developed, etc.

The 1931 REACHING FOR THE MOON has a couple of instances of camera noise. I know of others but draw a blank now (an increasingly common incident these days) but these seem to occur when the camera gets as close to the actors as the microphone.

Thanks, at least I know I'm not hallucinating this. I have an idea now which film it was, but I'll check to make sure. I've read the early blimps and doghouses didn't do such a good job quieting the camera.

The long term memory just kicked in: GREEN GODDESS has several instances and one scene when Ivan Simpson is in the telegraph room his voice sounds as though the microphone was located in the next room. The soundtrack of THE ROGUE SONG that was issued on LP ages ago also has some instances of camera noise. So you definitely didn't imagine it.

One just came back to me. The WB 1936 Technicolor 2-reel short CHANGING OF THE GUARD, has prominent camera noise. Dialog sequences have it, but when it goes to music, done with playback, it goes quiet.

This was a pretty elaborate production, even though a short, and a late date for such a thing to remain. Maybe the cost, using Technicolor, eliminated any correction.

GLORIFYING THE AMERICAN GIRL(1929), I always thought it to be projector screw up from the tv station.

Odd question, but I swear I have in a couple of post-booth era early talkies. One was particularly noticeable as it happened when an actor entered a room. As soon as he opened the door, I could hear the whir and clatter of the camera. As soon as he closed the door, it stopped. Set acoustics must have been the cause and it managed to get past editing into the finished film. I have to dig though some disks to find the film, but I watched it not too long ago.

Yes, I've heard it too. It continued into some television productions as well. Another flaw of this sort is the intercutting of exterior shots where the presence of background noise is absent in the cutaways. This was before the realization of recording and mixing in ambient sound. Some directors and cameramen soon realized that they could minimize the noise from the camera motor by muffling it with a blanket. After that came the blimp, which solved this problem.

With respect to camera noise getting past the Film Editor, etc., there needs to be some consideration as to the reproduction range of the playback head on the Movieola that was in use at the time. You'd have thought that the Sound Technicians would have heard this, too. There are many extraneous "noises" that may have escaped notice in the initial stages like this. Some may have gone unnoticed in the final films since no one noticed them, or it was hoped no one did. At the same time, some of these noises may have been considered within a marginal frequency range that may not have been amplified on some playback systems of the time. Interestingly, many early sound films have an amazing frequency range that went unheard until more sensitive reproduction equipment came into being. So it stands to reason that many of these things went unnoticed based on reproduction limitations of the time.

Although I no longer have the VHS tapes from the AMC days, I seem to remember that almost every RKO film that I viewed from 1929-31 had noticeable whirring/mechanical noise of some sort in at least one scene.

Although I no longer have the VHS tapes from the AMC days, I seem to remember that almost every RKO film that I viewed from 1929-31 had noticeable whirring/mechanical noise of some sort in at least one scene.

Yes, and there was also the problem of a loss of "Room Tone" when there was a Cutaway from another take that was shot MOS. The effect was as if the sound had shut off at that moment, only to turn on again with the cut back.

Odd question, but I swear I have in a couple of post-booth era early talkies. One was particularly noticeable as it happened when an actor entered a room. As soon as he opened the door, I could hear the whir and clatter of the camera. As soon as he closed the door, it stopped. Set acoustics must have been the cause and it managed to get past editing into the finished film. I have to dig though some disks to find the film, but I watched it not too long ago.

It had nothing to do with set acoustics. The Film Editor chose to start the track at that spot, the entrance and end at the exit. It was hoped that people would concentrate on the dialogue and not hear the machine noise.

Odd question, but I swear I have in a couple of post-booth era early talkies. One was particularly noticeable as it happened when an actor entered a room. As soon as he opened the door, I could hear the whir and clatter of the camera. As soon as he closed the door, it stopped. Set acoustics must have been the cause and it managed to get past editing into the finished film. I have to dig though some disks to find the film, but I watched it not too long ago.

It had nothing to do with set acoustics. The Film Editor chose to start the track at that spot, the entrance and end at the exit. It was hoped that people would concentrate on the dialogue and not hear the machine noise.

Since I wrote that, I found the film. It's The Gang Buster and the camera noise starts when Jack Oakie enters the mansion of the bootlegger after he has slugged the butler. The noise stops as soon as he drags the butler inside and closes the door, but the scene doesn't end there, it continues in a long tracking shot. There is no dialogue.

I’ve heard the camera occasionally, mainly in low budget early films, like 1929, 30, 31. It turns up in different films in different ways. For example, when two people are talking in a wide shot, then there are cuts to close ups of them, either listening or talking, sometimes I can hear the camera in the close ups, but not in the wide shot. So, on the sound track, we hear the camera off and on, depending on what kind of shot it is and how close the microphone is to the camera, and how close the person speaking is to the camera.

Odd question, but I swear I have in a couple of post-booth era early talkies. One was particularly noticeable as it happened when an actor entered a room. As soon as he opened the door, I could hear the whir and clatter of the camera. As soon as he closed the door, it stopped. Set acoustics must have been the cause and it managed to get past editing into the finished film. I have to dig though some disks to find the film, but I watched it not too long ago.

It had nothing to do with set acoustics. The Film Editor chose to start the track at that spot, the entrance and end at the exit. It was hoped that people would concentrate on the dialogue and not hear the machine noise.

Since I wrote that, I found the film. It's The Gang Buster and the camera noise starts when Jack Oakie enters the mansion of the bootlegger after he has slugged the butler. The noise stops as soon as he drags the butler inside and closes the door, but the scene doesn't end there, it continues in a long tracking shot. There is no dialogue.

I should apologize to Ray, I'm almost certain he is right about set acoustics. Watching it slowed, I think there's a second camera on the set which is switched off when the door closes. The long tracking shot made me think there was no way another camera could be around, but the sound of the camera stopping doesn't exactly coincide with the door's closure. There's something like a tenth of a second difference. So apologies to Ray.