NitrateVille.com

So, why didn't this sound-on-disc process last? What did Vitaphone have that it didn't?

I think that Vitaphone won out because it had superior sound and a lot of money behind it. The engineers at Western Electric were among the best in the profession and they were well equipped to work out any flaws that appeared. As far as fidelity went the Vitaphone system was the equal of the best quality commercial recording- to an audience of the late 20's a decently miked vitaphone picture would have sounded very natural.

I don't doubt that if Warner Bros had chosen to back Kellum his system might have triumphed, but that's the way it goes- if you're small and don't have the money you're disadvantaged,

It seems the Photokinema thing was around quite a bit earlier than Vitaphone though. Am I correct? If so, why did it not last?

There were quite a few sound on film processes from the beginning and all suffered from either poor synchronization or poor volume. The Ca. 1905 Gaumont sound shorts are quite good but the pneumatic amplified phonograph needed to play them was cumbersome. In addition the physical limitations of the system meant that films had a maximum length of about 4 minutes. People would go to a small Gaumont theater and see musical acts and snippets of plays on screen. The novelty wore off quickly, mostly because those people could walk to a real theater and see the same thing live.

In addition to that people just don't seem to have cared very much. A good example is the DeForest Phonofilm system- the results were quite good as the surviving Eddie Cantor short demonstrates, but the public wasn't overwhelmed and the studios didn't buy it.

So, the public were more open to the idea in later years? I guess what I'm trying to figure out is why, at a certain time, did everybody ( studios and public) suddenly decide that the time is right for talking pictures, when the phenomenon didn't appear to have been at all successful previously.

Michael O'Regan wrote:So, the public were more open to the idea in later years? I guess what I'm trying to figure out is why, at a certain time, did everybody ( studios and public) suddenly decide that the time is right for talking pictures, when the phenomenon didn't appear to have been at all successful previously.

The short answer is RADIO.

At least that how it's been described in many documentaries about film history.

Michael O'Regan wrote:So, the public were more open to the idea in later years? I guess what I'm trying to figure out is why, at a certain time, did everybody ( studios and public) suddenly decide that the time is right for talking pictures, when the phenomenon didn't appear to have been at all successful previously.

As Big Silent Fan states, the short answer is RADIO, but the longer answer is the selling of technology by the big corporations in the field, General Electric, RCA, AT&T, and what Radio Pictures called the "Thundering Dawn of Electronic Entertainment" in their late '20s ads. America was enamored with technology in the economic boom of the 20s and the growing electronics industry was glad to sell it to them. It just seems that the studios played a waiting game and then sensed the "tipping point" at which time they began to seriously invest in the technology -- they still hedged up into the beginning of the 30s with dual versions of films, and "part-talkies," but all-talkies were what the public wanted by that point.

A very good book on the subject, in great depth, is "The Talkies: American Cinema's Transition to Sound, 1926-1931," by Donald Crafton, one of the volumes of the History of American Cinema series published in the 1990s by Scribners (hardcover) and then in paperback by Univ of California Press.

I don't think it was just the technology suddenly getting good enough that people noticed. Experiments, demonstrations, and traveling exhibitions of sound films had made the rounds since 1900 and earlier. Edison was shooting synchronized sound films in 1894! He thought he'd perfected them in 1913 and his Kinetophone productions toured the country, but never caught on (despite glowing newspaper reports that sound films had finally been perfected). The higher-fidelity Vitaphone had been around for over a year before THE JAZZ SINGER was released, but again the shorts (and a synchronized score for DON JUAN) were more or less curiosities.

Before THE JAZZ SINGER, the sound films produced and exhibited merely proved that synchronized sound was possible, with films that were essentially recordings of stage acts (or canned music for silent films with a few sound effects). THE JAZZ SINGER was a full-fledged late-silent melodrama that had periodic insertions of energetic sound sequences with the same character and star persona the audience had come to empathize with, and Jolson's stage magnetism was captured on film and disc in that context, enhancing the story to a point that the return to silent drama with music became a letdown. The rest is history. I've stated before, that if George Jessell had accepted Warner Brothers' terms and repeated his stage role in the film of THE JAZZ SINGER, we might very well still be watching silent films today! It's really a case of the right people in the right place with the right technology at the right time.

Thanks very much for your replies, folks.

The responses here regarding why talkies finally clicked in the mid-twenties, after so many failures, are correct. But to distill it down, it was that a number of things finally came together in one product, most or all of which had previously been missing:

1) Natural sounding recording and playback using a microphone instead of a horn. Few audience members had even heard electrical recording in 1926
2) The ability to fill an auditorium with sound using loudspeakers.
3) Despite SINGING IN THE RAIN, a fairly reliable synchronization process for Vitaphone and a very reliable one for Movietone.
4) The backing of the system by large bankers and a solid Hollywood studio with extensive theatres and exchanges following their purchase of Vitagraph.
5) Al Jolson. There is no underestimating how his stardom and personality put over the success of Vitaphone where a lesser star (Jessel) could not.

Certainly radio's increasing competition drove the other studios to realize that they needed to respond in a big way.

I humbly suggest that you watch the DAWN OF SOUND documentary that is part of THE JAZZ SINGER 3 DVD deluxe set. They do a wonderful and very thorough job of putting this transition into perspective.

So, what films survive from this process?
I know the talking prolog from Dream Street survives...or maybe a part of it does, because part of it was shown on the last episode of Hollywood.

A post (by Bob Birchard in 2001) from alt.movies.silent says that what survives was part of a demo-reel.

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.movi ... 3b1ec9d3c7" target="_blank

Anyone know of anything else?

From the NY Evening Telegram, May 3, 1921:

Acoustic recording has a serious limitation in terms of combining it with motion pictures: the performers must remain fairly close to the horn or the recording will have distracting levels of change in volume and comprehensibility. Staying put isn't such a problem for filmed acts like Phonoscènes, but the staging and editing of drama would be quite constrained. If the early sound processes had ever become popular enough, perhaps some method would have been created to make the recording horn (and lathe) mobile, but I suspect that such an enterprise would've been much more of a hassle than the results could have warranted.

-HA

From what I've heard (and it seems likely) the Gaumont Phonoscenes were lipsynced. The performers made the recording first and then sang along with it for the camera. This would explain why the voices are clear and there is no variation in volume as the performer moves- and no sound of footsteps on the stage as you'd expect with Felix Mayol dancing about.

I thought that the main problem with talking pictures in the beginning was the lack of suitable amplification and that it wasn't until the invention of the audio valve (tube) in 1925 that allowed loudspeakers and microphones to replace acoustic apparatus.

The wireless (radio) too was making people stay away from going to the pictures and so a new gimmick was needed to get bums (butts) back on seats.

I think that the studios envisaged orchestral accompaniments on a synchronised recording as all that was required of this new sound business - although photographing Vaudeville acts and opera stars in one reelers could take the place of the stage performances that accompanied film performances. All less money for the exhibitor to fork out once he had got over the shock of paying for sound wiring.

Having seen "The Jazz Singer" I can understand what a revelation it must have been to audiences to see a few moments where somebody could waken you up from a deep slumber from the dreary and maudlin silent bits of the film. Of course one would have hoped that talkies could have been better announced than the awful "You ain't heard nothin' yet!" I know a lot of people in the audiences winced thinking, probably rightly, that talkies would usher in very low-brow entertainment.

Just to demonstrate that the compressed air amplification system (such as used by Gaumont) could be quite effective.

Donald Binks wrote:I thought that the main problem with talking pictures in the beginning was the lack of suitable amplification and that it wasn't until the invention of the audio valve (tube) in 1925 that allowed loudspeakers and microphones to replace acoustic apparatus.

Audio amplification via vacuum tubes was a reality in 1915. The first public address systems were in use by at least circa 1920. Horn speakers for radios were available. The problem was FIDELITY. and electrical recording of sound via a microphone to a disc master. Western Electric developed a relatively High Fidelity (at the time) system of recording on to disc, and relatively High Fidelity amplifiers and speakers to play the sound back.

The DeForest sound-on-film system using vacuum tube amplifiers and microphones and light-valve recording on an optical sound track was fairly good with recording, the problem was playback. Without Western Electrics extensive knowledge of sound and their development of High Fidelity auditorium speakers DeForest was relegated to using speaker technology not much improved from home Radio horn speakers, which made the exhibition of his short subjects unsatisfying from a Sound standpoint.

I contend that modern exhibition of DeForest subjects, played thru modern playback equipment sound far better than the playback equipment he had available to him.

Before audio tubes the common way to increase the volume was to make everything bigger and use more current. Cahill's 1906 "Telharmonium" electric organ played through telephone-type receivers fitted with horns and used so much power the music signal would often jump to nearby telephone lines. People said you could even hear the music coming through gaslight flames.