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The Strange World of Early Sound Films
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ส.ค. 2021
- In the late 1920s the first Sound Films or 'Talkies' were released. Following the success of the Jazz Singer Hollywood was keen to release fully talking films to capitalise on its success. However, the first years of the talkies produced some strange results. As a result of the difficulty studios had in producing sound films these new pictures, many of the early sound films suffered from technical and artistic problems. Nevertheless, as the technology developed and Hollywood adapted, these issues were overcome begining the industry that we know today.
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I would love to hear everyday movie goers reactions to watching a talkie film for the first time in the late 1920's in a movie theater after years of viewing silent films.
Well, pit musicians were jumping off buildings due to jig being up. And very much was lost from the movement and motion of silent productions. Interestingly they are mostly shot at 18 fps but when finally kined to video got unknowingly sped up to 24fps which was not how they were meant to be exhibited.
This is what i've seen in the movie babylon what a great film that showcased the end of an era of silent films and the decay of glorious artists that were once so untouchable.
I recall some of the silent stars claiming that "the talkies killed the movies" & this has been a thought of which has pervaded my mined. To think soviet montage theory was concieved soo shortly to the invention of sound & the fact that after sounds popularity studios began to hire theater directors whom of which knew little to none about the filmic medium makes you think of the potential of silent films if sound had been prolongued by even just 2-3 years. 1927 (when the jazz singer was released) is deemed by many as one of the best years for silent cinema (metropolis, wings, sunrise, napoleon)... It may be strange to think that people once concidered the death of film to be sound when nowadays most attribute it to marvel & sequals (such opinions have validity), yet people were making such opinions 100 years ago which technology we intereract with everyday.
2:38 she has the cutest voice
I'm always amazed at the early 30's musicals. The music would play. The actor(s) would sing , camera angles and scenes would change -yet everything was kept in sync . I tried to lip sync to some playback music & song -on a static shot, and lost sync 2 mins into "action" .
At least 50 feature films from 1929-30 were filmed partially or completely in technicolor. While there was some awkwardness and technical issues to be resolved, the aspect ratio of early talkies was fine when first shown in 1929-30. Not mentioned is the Vitaphone sound system ... which, while cumbersome, provided excellent sound quality. Vitaphone films converted to sound on film seem a bit lopsided because of the conversion to sound on film. In other words, a bit of room was needed for the sound track. Also, while quite a few films were static, fluid overhead shots were used in some early talkies. For example, "Whoopee!" from 1930 has very fluid camera movements.
I’m not saying I know everything about cinema-I definitely don’t-but it’s rare for me to find a video on movies about a topic that I know _nothing_ about (or, for that matter, has not been covered by dozens of other videos) Thanks-that was a really fascinating video about the early days of sound in film.
Thank you, this was very informative. You can see parallels like this in modern day cinema, along the way, it seems like we have lost something as well.
Yes definitely, I think that people are now starting to see how much digital/CGI is changing everything. Glad you liked the video!
Back then you could mix in a rudimentary way. In "The Canary Murder Case" from 1929, for example, which was half-finished and then made into a sound film, Louise Brooks' vocals were overdubbed. The animated film “Finding His Voice” from 1929, which explains the technology at the time, is interesting in this context.
D.W. Griffith’s “Abraham Lincoln” (1930) was a movie that suffered from all of the problems mentioned in this video
2:00 - 3:22 - ntro
4:05 - 5:48 - sound mixing
6:29 - end of silent films
The frames of early talkies have the edges cut off because initially early talkies were sound on disc. That system did not work very well, so by the end of 1930 movies had switched to sound on film, with the soundtrack on the edge of the film strip. This required the edge of the picture being cut off.
"Very few films of this era, roughly from 1928 to 1932, are considered classics today."
I think this is only true if you ignore 1931. There were a lot of really good movies that year.
Great video! If the others on the channel are like this I'm in for a treat
This video is made for me. I needed to watch it.
I recently watched the cross scene between Van Helsing and Dracula from the 1930ish movie, and I was puzzled by how wooden the acting was.
Another excellent video. Great choice of sequences to illustrate it too.
This could actually lead to a follow-on video about what great sound design can add - it's 50% of what we see as david lynch said. 👍
Thanks for your support as always Justin.
I think you can tell from my videos but I am really into the use of sound design and especially good sound tracks. I've not made anything like that because I don't know if I've got anything orginal to say. There are a few good ones made by other people out there though:
th-cam.com/video/A4Fo6RbKiLk/w-d-xo.html
th-cam.com/video/q4NBKiJ33Ag/w-d-xo.html
My father and I had a term for movies of exactly this period. We called them "say movies," because you would hear very slow and deliberate lines like "Sayyy . . . you're that guy who got away with all that dough . . . !"
😄 That's great!
Very good video, it should have more views
fantastic video. thank you!
Well done!
Informative thank you 🙏
This was interesting, thanks :)
4:44 that’s mad 😂
Excellent!!
Your videos are such high production
Thanks, that's very kind!
It's hard to image an orchestra being on the set of a film, how far we have come.
I'm working on bringing silent films back from my studio.
I cant imagine being an actor during the time of silent movies then being put in a sound movie after having a whole career of silence, it must be so awkward
Many of the public disowned certain actors after they started “talking” because they didn’t think they should sound the way they did!
3:00 Oh, so that’s why, in Singing In The Rain, the microphone picked up Lina’s heartbeat.
It seems to me that early sound in movies with their clear speech could teach modern movie production a thing or two. Dialogue in modern movies is often very indistinct such that subtitles have to be turned on, even for the viewer's native language. Diction has degraded to an unacceptable level. Great video though.
True. Can’t understand anything without subtitles.
Yeah for the last few decades people have come to believe that mumbling like Clint Eastwood is "cool" and "badass".
Great video , please can you name the movie name of cavalry charge scene at 0:19 , thank you 🙏
Love the video! I'm actually going to write a paper on this topic for uni and would love to to refer to this video. I was wondering if you could share your sources that you used for making this video. It would be a great help :)
Sorry this is late, I'd try the work of Barry Salt to start.
@@TheWholeEquation thank you!!!
Can anyone tell the film at 3:53?
The way the shot is done is breathtaking
Gone with the Wind
4:22 What film is this? Would love to see it.
The General starring Buster Keaton from 1926. Theres a low def versio on youtube, this looks like a more modern cleaner up version in (relatively) HD
does anyone recognise the name of the film at 3:31 ? (please let me know its been bugging me for so long now lol)
Its called 'Wings'
@@TheWholeEquation perfect thanks (also I only recently got into film history and your content has been really good so thank you 😁)
What's the film at 4:17? Looks great!
The General - Buster Keaton
@@TheWholeEquation thank you!!!
3:52 what is the name of this film?
Gone with the Wind
0:33 honestly i think it's actually the creation of the camera the idea of moving pictures existed a long time probably thousands if not millions of years i think that the camera is the reason the idea of moving picture became so popular because now instead of drawings people can now see real people moving
vce drama anyone?
3:31 how did they do this shot? Shuffle the tables out of the way ass they dolly zoom in ?
Overhead rig, the cameras hanging off a rail so as it slides forward over a fixed track the actors duck out of the way.
Described by the drector as technically interesting but way too expensive and time consuming to ever do again in his career
HOW DID ZOUARY ACQUIRE THE FILM COMPONENTS AND BY WHAT LEGAL PRECEDENTS
ACQUIRE THE RIGHTS OF "OWNERSHIP" & THEREFORE BE ABLE TO OBTAIN COPYRIGHTS APPROXIMATELY 40 YEARS AFTER THEIR COMMERCIAL EXHIBITIONS ?
That is a puzzling and controversial issue. As I understand it, he and a partner bought out a film library that was considered abandoned in a storage facility in New York. The majority of these films were in The Public Domain since the original production companies like Educational Pictures and Stuart Productions had gone out of business. He spent a great deal of money transferring 35mm Nitrate prints to Safety Film stock, many times done cheaply and incorrectly. This was the case of what was done with the deForest Phonofilm collection, which existed in at least four forms, including positive prints, dupe negatives, as well as shrunken and dry Nitrate negatives. The "lost" German film, "Niemandsland" was found in this facility through its American release version, "Hell on Earth." Zouary re-released it as "No Man's Land-Hell on Earth." This was considered a "new version," and since the original was in The Public Domain, he was able to obtain legal ownership under this new title. The same occurred with the silent German film, "Luther," which was re-released as "Martin Luther: Rebel Priest. While these films had limited distribution to largely art houses, they were made available after having been considered lost for decades.
In the case of the Educational comedies, Zouary made 16mm reduction negatives and prints before the 35mm elements decomposed. Some had already started decomposition in 1948. In the process, these comedies were packaged for early television under the title, "Laugh Movie." But they were beat out by the competition and popularity of "The Three Stooges." What Mr. Zourary did was no different, and certainly not as bad as what others like Raymond Rauhouser was accused of doing. But most of what Zouary acquired was relatively obscure. Now that he has passed away, his film library has also become obscure other than what he donated to The Library of Congress.
I don't think Chaplin failed. Have you seen The Great Dictator
I had this thought that studios producing silent movies could have sent scripts to theatres with their movies. Then the theatres could have hired local actors to voice the actors on the screen. Of course, these actors would have been losers in the upgrade to sound.
Many films in the silent era did come with written narration!
If you see any of George Melies’ Star Films, they generally come with this, which makes them much more enjoyable and easier to follow!
70
All silent on the western front.
Your definition of a classic is that it's popular .Corporate controlled film classics.
Yes they pay me to say this, please don't tell anyone my family will starve.
This is about to happen again with AI