The History of Sound at the Movies
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ส.ค. 2014
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Take the full Filmmaker IQ course on the History of Sound at the movies with sauce and bonus material at: filmmakeriq.com/courses/histo...
The inclusion of sound at the movies was one of the most dramatic changes in all of film history. Dive into the early experiments of Edison trying to incorporate sound from film’s inception, through the experiments in the early 1920s, the Jazz Singer and the industry sound overhaul, and finally the multi-channel surround and modern movie sound technologies.
If you have any further questions be sure to check out our questions page on Filmmaker IQ:
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I think you are the most underrated channel on TH-cam. Amazing work, as always.
Thanks Batman. Now go save Gotham!
atmos atmos atmos
You get your checks directly mailed to you by Dolby?
You should do a lesson on the restoration of films. Films that have been saved, lost, found and the processes that have been used to preserve films.
Good idea
Definitely!
110% agreed.
I know videos about restoration of Cinerama movies. They made them looking better than initial by fixing some problems of bringing all 3 films together.
The Dixon film was the only one done live. The horn doesn't look good, so when using acoustic stylus sound, they did it with the playback process. Prerecorded music and added the picture.
It's not accident, that the availability of microphones, amplifiers and loudspeakers came together with developing film sound.
One interesting thing, with cinema speakers and mixing consoles in film studios, they had all technical stuff for a PA system since 1930, but before the 1960's they hadn't use this.
Four years after this video was released we have object based audio like Dolby Atmos which render "objects" "on the fly" during playback to use up to 64 discreet channels to place these sound "objects" in specific places in a room regardless of speaker location or room size.
This channel is like jacking into the Matrix training programs. Watching two of them will give you a headache, and I mean that in a good way. The amount of information delivered in such a concise manner is nothing short of mind blowing. It's content creators like this that make TH-cam invaluable. :)
Could NOT have said that better myself. Totally agree.
Great video! I studied film/TV production in the ‘80s with an emphasis on post-production audio sweetening. I got to do the sound for everyone’s projects because so few people in film school cared much about the audio. Our audio sweetening studio was set up with three synced tape systems - an eight-track 1/2" machine, a two-track 1/4" machine, and a two-track digital tape machine. While we could theoretically mix for multichannel sound, the only way to export the sound was to a stereo S-VHS machine, so everyone’s projects ended up being stereo at best.
All this work in the analog field ended up making me a dinosaur as soon as I had graduated. I didn’t know anything about digital recording or editing tools. Likewise, I got my Masters degree in photography, learning film processing and printing techniques in the early ‘90s, only a decade or so before film became essentially obsolete. There’s nothing like being the guy who learns the skill of making buggy whips right before the automobile is introduced.
So, three decades later I’m a classical musician working for an opera company. I have a killer sound system set up in my house, though! I’m still more interested in the audio of a film than the video portion…
Star Wars did "kind of ok" at the box office. Yeah I think so too.
@29:51... my wife is obsessed with that sound. Just loves it.
I gave it a like before the video even loaded because what ever you talk about is interesting. , so basically I already know I'm in for a treat. Thanks
John, still one of your best episodes, I show this to my friends often. The scene regarding the Jazz Singer, really illustrates how amazing the sound transition was... Imagine being in the audience and the film switches to recorded dialog and then back to title cards... At that moment anyone watching would have realized that "silent film" was dead... There's only a few times in history where such technological realizations were so abrupt.
In any case your work is always of the highest quality Mr. Hess and glad you continue to contribute.
+David Simmons You know what - I never thought of it that way. The fact that it was both talkie and silent must have been really jarring - which explains why Jazz Singer is always listed as the first talkie even though it wasn't... it was the first public demonstration in a very graphic form that silent film was indeed dead ;)
Not only all of this, but the off-the-cuff effect of Jolson's seemingly improvised joshing around with his "mother" lends that "voyeuristic" effect that John mentions, and this individual personality coming out in an intimate and humorous way made an actor more human and not some idealized frozen icon graven in light, as in silents. NIce presentation, as usual, John, btw.
Cinerama had three surround speakers, left, right, and center, switched manually, literally by a person sitting at the audio console. Perspecta didn't switch the mono track to one of the three screen speakers at a time. It dynamically and smoothly varied the volume of each speaker individually, so the sound could go to one only, any two, or all three in varying amounts with split-second timing. For example, a full orchestra playing would come from all three screen speakers, and if a cymbal crashed on the right, the right speaker would get louder and fade back just for the duration of the crash. Most of the time, the effect was indistinguishable from sound recorded and played with three channels because, like Dolby, it took into consideration psycho-acoustic listener considerations (I've studied Perspecta articles and patents and attended a theater screening of a Perspecta feature).
The sound of the chalk on the board is very pleasing
shaggy!
What is a chalk board??
Filmmaker IQ Thanks for making these. Learning so much from it. The way the videos are layed out and the way you explain the topics is just great.
Your videos on insight to filmhistory, are amazing. I think I've said that before, but such an amazing yet underrated channel, deserves to hear it again.
Good job, John, you're one of the few TH-camrs who I can't wait for when they will upload their next masterpiece. So keep up the good work
MDMart you are so right His history lessons are phenomenal
❤enjoyed your content used on my final project very knowledgeable
ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL DOCUMENTARY!!!! I have long been interested in the technological elements of sound recording -- the transition from acoustical recording to electrical recording, Vitaphone, sound-on-film, etc -- but I still learned much in this video. The sound clips from the early days are priceless. This is possibly the best documentary on "the coming of sound" that I have seen. Thanks for creating it and posting it.
Bill Chambers Thank you for the kind words - comments like that really do mean a lot to us :)
+Filmmaker IQ Could you cover or have you covered the faster frame rates used today as well as the Audio High Sample Rates is it not over kill? Great series Thanks for sharing it.
Check out History of Frame Rate:
th-cam.com/video/mjYjFEp9Yx0/w-d-xo.html
I talk a little about High Sampling Rate in th-cam.com/video/S9cP1WHL0Zo/w-d-xo.html
I like 96KHz personally (to me anything higher is overkill), there's a lively debate in the comment section regarding that.
I find your videos utterly amazing, you speak with such enthusiasm, knowledge and love for cinema and its history it's just infectious to watch. It's always just brilliant.
Brilliant. I haven't seen a video of yours in a while. I was so excited when I saw this pop up in my subscription feed. Time to put on popcorn and soak this in:)
The Quality of your content is just incredible.
wow! excellent as ever! Your videos always throws light on every aspect of the topic you chose. Thanks!
Working my way through your back catalog. This was really well done. I knew some high level information but you really filled in all the details. Loving watching your presentation style.
I discovered you channel a few days ago with "The history "The history and science of Color film" and now this - loving your videos a lot. So informative and interesting, and very well researched and presented. Thanks!
Great show John, I'm always amazed by the information you are able to provide. I know these shows aren't easy to produce, but don't wait so long next time to put out your next piece;-)
I am always excited getting a new vivid course like this on film history ((-:
Top quality from John as always. Thank you for your hard work, it was really educational.
I'm incredibly happy to find this channel. I've been working in cg for 10 years now, and have learned a lot from your video's! Keep up the good work!
You always inspire me, John. I am busy making something great. Thanks.
Once again amazing video! Good job to the Filmmaker IQ crew.
I'm really enjoying learning from these! Thank you!
Great Video! It really came in handy when I had to prepare for an exam
The information itself is awesome but I especially love the commentary at the end. Your passion is so real!
Can I just say, getting to listen to your courses is the reason why I wash dishes in my household. 😂
Amazing video as always
Thank you
Nice, I was waiting for this particular video for a while. Great job
Wow! How inspiring! This is so helpful as always! THANK YOU FOR WHAT YOU GUYS DO!
I honestly learnt more from this video than almost a whole term of learning about sound for film at film school!
Excellent channel and format.
I really enjoyed this John..You are brilliant!!! Love your energy!
Fantastic video, thank you for this!
T his is a great, informative video! Thanks for explaining the history of sound in film in an easy-to-understand way.
I don't know what it is about John Hess, but I like his presentation. Anyone else would be boring to me. I sat through lectures like this in school that were painful but John keeps it interesting for me.
a very well researched documentary. thanks.
It took me eight years to find "Filmmaker IQ", but these are so well done and easy to understand.
Boy I just discovered your channel. Am I going to bingewatch everything ? YES SIR !
Thank you John! That was fascinating!
That was pretty awesome. Appreciate your passion as well! Thanks for lesson.
A great lesso. You are amazing at keepung me focussed and keeping the spark there
Such passion John, that ending really was a statement from you to your love of cinema! Another great video, with amazing excerpts! Thank you so much! ;)
My god, what a great video! Thank you so much!
I love your history videos. It’s so soothing to watching and learn. Well presented and enjoyable. Thank you
Thank you, great information learning great things from your channel. Keep it up
Great channel!!! :) You put information in a way it is impossible to stop watching! :D Thanks, awesome job! :)
Taking on the fact that I love to edit videos, including greenscreen, recording video, and special effects, this channel is AMAZING.
Another great episode. What about an episode talking about cinema's resolution? "from 35mm to 8k"
i would love that.
Emm, actually ordinary 35mm film from 1960s have digital resolution equivalent of about 4k (depending on film stock used and equipment), and 70mm IMAX is about 9.3k. This is the main reason why digital cinema novadays still lags far behind film in terms of actual sharpness.
I'd rather make title something like "From 8mm to IMAX", and only mention digital projection (2k, 4k, and future 8k) in the end.
Artūrs Savickis I don't know about the comparison between 35mm resolution from 4K, but it's sound plausible. But most movies today are shooted in digital cameras (As RED, for example), there's a documentary of Keanu Reeves talking just about that, called "Side by Side", and saying pretty much that tradicional cinema will ended up dying, as digital cameras starts to get each time more and more available and cheap
About "sharpeness", I have to disagree, digital cameras shooted PIXEL by PIXEL, there is no "film grain", for example in digital cinema. If you look many movies shot on film, and that later on were converted to Blu-Ray, you'll notice that many of them, have a very grainy image, that's not happen on digital cinema.
Cinema standard has been 2k for the past 100 years
Great video! One thing that I found particularly interesting was that larger theaters would have an orchestra in the pit playing the music while the movie was projected above. A recent phenomenon is for symphony orchestras in larger cities to play the scores for movies, such as Star Wars or E.T. , live, while the movie is projected on a screen above. So it turns out that this is not new at all, but a revival of an old tradition!
Great, excellent as always. thank you
I loved the passionate sign-off!
glad to have seen this video considering that nearly all of us take sound in films for granted because nowadays we focus on the fancy CGIs
I love your videos, I have been using them in music class for my middle school students very well put together.
Wow, the colours of fantasia are amazing. Great vid as always!
I was wondering what the next videowas going to be. Another great lesson in film. I love this kind of history
great lesson on sound in film!
Thank you for helping with my exam revision. You saved me a lot of time! I have now subscribed! :D
Immensely informative and entertaining, thank you!
Thank you for this great, intresting and entertaining video!
Thanks John
Another very informative episode.
This was well done. Thanks for the info!
This was awesome , I'm glad I subed to this channel.
I also did that!
Great stuff, Thanks for the knowledge
Excellent Essay! Thank You!
One of my old flatmates, who's a sound engineer met Mr and Mrs Dolby. I was so impressed lol. He said Dolby was very nice.
Great work !!! As always...
Excellent presentation!
Well-Done & Quite Enlightening
John, I really enjoy these history lessons. I think most of my peers in Hollywood have no clue of what this history is. Thank you so much. Looking forward to more of your work.
Awesome as always!!!
As always : really good episode :)
B-R-A-V-O!!! Great job!!! Thanks for the journey :)
Great informative video, I teach video production and showed this to my classes for our intro to sound unit!
Very good documentary - although when talking about the 1976 version of A STAR IS BORN, you showed a poster for the Judy Garland version from 1954.
Long wait, well worth it !
All this time, I have never seen the Jazz Singer and never knew that only a couple parts of the movie have talking. The rest of this video is fascinating!
Dude, awesome channel! Subscribed!
Amazing, thanks for your service to the humanity!
Great lessons for good filmmaker.
Kudos on those closing remarks!
I think this is the greatest TH-cam channel. Such fantastic work, you know whats up! U still making these wonderful videos?
Wonderfully done
The best history lesson ever. Thanks
Fantastic video. Thank you.
There was also Eugene Augustin Lauste who "exhibited a sound film in the United States, possibly the first-ever American showing of a movie using sound-on-film technology" in 1911. From Wikipedia.
I must say that as a film sound educator, this really hit all of the right points and was incredibly informative and concise. However, I'm hugely disappointed that you didn't mention Dolby Atmos, which has now been around for a couple of years and is really the pinnacle of theatrical sound at 64 channels. It should have at least been given an honorable mention.
Outstanding! This might be the best explanationof what makes movies great entertainment.
Excellent presentation, thank you !
My family goes back in showbusiness before there was electricity.
This is a great review !
Bill P.
Ur channel deserves more subs
The organisation is wonderful
Damn John, this stuff is fantastic. You're doing phenomenal work. It's almost criminal that this has so relatively few fews. I guess people generally don't watch TH-cam video longer than about 10 minutes. It's a shame, they're missing out on some brilliant content. Cheers!
Jesus, I'm going through your videos and you have gone through an entire college course. BRAVO! I am not sure if people like you understand how much you are having an impact on the popularisation and accessibility to knowledge. When Aronofsky said that the Internet is more than enough for you to learn about filmmaking and then put it into practice, I understand what he had meant. A low bow from everyone for your work!
Great shit yo! Keep it coming
It was a wonderful episode!!! Like,like, like!!!
Amazing! Such an inspiration end for me who would like to be a sound designer ^^
Great as always..
The best educational channel I know now