Lourenz Marie Balayan: PG. 218-219

• In 1927, numerous of critics despised the sound for movies when the Jazz Singer happened in the "talkie era" because they believed it would ruin the "art of movies."

The Jazz Singer (USA, 1927):
directed by Alan Crosland shows the many experimentations in synchronous sound (image and sound were recorded simultaneously). Although it didn't stir with the public, Warner Brothers were able to break the sound barrier with the genre of musical. Nevertheless the movie was mostly silent, only due to Jolson's musical numbers and changes of dialogue that were in synch sound.

• However, there never was a silent period for they had always been some kind of sound accompanying images of a movie.

• Examples of movies accompanied by sound:

• At the time, the early "100% talkies" were visually boring.
• Equipment then required (synchronous) recording of sound and image.
• The camera stayed put in one place, so actors cannot go far from the microphone, and editing was restricted to the least possible function.
• Therefore, the major source of meaning was the dialogue.

Nathaniel Epting: Pg. 220-221
Directors began to experiment with techniques. (Camera's were housed in soundproof blimp allowing the camera to move in and out of the scene quitetly; microphones with separate channels were placed on the set; overhead sound booms were devised to follow an actor on a set to allow the actor freedom to move around and still be heard).







Formalistic directors remained set to realistic sound recording. An example of such was Eisenstein who thought that synchronous sound "would destroy the flexibility of editing and thus kill the very soul of film art." (220). The problem was that using synchronous sound required more "literal continuity" and Eisenstein's technique (a lot of leaps in space and time) wouldn't fit well with synchronous sound.




Most directors of this sound era prefered nonsynchronous sound--alowing it to be used selectively as Rene Clair believed. Per Rene Clair, "The ear, is just as selective as the eye, and sound can be edited in the same way images can." (221) This allowed for the camera to explore "contrasting information" to the dialogue being heard--a technique the was used a lot by Hitchcock and Ernst Lubitsch. To prove his point, Clair made many musicals where songs replaced dailogue. Many of the scenes from his musicals, such as Le Million, were photographed without sound and the later dubbed when the montage sequences were completed. This technique the Clair used for his musicals became a major approach in sound film production because the musical wasn't trapped by the confinement that the stage provided.






PG.222-223

• American Director, Lubitsch used sound and image nonsychronously to produce a number of witty cnical juxtopsitions.
  • Example: "Beyond the Blue Horizon" sequence in musical Monte Carlo
  • As the heroine sings cheerfully of her optimistic expectations there is a visual symphone of music and natural sounds in the background to create a brilliant example of montage in sound
• Increased realism brought by sound forced acting styles to become more natural
  • no need to compensate visually for lack of dialogue
  • nuances through voice
  • close ups added another advantage
    • could actually mutter something under their breath
• In silent cinema titles used for dialogue would interupt flow of film
  • some directors chose to dramatize visually as much as possible
    • villian showed by kicking a dog
    • heroine showed by halo over head

PG. 224
-In the movie The Magnificent Ambersons, Orson Welles uses sound Montage.
-In one scene at the ball, each dialogue of a certain group of characters over laps the next group and the cycle continues.
-The certain group is characterized by their sound texture. Each age group speaks in a different way .
-The actors do not take a cue, but instead shout at each other simultaneously, mimicking the fashion in which many people do fight.

some of the sound bites-Here are some of the audio from the movie in which you can see the people's arguments overlapping each other.