We have digital cameras in this generation but in old generation where there was film role, how did the film captured video in motion (not photo) on the top of it how did it record audio? Were these in the same equipment or different audio video equipment?
In: Technology
Film itself is actually incredible, by your question I can tell your not technical but film essentially is just material that is reactive to light, the lens shapes the light in such a way where it can fall on the film in the right way, same as a picture, only difference is that instead of winding your camera after each shot there’s a motor that moves film in a row behind the lens at 24 frames per second on average. The film itself literally captures light and after processing and removing the chemicals that keep the film together that’s where you have a motion picture. Audio was a big breakthrough as well as most motion picture film has the ability to “write” the sound waves onto the side of the film. Google it.
In terms of same or different equipment I’m not sure but I know you can record sound directly to film as well.
There’s a smarter every day video on the making of film itself and personally for me in this digital age having a medium that physically capture the photons in a physical means is incredible and brings home the fact that with cloud services you don’t really own your own photos or in the event the internet went down you wouldn’t really have any of that to hand unlike physical pictures but they all have their own pros and cons
The video system using film was called a “movie”. The first movie was done in 1878, and it was silent. For a long time, movies were made without sound, and in some theaters showing them sound, in the form of background music, was provided by a live musician.
The first movie with integrated sound was The Jazz Singer in 1927. The sound was captures on separate equipment, processed through some sophisticated analog equipment, and then added to the film strip as part of the production process.
There were home movie cameras, some of which could capture sound, but professional movies shown in theaters process imagery and sound separately up to the printing process. Even in today’s professional digital movies, this mixing operation combines separate sources to make the product you see.
Film stock is, essentially, the same as photography stock, in which a light sensitive medium (film) is fed through an enclosed device (camera) at a certain speed and the amount of light (natural and/or artificial) gets recorded onto the film. That reel of film is broken up or sectioned into twenty four separate bits or ‘slices’ of film, for each second of captured motion. (I think the 24 frames per second is to do with how our eyes and brains process visual information). They become the individual frames. That’s the basics of how old cameras record visual information.
In older, and home film formats, sound could be captured within the camera, but it was poor quality. Generally, and especially for studio released films, sound is recorded separately from the camera, and/or dubbed in the studio in post production so the sound can be isolated so no unwanted sounds or noises that would have been recorded ‘live’ can be heard.
For film, the audio is recorded separately, and the two combined later. That’s why movies use clapperboards, and why the name, scene and take number are spoken and written on the board. On the film, you can see the information and on the audio you can hear it. The clapping sound made by snapping the clapper board shut lets you syncronise the sound recording to the film.
Film used in movie cameras is essentially the same as film used in still cameras, but in much longer rolls. A movie camera is specially set up to advance the film, expose one frame, then repeat at the required rate (usually 24 frames per second).
Thinking about your question, the answer sounds fake: the camera was basically taking thousands and thousands of pictures, 24 per second. In professional filmmaking, audio recording is separate from the filming, using overhead boom mikes just out of camera. Home movie cameras (Super8) had the audio recording built into the camera, but it was very low quality. Each reel was about 3 minutes long.
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