How do movies shot on film have sound?
In: Technology
For a long time the film had a visual audio track on one side, it’s a wavy sine wave looking thing that essentally works the same way as a record groove does, only using light. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/57e9a1c0f7e0ab213fe99f4a/1493060981670-OAI5ANMFURAHOO6XF2OQ/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kAfmdXy9ec-y8TIq8PMnpTdZw-zPPgdn4jUwVcJE1ZvWQUxwkmyExglNqGp0IvTJZUJFbgE-7XRK3dMEBRBhUpwbzk5AuxzBqMumNHG0SdUDNP33wQIjEXYrnTj0VC0j3ywzCrVVLkBVxPu87tXqfqM/Screen+Shot+2016-12-01+at+5.20.55+PM.png
the audio was recorded using a phonograph and was played simultaneously with the film. the movies on film have now been put together in one thing using computers/technology to combine them together. Fun fact… back in the days of silent films when they showed them in theaters they would have a musician playing the soundtrack live along with the showing.
The audio is recorded simultaneously. It is usually on a separate device.
You know the clapper board you would see someone clack when saying action? That was designed to give a distinct sound that could be coordinated with the video to help sync the two.
Originally on the first talking films, the audio was recorded on a separate phonograph. This was then duplicated along with the film and the phonograph disc was played concurrently as the film.
By far the most successful method of this type was the Vitaphone system invented by Warner Bros studios. This proved widely commercially successful in the film “The Jazz Singer” in 1927, although it had been used in films for several years previous.
Fact- one of the main reasons for the *Test Pattern* at the beginning of old films was to synchronize the audio playback.
As you might imagine, sound synchronization with this method could be pretty problematic.
Years before *The Jazz Singer* the inventors Lee DeForest and Theodore Case created a technique for encoding sound directly on film using an electro-mechanical shutter system. The sound was recorded onto a phonograph. The phonograph was then used to drive the shutter used to expose the film. This produced a wavy stripe on a film similar to the grooves in a photograph.
To reproduce the audio, a light was shone through the strip of film onto a specialized light sensitive vacuum tube. This produced a varying electrical current which could drive a speaker. This kind of technology wasn’t originally used for film, but as a more reliable way to store audio for radio broadcasts that was less sensitive to damage like scratches. However DeDorest & Case began producing a number of films containing an integrated audio stripe to one side in the mid 1920’s. These were modestly successful but not widely played.
Because of the unreliability of methods like Vitaphone, national movie producers gradually looked for a more robust technology.
Case, Deforest and another employee became embroiled in legal battles over the status of patents, their relationship soured, and the company they formed dissolved. Case began working with Fox Film Corporation and using what he had learned, developed the Fox Movietone process. The first major commercial film using the process was *Sunrise* which later won several academy awards.
While it was somewhat technically complex, Movietone proved to be very robust and reliable. It produced excellent sound quality and gradually became industry standard. In fact, many modern 35mm projectors are capable to run historical 35mm movietone films. In the 1990’s the audio strip was transitioned to a digital rather than audio format. In this scheme the pattern on the strip resembles a bar code rather than a phonograph groove. But the overall format of the film is the same.
Latest Answers