Hello. Hello. Welcome back. This is the lecture where I'm going to talk about sound and movies and the, addition of sound. You know, movies were actually silent for about the first 30 years, which is quite a long time, actually. Movies had established themselves, and silent films were, you know, something that audiences were very much in tune with. And then along comes sound and everything's kind of turned upside down and part of what I want to talk about with this is sort of the history of that, because it's pretty interesting that think about all the things that changed as a result of sound technology coming into play in the mid 1920s. Before we get into that, though, I actually wanted to sort of just draw your attention over to, what's kind of a historical anecdote or a little footnote here. There's a film that was created in 1894, in Thomas Edison's laboratories here in the United States. You know, Thomas Edison was involved in inventing motion picture technology around the same time that the Lumiere brothers were doing it over in France. So Edison had a lot of experiments going with movies and cameras and as well as sound and, you know, doing a lot of things with, with sound, not for film necessarily, but, other applications. So in 1894, there's this film that gets made in Edison's laboratory that's referred to as the Dixon Experimental Sound Film, because Dixon was the name of the, scientist, the engineer that was working on it. And it's really the first attempt to create a sound film. It's a film that has actually a soundtrack, and it's kind of, I think I thought it was kind of interesting. That's why I'm pulling it out here, because it's really the first, in a sense, the first sound film, and it's back in 1894 now. I mean, movies at this point wouldn't have sound in terms of commercially available movies and mainstream movies and things like that. They wouldn't have sound for about another 30 years or more. But this kind of represents a very early interest, at least in incorporating sound with film. So I wanted to play this for you. It's kind of a strange film. It's not. It was never designed to be shown really to audiences or exhibited. It was really just an experiment that happened in the lab. But what you're going to see in this film is, a shot of, person playing the violin into a cone and that sound is being recorded onto a little cylinder. And then two of the, scientists that were working in the laboratory in the foreground, dancing with each other to that, music of the violin. So here it is. Here's the Dixon experimental sound film. So, as I was saying, you know, that's kind of a little historical footnote. It doesn't mark the beginning of any real application of sound in movies, movies would be silent for, about the next 30 years before sound came into play and really changed everything. you know, as I mentioned before, sound was, a huge, huge, thing in movies, and it affected almost everybody that was involved in movies in a lot of different ways. And, so I wanted to lay out some of that, and I wanted to first start by kind of talking about some of the motivations for incorporating sound in film. So, you know, we had 30 years of silent films, and now all of a sudden we have sound films. So why is that? Well, first of all, obviously the technology becomes practical. It becomes something that can be actually effectively used by filmmakers. The stuff that they were doing with, you know, Edison's laboratory with that experimental sound film wouldn't have wouldn't have worked for really most movies. So the technology becomes available. Films can be now created with sound in the in the mid 1920s. Okay. So that's a fact. That's one factor. Another factor is that the exhibition, one of the things that made sound appealing actually, is the, fact that, it's pretty expensive to show a film if it doesn't have a soundtrack, if it's silent. And the reason for that is that silent films weren't actually shown in complete silence. You wouldn't go to the theater and sit for two hours and in the dark in silence. The film would be accompanied by a soundtrack, and that soundtrack was performed live. It might be a full orchestra if it was a big movie palace type theater. smaller theaters might have a piano player or an organist or something like that, but there would be some kind of live musical accompaniment with the film, and that cost money, you know, for film, for theater owners, they had to pay musicians. Musicians were unionized, and they had to shell out a fair amount of money every time they showed a film. because of that. So sound comes along and now the soundtrack is recorded on the film, it arrives with the film. All they have to do is hook it up to there sound system in their theater and that's it. They don't have to pay any more musicians. So it's one of these situations like we see, you know, in a lot of different places and throughout history where people get replaced by technology by machines. As a result, we've got now a lot of musicians that are out of work, but theater owners are maybe doing a little bit better with their profits. Another factor is that the film industry faced a lot of competition from radio. This is 1920s again. Audiences are staying home. It's sort of this recurrent theme in in movies, you know, bringing audiences out of their homes to see films. We talked a little bit about that in terms of the, motivation behind widescreen movies. Movies are always competing with other things. You know, nowadays it's home theaters and high definition video and other stuff like that. But anyway, so film industry is, you know, in 1920s, people are staying home and listening to the radio, you know, you might sit around the radio and listen to a story or a radio drama on the radio or, or the The Lone Ranger or some something along those lines instead of going out to see a movie. So that's another factor. Also, movies are becoming more complex. the narratives, the stories in movies are becoming more elaborate. So, in movies, what you'd have is a title card that would show up on the screen. And so the actor would, you know, mouth their dialog on screen. You wouldn't hear what they were saying, but you'd see them moving their lips, and then there would be a title card that would show up, which would have their little bit of dialog there. The more you have to keep cutting away to those title cards, the more you're interrupting the flow of the images and it becomes more about reading the thing than watching a movie. And if you're trying to tell elaborate stories that involve complex characters and and scenarios and things like that, you might need to you might find yourself needing to cut two more of those title cards in order to keep the audience aware of what's actually happening. So, that sort of interrupts the experience of watching a movie. It's not exactly, you know, what you might say, cinematic. It kind of makes the film less visual, perhaps. So that's another motivation for adopting this sound technology. So early on. There's a couple of technologies that are brought along. One of them is called Vitaphone, and Vitaphone was developed by Warner Brothers Studios, and Vitaphone is a sound with film system. So what that means is that the sound and the picture are actually separate elements. You have your film running through the projector that has just the picture on it, and then next to the projector you have what's kind of like a little turntable that's playing the soundtrack from what's basically like a record. Okay, so there's two separate things that are that are going hopefully simultaneously. Vitaphone, though, was very problematic. It was, a system that was prone to going out of sync. You know, if you've ever played a record, you know how this goes. If you have a little scratch or a piece of dust or something, the record can skip. Projectors, from time to time, will skip or the film might jump a little bit in the, in the gate of the projector. So if that happens to either the projector or to the record on the turntable, your whole movie now is out of sync. And obviously that's going to create a big problem when you're showing the film in a theater and you've got a whole audience there, and then all of a sudden you've got to deal with this audio being, you know, off behind the guy on the right there is a projector that's a film projector, and the projection booth of a theater. And then in the middle there is, on the floor is a little turntable, little thing that looks like a table, and there's a record on it. And the guy on the left is holding another record. So that's the system. That's the sound with film system that Vitaphone used, the other system, which became really this system that we use today is a system that was, originally called Movietone. And Movietone was developed by Fox Studio, and it's a sound on film system. And what that means is that the sound track is actually literally printed on the film material itself. So if you looked at the piece of film, you'd see the picture on it, and then on the side you would see the, what looks like a sort of wave form and that's, an image. It's a it's a photographed image of the sound and the projector has a, mechanism for reading that waveform and turning it from, you know, a waveform into actual sound. So it's a it's a great system because if the projector goes out of sync or it skips or the film breaks or something happens, there's no way for the sound to get thrown off. They're both, on the same material. Okay. So that was a that was really the system that took off. And in, in many cases in most cases, that's still what's used today. You know, technology is changing. And there are other ways of doing it. But essentially that's that's the common way that it works. Now the soundtrack is printed right on the film. All right. So a little more history here in 1926, Warner Brothers makes this film releases this film called Don Juan, which stars a couple of the big movie stars of the, silent era, John Barrymore and Mary Astor. And Don Juan is a very popular film. And it's a it's the first film that has this Vitaphone technology. It's the first popular sound film to use this Vitaphone technology. Now, the thing about Don Juan is that it didn't have dialog. What it has is a recorded musical score. So it's not exactly the big earth shattering thing that audiences are experiencing, because it's really, if you think about it, it's not terribly different from what they were already used to, which is that the characters don't talk. You read title cards and you hear music along with it. except that the music is coming through the sound system instead of being performed live, which probably is actually a step backwards if you think about it. I'd rather I think have live music than have my music, you know, coming out of the PA system. But in any event, the film was pretty popular. And also, by the way, you know, it use that Vitaphone technology, but it didn't have dialog. So the whole problem that would show up with the sound and the picture going out of sync wouldn't have been as big of an issue, because if the music is a little bit off with the picture. It's not a huge, problem. It's not going to probably be noticed. Whereas if dialog is off, even just a fraction of a second, you're going to notice. You're going to see that the the words don't match up with the lips of the characters. So here's just a this is a picture of a billboard advertising Don Juan. And okay, so 1927 is a big year. this is the year that Warner Brothers releases a movie called The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson and the Jazz Singer is a monumental film because it contains recorded dialog. It uses the Vitaphone technology, and it has actual talking on screen, which is something that audiences really hadn't seen before. And it was a big deal. Audiences were really excited about this idea of hearing their actors speak on camera on the screen. And The Jazz Singer was a very popular film. it's a sort of a strange film, actually. If you ever get a chance to see it, it's kind of a combination. It's not all talking. I mean, it's not all sound. There is, the majority of it actually is silent and you still have title cards. But then there are these moments where the characters do start to talk to each other and even sing. And, so that was something that audiences really responded to in a really positive way. And it, it sent a pretty strong message to the studios that this is the direction that movies needed to go in. This is what was really going to get audiences excited and bring audiences out to theaters. And so, you know, this, this, movie particularly The Jazz Singer, and the Jazz Singer is usually the film that people identify as the first sound film, the first talking film. It's not technically the first sound film, but it is the first popular, film that contains dialog, recorded dialog. So that's 1927. In the spring of 1928, the industry pretty much completely switches over to Movietone, and, silent films kind of become a thing of the past. This is a very quick and very radical shift. It's not something that happens over the course of, you know, 5 or 10 years or it gets phased in or something like that, like some other technologies get sort of phased in. This is something that happened almost sort of overnight. I mean, it was a very quick, quick transition. And as I was saying earlier, it had a major, major impact on almost everybody that was involved in movies. So I wanted to talk about some of the effects that this had on, the industry. Okay. And, one of the things you hear a lot and, you'll see to some extent in the film we're going to see today, Singin’ in the Rain is the, the problem that a lot of actors had with with sound film, you know, there were a lot of people that were very popular and very successful as as movie stars and actors in the silent era that couldn't make it into the sound era because they didn't have voices that, were, very good. You know, they never had to talk. they just had to look good and act, but but without ever having to speak dialog. So there are a lot of people, a lot of actors that just can't make it, they just don't do well in the, in the sound, film business. And so it ends a lot of their careers and that's a big problem, not only for those actors, but also for the studios that they work for, because studios have a lot of money invested in promoting these actors, and they want them to be able to make the transition. That's in the studio's best interest to, have their movie stars, succeed and make this transition to sound film. But some of them just can't do it. Despite the fact that studios would hire speech coaches and try to train the actors to speak, train their voices to work in movies. But, some can make the transition and some can't. another thing that happens is a lot of new writers get hired because now there's all this new, this new way of, telling stories, sort of, you know, you've got all this new dialog that can happen, in silent films, you had to have a title card if you wanted to have dialog that was important. As I said before, that if you have too many of those title cards, you're really interrupting the flow of the movie. now, you know, we've got sound, so we hear the actors talking. It's not interrupting anything. And so writers have to be hired to write that dialog. And the role of the writer, changes a little bit and Hollywood has to hire new writers that can actually write dialog. Another thing that happens is you've got this whole new genre of movies called musicals, which are very popular at the time and have been throughout history, somewhat popular. I wouldn't say they're terribly popular today, but they still are a genre. And you still see a certain number of musicals, that are released now. But back then, movies, movie musicals were extremely popular. And part of it was that this was something that audiences had never really seen before. and particularly audiences that wouldn't have maybe had an opportunity to see a real sort of Broadway style musical in the past. If you didn't live near a big city, you really didn't have an opportunity to experience that kind of entertainment. The the Broadway style musical. but now with movie musicals, you can go down to your local theater and you can see something that's very much a kind of Broadway style show. on the movie screen. So there's a lot of audiences, out there that, that want to see that and movie musicals explode and become very popular. you know, obviously movie musicals wouldn't work at all in the silent era. I mean, it just couldn't happen. So it they owe their existence really to sound. another thing that happens is that the production costs go up for movies. Movies become more expensive to make. You've got all this new technology, so you have to have people that operate it. You need people to be able to engineer the sound and record the sound, mix the sound, not to mention just the equipment itself and the, the, facilities that you have to shoot in. You have to have a soundstage, you have to have, a place to shoot the film that's going to be quiet and isolated from the rest of what's going on. You know, you can't have 2 or 3 movies being shot in the same studio space because there's going to be too much noise. You know, you have to isolate the productions. So, movies become more expensive to make. Another thing that happens is the international market for movies kind of dries up a little bit, you know, if you think about it, silent movies, had the potential to be very international because it's really easy to just replace the title cards with whatever language you want them to be in. So, movies could be very easily sent to other countries and imported and exported. And there was this sort of exchange of, films that was was really negatively impacted by the, invention of sound. Because now when you've got sound, you've got your actors talking, right, and they're talking in a language. and if you want to show that film in another country that doesn't speak that language, you have to either have subtitles, which audiences typically prefer to not have if they have a choice, or you can dub it. But as you know, if you've ever seen a movie that's dubbed that usually just never works. It's often just kind of funny. It's it's usually not not a very effective way of solving that problem. So as a result, movies become more nationalistic, I guess. And there's not as much of an exchange of films across borders. Audiences, in most cases, not all the time, but if an audience has a choice of seeing a film in their own language or seeing a film in another language, a lot of times they're going to choose to see one in their in their own language. Films are made all over the world, but you go down to your local movieplex, and you're probably going to see primarily movies that are in English. So movies are, less, less international. Another factor is that a lot of theater musicians lose their jobs. And we talked about this earlier, but, you know, they're replaced by this automated soundtrack. So there's not really a need for live musicians anymore. So you got a lot of musicians now that are unfortunately out of work in, in sound films, the camera has to be silenced in some way, which means that it has to either be blimped, you know, cameras make noise, they're mechanical devices. At least, they did make noise back then. And cameras nowadays are much quieter and not so much of a problem. But back then they were noisy and they didn't have to be quiet because nobody was recording sound. But now the camera's got to be isolated somehow, because it's going to make noise, and that noise is going to be picked up on the microphone. So you got to maybe blimp the camera, which means you sort of encased in, sound proofing, material to kind of muffle the sound, or you even have to put it in a booth or behind glass or something like that to isolate it from where the microphone is, so that, again, the sound isn't picked up on the microphone. The actors that are on camera speaking their lines can't just go anywhere and talk. They have to speak into a microphone so they can't travel around as much. Nowadays, actors have wireless microphones and, sound is technology is a lot better. But in early silent films they would have to speak into a microphone that would be positioned somewhere in the scene. So you might have two actors sitting across the table from each other talking into, a flower pot or in this, a vase or something in the center of the table. And they can't get up and leave. They can't walk around. They can't even turn their head the other way, because if they do, the sound is going to be lost. So the upshot of that is that movies, early sound films are actually very un cinematic. They're visually very boring. The cameras are locked down, the actors are locked down, everything is very static. And they're just visually, they're they're very flat and very uninteresting compared to what filmmakers were doing in the silent era, where they were able to move the cameras all over the place and have a lot of movement and kinetic energy and all kinds of stuff like that. And then sound comes along and movies get become very, static and very, stationary. one more little, effect here, of sound that I wanted to mention is that the, small theaters are now able to more effectively compete with the big movie palaces. And the reason for that is that the soundtrack is more or less the same in the small theater as it would be in the big movie theater in the silent era. If you go to see a film in a big movie palace in a city somewhere, you'd probably be seeing it with a full orchestra and that that sound would be very different from what you'd see in, little small town theater where you might have a little piano player or something like that. So now with sound technology, the soundtrack comes with the film and what you see and hear in the small theater is very much similar. You know, the sound quality might not be quite the same, but it's essentially the same thing as what you see in the big movie palace. So that means that there's not as much incentive for people to go to the big city to travel if they need to, to see a movie there, when they can see it in their own home town theater. So, it's a little bit of a boost for the, the small, theater owners. Okay, so that’s some of the history. I wanted to define a few terms for you, again, like we've done in other, lectures and show you some examples. And just to sort of make these terms clearer for you and, more real by actually giving you some real clips to look at here. But, there's a few terms that I wanted to go over first term is, is this term synchronous sound sometimes referred to just as sync sound. And that's a term that refers to any kind of sound that matches the picture and was recorded at the same time. So you might have a situation where you've got two actors on screen that are talking on camera, and while they're talking, the sound is being recorded. Right. That would be a logical sort of sync sound situation. The sound and the picture are being recorded at the same time, okay. Their voices are being recorded and the microphone at the same time as a picture. So that's the basics of sync sound, synchronous sound. Let me show you. Here's a little clip that just has a little bit of sync sound in it. I'm not following you. My car is parked over there. In Smart Park? No on Front Street. I parked in Smart Park. So at the end of the next block we’ll separate, Tyrone Street. Yep. The Iceland sign is half way. It's the halfway point. Iceland is. It's kind of like that point in a relationship you know where you suddenly realize it's not going to last forever. You know, you can see the end in sight. Tyrone Street okay. So then there's non synchronous sound. Non synchronous sound is any kind of sound that's not recorded during the shoot. So things like sound effects what is sometimes referred to as Foley sound effects which are sound effects that imitate sort of the everyday sounds of things like, you know, you might have a Foley studio that would record sound effects, might, you know, be doing things like, footsteps on, tile floor or something. So, you know, they might have a little section of tile on the floor of the studio, and then they're just recording somebody walking in place, and then that sound can be added to the picture later on. in some cases, it's easier to do it that way than to try to record the sound while you're shooting. It's just more economical, actually, you can shoot more quickly if you don't have to worry about the sound. And for things like that, those sound effects that are pretty basic, that's it's very simple to add them to the edit after the film has been shot during what's referred to as sometimes this post-production phase. So after the shooting is taking place, usually during the editing or even after the editing, those sound effects can be added very easily. And it's, it's much easier way than worrying about recording them while you're shooting. I've got an example here. Here's a clip that has some non synchronous sound, and it. Not very sporting to fire on an unarmed opponent. I thought you were supposed to be good. Aren't you the good man? Come on, Deckard, show me. Proud of yourself, little man. This is for Zora. This is for Pris. I'm right here. You've got to shoot straight. Doesn't seem to be good enough. So, you know, obviously, Harrison Ford's fingers aren't actually being broken in this scene. So that's non synchronous. we know that that's not a synchronous sound. And it's probably, you know, somebody in a studio somewhere cracking, I don't know, a piece of that twig or cracking a piece of celery or something like that to imitate the sound of the bones cracking. Probably also the crashing through the wall. Rutger Hauer's hand is not synchronous sound. That's a sound effect that's added later on. All right. Okay. So those two terms synchronous sound and non synchronous sound are terms that are used a lot by filmmakers. You hear those terms in in the production process, you know, used to be shooting something with sync sound or shooting with non sync sound. The next two terms that I want to go over with you, here are terms that are referred to more in the context of film analysis. Film study. These are terms that are not so much used by filmmakers, but are more used by film scholars, film reviewers, even people that are writing about film, not making film. So the first term is diegetic sound. And what that means is any kind of sound that's generated by something that we see on the screen, which could be synchronous sound and could be non synchronous sound. And there's that's one of the things I wanted to try to clarify is that there's overlap here with these terms. but keep in mind synchronous and asynchronous are production terms. Diegetic and non diegetic are more film analysis, film studies terms. But anyway so diegetic sound is any kind of sound that's generated or comes from something that we can see on the screen. Okay. So for instance, in that clip from Blade Runner that I just showed you with Harrison Ford, all the sound of his fingers cracking, the sound of the characters talking, the crashing through the wall. That's all diegetic sound, okay, because it's all coming from something that we can actually see on screen. Non diegetic sound is any kind of sound that doesn't come from something that we see on screen. So sound that comes sort of from off screen somewhere. Things like voiceover narration where you have somebody talking, narrating the film, but we don't see them on camera. We just hear their voice coming from somewhere. music would be considered non diegetic sound. Also, when it doesn't come from something that we see, you know, if we see like a band playing in a scene in a film that's diegetic sound, because we see where it's coming from. But if the music just appears from nowhere, that's not a diegetic sound. I have a clip for you. And so I wanted to play this, and then we can sort of pick out what's the diegetic sound and what is the non diegetic sound. So the diegetic sound would be things like the sound of the engine and the sound of the wheels on the road. The sound of the door slamming. Those are all diegetic sounds. And the nondiegetic sound would be the music that we hear. Because it's not coming from the radio or the car. It's coming from somewhere offscreen. We don't know where it's coming from. As far as what's synchronous sound and what's non synchronous sound. In that clip, that's a little more difficult because as just as a viewer, we don't always know what’s synchronous sound and what's non synchronous sound. For instance the sound of the car and the sound of the engine and the wheels and all that would probably, if I had to guess, would probably not have been recorded as non synchronous sound. That probably would have been added later in the studio, because it would just be a very easy thing to add. instead of having to worry about recording those sounds while you're shooting, just adding it later on. Now, I don't know that because I don't have any real privileged information about this scene. I wasn't there on the set, and I didn't see what was shot sync sound and what wasn't shot sync sound. And, so it's a little bit hard to know that. And that's part of the reason that we have these two sets of terms, because the diegetic sound and non-digital sound, those are terms that can be used by anybody that's watching the film. You don't need to know anything about how it was shot to to use those terms. Whereas sync sound and non sync sound, we kind of have to have some knowledge of the production in order to really know what's sync or not sync like that clip with Harrison Ford. I know that that's not sync, because I know that they're not cracking his fingers. Other things that are a little more subtle, like somebody's closing a door or footsteps or something like that, it's kind of hard to know whether that was sync or non sync. So that's why we have these other terms diegetic and non diegetic. Okay. Let me say a few things about the film that we're going to look at. It's a film called Singin in the Rain. It's a classic movie. It's a movie musical. And that's part of the reason that we're looking at it. I mentioned that movie musicals sort of owe their existence to sound film. So this is one example. I think one of the great examples of, a film that's in that genre of movie, movie musical. But, more than that, this is a film that is kind of, self-reflexive in a way. It's a film about filmmaking and the film business. And the story of Singin in the Rain is actually connected to the story of sound film coming into popularity. The characters in the film the you're going to see are actors, primarily, people that are, working in Hollywood as actors and performers and are having to deal with this transition from silent film to sound film and all of the situations that come up as a result of that, a lot of which are based on real issues that, number them or, you know, issues that I've just gone through with you with the transition from silent to sound. it's a funny movie. I think you're going to enjoy it. It's a it's a film that is humorous. And I think it takes a very sort of lighthearted approach to Hollywood and the whole sort of business of, of Hollywood and, and movie stars and things like that. So let me give you the questions here. so there are two questions this time. the first one is: In what ways does The Singin in the Rain comment on the transition from silent to sound films. So what is it? What do they tell us about that transition? What kinds of things do they, explore in this movie? What are some of the issues that come out of that and the second question is, to talk about in what ways the Singin in the Rain poke fun at Hollywood. this is a movie. Like I said, that sort of takes a kind of lighthearted look at Hollywood. I mean, it is a Hollywood movie, but at the same time, I think it kind of has a little bit of fun with the whole sort of, idea of celebrity and the idea of what it means to be a movie star, actually, and, and all of that, and, and so it kind of pokes fun at some of those, some of those things. So those are the two questions. Enjoy the film.