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Sound in Film

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Saved by Ian Stephens
on September 30, 2009 at 9:29:42 am
 

The relationship between the visual and aural in film has been at work since its inception.  Sound, which in the loosest sense of the term refers to any auditory accompaniment to the images on the screen-this could include dialogue, sound effects, music, and the like- impacts and influences the parameters of the cinematic experience.  The puropse of this article will be to include a brief history of how sound in film originated, with special regard to the implications of the radical introduction of commercially-viable "sound films" (which refers to the synchronization of the film's audio with the film itself). 

 

History

 

Although "sound films" were not widespread until the 1920's, the pairing of audio with image dates back to early cinema.  Thomas Edison was involved in some of the earliest attempts to marry sound with film, which resulted in what Walter Murch calls "officially the oldest synchronous film in existence" (filmsound),the Dickson Experimental Sound Film, which was produced in 1894.  Kinetoscopes were being produced by 1913 that were fitted with special phonographs that provided a rudimentary synchronization with the images. In this particlular setup, "synchronization was achieved by connecting the projector at one end of the theater and the phonograph at the other end with a long pulley" (filmsound).  These marriages of sound and film were far from perfect, however, and often suffered from a lack of accuracy in matching the audio to film. It should be noted that, throughout this early period in cinema, films in theatres were often accompanied by audio in the form of musical score, whether from record or live production.

 

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