Saturday, 8 March 2014

Let's Hear It For Sound- Bob Allen

Let's Hear It For Sound



By Bob Allen




In the early days of talking pictures, sound was said by many, to have ruined the motion picture as an art form.

Those who were opposed to sound claimed that the technical requirements of recording, restricted directors, prevented camera mobility, inhibited actors and caused great problems for cameramen.

Many were the dining out stories told, of the power the sound engineers had over directors and the prima donna activities of those responsible for recording.

What is overlooked is the fact that sound not only revitalised the sagging box office takings of a waning industry but also caused a great many technical improvements on the picture side and motion picture production in general.

One of these improvements was the standardisation of camera speed to an exact 24 frames per second. For successful sound recording, speed of the recorder must be constant and for successful reproduction the speed of the reproducer must not only be constant but exactly that of the recorder. Before sound, although there was supposed to be a standard of 16 frames per second, nothing demanded that that speed be adhered to. Cameramen would often over or under crank to help their exposures. Directors would likewise ask for speed variations to give dramatic effect to the action.

However, the main disregard for constant speed of movies was in the cinemas, where projectors equipped with variable speed electric motors would be run fast enough to enable the management to get in an extra show each day. To thwart this, directors would have their camera men crank faster so that the action in his film wouldn't look ridiculous.

Stanley Watkins, the British engineer who was in charge of Western Electric's sound on disc development, investigated cinemas to ascertain what speed cameras should run at for photographing talking pictures. He found that projection speeds varied widely, anything from 80 to 100 feet per minute. He decided upon 90 feet per minute, 24 frames per second, a 50% increase on the supposed 16 frames per second standard.

Regardless of the problems sound is said to have given cinematographers, few people seem aware of the photographic improvements sound brought to black and white cinematography.

For studio interior filming, arc lighting was necessary to expose the slow blue sensitive Orthochromatic film then in use. Red sensitive Panchromatic film had been produced by Kodak as early as 1920 but as it cost more than Ortho, producers were not interested in using it. Its first use on a feature length film was by Robert Flaherty in Samoa for 'Moana'. He used it because it gave much better skin tone to the brown skinned Samoans. Photographed with Orthochromatic film they looked black.

Sound came. The arcs then in use made a loud noise and caused interference on sound equipment. For sound shooting they were out. Cinematographers had to use quiet incandescent lighting which is in the red end of the spectrum, so getting an exposure on blue sensitive Ortho film was almost impossible. Producers had to agree to using Panchromatic film stock with its superior quality and lower lighting possibility.

Prior to the introduction of Panchromatic stock all picture negative was developed 'rack and tank'. The exposed film was wound on to racks holding approximately 200ft. The rack was dunked into a tank of developer for the time required to produce an image, then into a tank of hypo for fixing the image. After a thorough washing to clear away all trace of chemicals, the wet film was wound off the racks by hand, on to large revolving drums in a drying room.

Orthochromatic film could be developed in a low level of illumination containing no blue, known as a 'safelight'. An expert experienced person, known as the 'Negative Developer', watching the latent image emerge on the film was able to judge the desired amount of development by eye.

Because Panchromatic is sensitive to all colours of the spectrum it must be processed in total darkness, visual judgement is not possible. At this time, machine processing was still fairly much in experimental stages and not popular with producers because of the risk of mechanical failure ruining expensive negative.

When optical sound came in, replacing sound on disc, much research went into perfecting machine processing. Rack and Tank was unsatisfactory for sound negative because eddy currents at the top and bottom of the rack caused disastrous photographic density variations. For satisfactory results, the sound negative has to have controlled continuous development, which can only be done satisfactorily in long lengths by a machine. As a result of this, processing machines became safer and even reliable enough to develop the precious picture negative.

To sum up the good sound did for movies:

  • As a result of enthusiasm stimulated by talking pictures box office takings shot up by 50%. In America admissions leapt from 57 million in 1927 to an average of 110 million in 1930. This success partly explains why the film industry survived the Wall Street crash and the Great Depression
  • Standardisation of exact speed ensured movies being projected in all places at all times at the speed and edited pace intended by the director.
  • The adoption of panchromatic film stock resulted in a vast improvement of black and white tonal quality plus because of its increased sensitivity picture making in lower light levels became possible.
  • Sound's necessity for continuous negative development brought about the introduction of reliable processing machines which were also of great advantage to black and white picture negative processing.
  • The introduction of Sensometric control necessitated by the precise requirements of sound negative and print densities also benefited both picture negative and positive development. Motion picture film processing became an exact science.

In spite of all the claimed horrors the sound department imposed, the operational limitations were short lived. Once sound engineers, mostly recruited from the radio and telephone companies, got the idea of film requirements they worked hard to find ways of overcoming the difficulties. It was not long before microphones on booms and mobile cameras in blimps were in every day use. From then onwards there has probably been in sound, more research, more technical advancement and improvement in technique than in any other operation connected with motion picture production.

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