Moving Images, Understanding Media

84 Moving Images: Making Movies, Understanding Media

Experiments in matching motion pictures to recorded sound continued

through the fi rst thirty years of fi lm. Th ere were two primary methods that

technicians used to enable recorded sound to play along with movies: either

sound-on-disc or sound-on-fi lm (optical sound). Both were experimented

with from the time of the invention of the cinema, but the fi rst widely used

system of synchronous sound with motion pictures was a fundamentally

fl awed system of sound-on-disc, the Vitaphone.

Sound-on-Disc

Th e Vitaphone, owned and marketed by Warner Bros., was a sound-on-disc

arrangement in which a turntable playing 33-1/3 rpm discs (not 78 as was

then standard) was linked by cable to the projector. Th e projectionist matched

the start marks on vinyl records with those on the fi lm for sync. However,

the imperfections of such a system are immediately obvious: If there was

even a slight skip in the record or a break or skip in the projected fi lm, the

synchronization between the picture and sound would be ruined.

Nonetheless, movies using the Vitaphone were shown starting in 1926,

featuring recorded orchestral scores played in sync with the fi lm. However,

the fi lm industry avoided this new development because studio heads were

worried about the enormous cost of the shift to sound fi lms, particularly

through the installation of sound systems in cinemas across the country.

Figure 3-4 Illustration of the chronophone.

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