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The Electric Ear: Early Film Sound Technology and Acoustic Spaces – From a Box of Insects to a Tomb of Make-Believe

The Electric Ear: Early Film Sound Technology and Acoustic Spaces – From a Box of Insects to a... The transition from the ‘silent’ film era to that of the sound film is an area well researched and widely discussed. Although it is commonly acknowledged that all manner of musical and spoken performances accompanied ‘silent’ films, what is perhaps less well-known are early attempts, with varying degrees of success, at marrying film with recorded, synchronised sound. The argument here is that the impediment to the introduction of synchronised sound and film was not just the pitfalls of successful synchronisation but more crucially the lack of adequate amplification. The story of the transition from silent to sound film is also one of the transition from an acoustic to an electric environment. The question is asked ‘what does this mean?’, both for the medium of film and the auditorium, and by implication for the audience and their relation to the audible world. Whilst reading contemporaneous debates around the coming of sound to the film industry in the late 1920s, along with the technical and historical journals and books of the time, I became increasingly interested less in the foregrounding of speech which (understandably) many analyses concentrate upon, than in the The New Soundtrack 1.1 (2011): 29–41 DOI: 10.3366/sound.2011.0004 # http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The New Soundtrack Edinburgh University Press

The Electric Ear: Early Film Sound Technology and Acoustic Spaces – From a Box of Insects to a Tomb of Make-Believe

Macpherson, Ian
The New Soundtrack , Volume 1 (1): 29 – Mar 1, 2011
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Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Copyright
© Edinburgh University Press
Subject
Articles; Film, Media and Cultural Studies
ISSN
2042-8855
eISSN
2042-8863
DOI
10.3366/sound.2011.0004
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Abstract

The transition from the ‘silent’ film era to that of the sound film is an area well researched and widely discussed. Although it is commonly acknowledged that all manner of musical and spoken performances accompanied ‘silent’ films, what is perhaps less well-known are early attempts, with varying degrees of success, at marrying film with recorded, synchronised sound. The argument here is that the impediment to the introduction of synchronised sound and film was not just the pitfalls of successful synchronisation but more crucially the lack of adequate amplification. The story of the transition from silent to sound film is also one of the transition from an acoustic to an electric environment. The question is asked ‘what does this mean?’, both for the medium of film and the auditorium, and by implication for the audience and their relation to the audible world. Whilst reading contemporaneous debates around the coming of sound to the film industry in the late 1920s, along with the technical and historical journals and books of the time, I became increasingly interested less in the foregrounding of speech which (understandably) many analyses concentrate upon, than in the The New Soundtrack 1.1 (2011): 29–41 DOI: 10.3366/sound.2011.0004 #

Journal

The New Soundtrack – Edinburgh University Press

Published: Mar 1, 2011

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