Misplaced Pages

#50949

175-423: In movie industry terminology usage, a sound track is an audio recording created or used in film production or post-production . Initially, the dialogue, sound effects, and music in a film each has its own separate track, and these are mixed together to make what is called the composite track, which is heard in the film. A dubbing track is often later created when films are dubbed into another language. This

350-475: A Pathé -Natan film, it is generally regarded as the initial French feature talkie, though it was shot, like Blackmail , at the Elstree studio , just outside London. The production company had contracted with RCA Photophone and Britain then had the nearest facility with the system. The Braunberger-Richebé talkie La Route est belle ( The Road Is Fine ), also shot at Elstree, followed a few weeks later. Before

525-425: A soundtrack . In the late 1980s, cognitive psychology and psychology of music started an investigation on the impact that the soundtrack exerts on the interpretation of audiovisual stimuli. Canadian psychologist Annabel J. Cohen is one of the first scholars who systematically studied the relationship between music and moving image within the interpretation process of brief animated videos. Her studies converged in

700-444: A "musical." (Griffith's Dream Street had essentially been a "goat gland.") Expectations swiftly changed, and the sound "fad" of 1927 became standard procedure by 1929. In February 1929, sixteen months after The Jazz Singer' s debut, Columbia Pictures became the last of the eight studios that would be known as " majors " during Hollywood's Golden Age to release its first part-talking feature, The Lone Wolf's Daughter . In late May,

875-470: A 1.3 share, it was ABC's highest-rated airing of the film since 2007, although it was beaten by NBC's Sunday Night Football . A soundtrack for the broadcast was released on December 3, 2013 and consists of 22 studio recordings. Walmart outlets exclusively released a nine-track instrumental ( sing-along ) bonus CD with the soundtrack. It peaked at number 17 on the Billboard 200 and number 2 on

1050-440: A 4.6 rating, 13 share in the 18–49 demographic, which led all networks. It attracted NBC's largest non-sports Thursday audience since the series finale of Frasier in 2004 (which averaged 22.6 million viewers), and NBC's largest non-sports audience on any night since the 2007 Golden Globe Awards . The special performed the best with women in the 25–54 demographic, reaching a household rating of 7.0 for that demographic during

1225-595: A TV series that are not featured in them. Many audiobooks have some form of musical accompaniment, but these are generally not extensive enough to be released as a separate soundtrack. Sound film A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film . The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades passed before sound motion pictures became commercially practical. Reliable synchronization

1400-518: A Warner Bros. movie. This second Jolson screen smash demonstrated the movie musical's ability to turn a song into a national hit: inside of nine months, the Jolson number " Sonny Boy " had racked up 2 million record and 1.25 million sheet music sales. September 1928 also saw the release of Paul Terry 's Dinner Time , among the first animated cartoons produced with synchronized sound. Soon after he saw it, Walt Disney released his first sound picture,

1575-464: A Western Electric sound-on-film system. None of these pictures made much impact. The first successful European dramatic talkie was the all-British Blackmail . Directed by twenty-nine-year-old Alfred Hitchcock , the movie had its London debut June 21, 1929. Originally shot as a silent, Blackmail was restaged to include dialogue sequences, along with a score and sound effects, before its premiere. A British International Pictures (BIP) production, it

1750-474: A book. 'Kaladin', a book soundtrack to popular fantasy novelist Brandon Sanderson's book, 'The Way of Kings', was written by The Black Piper. The Black Piper, hailing from Provo, Utah, is a combined group of composers who share a love for fantasy literature. 'Kaladin' was funded through Kickstarter and raised over $ 112,000. It was released December 2017. A New York Times Bestselling series, Green Rider by Kristen Britain , celebrated its 25th anniversary with

1925-602: A box set with an audiocassette entitled Music and Poetry of the Kesh , featuring three performances of poetry, and ten musical compositions by Todd Barton. In comics, Daniel Clowes' graphic novel Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron had an official soundtrack album. The original black-and-white Nexus #3 from Capitol comics included the Flexi-Nexi which was a soundtrack flexi-disc for the issue. Trosper by Jim Woodring included

SECTION 10

#1732780717051

2100-638: A commission in the German Navy and report immediately to Bremerhaven . Maria, thinking quickly, hands the Admiral in charge the program for the Kaltzberg Festival showing that the von Trapp Family Singers are scheduled to perform, so the Captain couldn’t possibly leave right away. They are granted permission to perform. During the finale, Max announces that a guard of honor is waiting to escort

2275-541: A contract with Warner Brothers and W. J. Rich, a financier, giving them an exclusive license for recording and reproducing sound pictures under the Western Electric system. To exploit this license the Vitaphone Corporation was organized with Samuel L. Warner as its president. Vitaphone , as this system was now called, was publicly introduced on August 6, 1926, with the premiere of Don Juan ;

2450-628: A demonstration of the Western Electric sound-on-disc system and was sufficiently impressed to persuade his brothers to agree to experiment with using this system at New York City's Vitagraph Studios , which they had recently purchased. The tests were convincing to the Warner Brothers, if not to the executives of some other picture companies who witnessed them. Consequently, in April 1926 the Western Electric Company entered into

2625-681: A few songs performed by Richard Tauber . The movie was made with the sound-on-film system controlled by the German-Dutch firm Tobis , corporate heirs to the Tri-Ergon concern. With an eye toward commanding the emerging European market for sound film, Tobis entered into a compact with its chief competitor, Klangfilm, a joint subsidiary of Germany's two leading electrical manufacturers. Early in 1929, Tobis and Klangfilm began comarketing their recording and playback technologies. As ERPI began to wire theaters around Europe, Tobis-Klangfilm claimed that

2800-400: A film, whether taken from the actual film soundtrack or re-recorded in the studio at an earlier or later time. The term is also sometimes used for Broadway cast recordings. Contributing to the vagueness of the term are projects such as The Sound of Music Live! , which was filmed live on the set for an NBC holiday season special first broadcast in 2013. The album , released three days before

2975-523: A furious pace on sophisticated sound amplification technology that would allow recordings to be played back over loudspeakers at theater-filling volume. The new moving-coil speaker system was installed in New York's Warners Theatre at the end of July and its patent submission, for what Western Electric called the No. 555 Receiver, was filed on August 4, just two days before the premiere of Don Juan . Late in

3150-456: A generation. The primary issue was synchronization: pictures and sound were recorded and played back by separate devices, which were difficult to start and maintain in tandem. Sufficient playback volume was also hard to achieve. While motion picture projectors soon allowed film to be shown to large theater audiences, audio technology before the development of electric amplification could not project satisfactorily to fill large spaces. Finally, there

3325-413: A gradual transition to sound—allowing the studios to spread out the capital costs of conversion and their directors and technical crews time to become familiar with the new technology. The Mandarin-language Gēnǚ hóng mǔdān ( 歌 女 紅 牡 丹 , Singsong Girl Red Peony ), starring Butterfly Wu, premiered as China's first feature talkie in 1930. By February of that year, production was apparently completed on

3500-642: A large bass "woofer", a midrange driver, and a treble "tweeter." The Sound of Music Live! The Sound of Music Live! is an American television special that was originally broadcast by NBC on December 5, 2013. Directed by Rob Ashford and Beth McCarthy-Miller , produced by Craig Zadan and Neil Meron , and written by Austin Winsberg, the special was an adaptation of Rodgers and Hammerstein 's 1959 Broadway musical The Sound of Music . The television special starred country singer and American Idol winner Carrie Underwood as Maria von Trapp , and

3675-462: A large section of the industry still saw the silent as a viable artistic and commercial prospect till about 1935." The situation was particularly acute in the Soviet Union; as of May 1933, fewer than one out of every hundred film projectors in the country was as yet equipped for sound. During the 1920s and 1930s, Japan was one of the world's two largest producers of motion pictures, along with

SECTION 20

#1732780717051

3850-406: A light valve, a thin ribbon of sensitive metal over a tiny slit. The sound reaching this ribbon would be converted into light by the shivering of the diaphragm, focusing the resulting light waves through the slit, where it would be photographed on the side of the film, on a strip about a tenth of an inch wide. In 1908, Lauste purchased a photographophone from Ruhmer, with the intention of perfecting

4025-475: A live performance of The Wiz . Interest in the concept also spread to competing networks: in April 2014, Fox announced that it would produce a live production of Grease , which aired in January 2016. NBC aired Hairspray Live! later that year. The special also had an influence on viewership for ABC 's annual broadcast of the 1965 film version of The Sound of Music ; with 6.5 million viewers and

4200-684: A major Hollywood studio. The Jazz Singer had its European sound premiere at the Piccadilly Theatre in London on September 27, 1928. According to film historian Rachael Low , "Many in the industry realized at once that a change to sound production was inevitable." On January 16, 1929, the first European feature film with a synchronized vocal performance and recorded score premiered: the German production Ich küsse Ihre Hand, Madame ( I Kiss Your Hand, Madame ). Dialogueless, it contains only

4375-404: A more dark thriller would compose of hard rock or urban music . In 1908, Camille Saint-Saëns composed the first music specifically for use in a motion picture (L'assasinat du duc de Guise), and releasing recordings of songs used in films became prevalent in the 1930s. Henry Mancini , who won an Emmy Award and two Grammys for his soundtrack to Peter Gunn , was the first composer to have

4550-412: A motion picture or television soundtrack. Majority of top charting songs were those featured or released on a film or television soundtrack album. In recent years the term soundtrack sort of subsided. It now mostly commonly refers to instrumental background music used in that media. Popular songs featured in a film or television series are instead highlighted and referenced in the credits, not as part of

4725-676: A musical artist), and the songs and the soundtrack itself can also be on music charts, and win musical awards. By convention, a soundtrack record can contain all kinds of music including music inspired by but not actually appearing in the movie; the score contains only music by the original film's composers. Contemporaneously, a soundtrack can go against normality, (most typically used in popular culture franchises) and contains recently released and/or exclusive never before released original pop music selections, (some of which become high charting records on their own, which due to being released on another franchises title, peaked because of that) and

4900-456: A new governess. However, the political differences between Schraeder and the Captain cause the two to realize that they have no future together, and she leaves. Meanwhile, the Captain meets with Maria and the two admit their feelings for each other. The two agree to marry at the Abbey, and while the two are on honeymoon, Germany annexes Austria . When they return, the Captain is ordered to accept

5075-568: A number of companies were making progress with systems that recorded movie sound on phonograph discs. In sound-on-disc technology from the era, a phonograph turntable is connected by a mechanical interlock to a specially modified film projector , allowing for synchronization. In 1921, the Photokinema sound-on-disc system developed by Orlando Kellum was employed to add synchronized sound sequences to D. W. Griffith 's failed silent film Dream Street . A love song, performed by star Ralph Graves,

5250-485: A screen. The phonograph was connected by an intricate arrangement of pulleys to the film projector, allowing—under ideal conditions—for synchronization. However, conditions were rarely ideal, and the new, improved Kinetophone was retired after little more than a year. By the mid-1910s, the groundswell in commercial sound motion picture exhibition had subsided. Beginning in 1914, The Photo-Drama of Creation , promoting Jehovah's Witnesses ' conception of humankind's genesis,

5425-412: A similar double-album for its soundtrack for The Hobbit . When a blockbuster film is released, or during and after a television series airs, an album in the form of a soundtrack is typically released alongside that. A soundtrack typically contains instrumentation or alternatively a film score . But it can also feature songs that were sung or performed by characters in a scene (or a cover version of

Soundtrack - Misplaced Pages Continue

5600-513: A similar fashion, In January 2014, NBC announced that it would broadcast a live version of Peter Pan in December 2014, and at NBC's upfronts in May 2014, Greenblatt announced that NBC had also obtained rights to produce an adaptation of The Music Man , although the network did not announce any timeframe for the production. It was later revealed that The Music Man project was put on hold for

5775-401: A song in the media, rerecorded by a popular artist), songs that were used as intentional or unintentional background music in important scenes, songs that were heard in the closing credits , or songs for no apparent reason related to the media other than for promotion, that were included in a soundtrack. Soundtracks are usually released on major record labels (just as if they were released by

5950-399: A sound version of The Devil's Playground , arguably qualifying it as the first Australian talking motion picture; however, the May press screening of Commonwealth Film Contest prizewinner Fellers is the first verifiable public exhibition of an Australian talkie. In September 1930, a song performed by Indian star Sulochana , excerpted from the silent feature Madhuri (1928), was released as

6125-485: A soundtrack album composed and performed by Bill Frisell , and the Absolute Edition of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier is planned to include an original vinyl record . The Crow released a soundtrack album called Fear and Bullets to coincide with the limited edition hardcover copy of the graphic novel. The comic book Hellblazer released an annual with a song called Venus of

6300-461: A soundtrack album to his novel Battlefield Earth entitled Space Jazz . He marketed the concept album as "the only original sound track ever produced for a book before it becomes a movie". There are two other soundtracks to Hubbard novels, being Mission Earth by Edgar Winter and To the Stars by Chick Corea . The 1985 novel Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin originally came in

6475-481: A subsidiary of British Talking Pictures, which purchased the primary Phonofilm assets. By the end of 1930, the Phonofilm business would be liquidated. In Europe, others were also working on the development of sound-on-film. In 1919, the same year that DeForest received his first patents in the field, three German inventors, Josef Engl (1893–1942), Hans Vogt (1890–1979), and Joseph Massolle (1889–1957), patented

6650-576: A synchronized-sound short, the country's first. The following year, Ardeshir Irani directed the first Indian talking feature, the Hindi-Urdu Alam Ara , and produced Kalidas , primarily in Tamil with some Telugu. Nineteen-thirty-one also saw the first Bengali-language film, Jamai Sasthi , and the first movie fully spoken in Telugu, Bhakta Prahlada . In 1932, Ayodhyecha Raja became

6825-559: A system that recorded sound on a separate filmstrip running parallel with the image reel. Gaumont licensed the technology and briefly put it to commercial use under the name Cinéphone. US competition eclipsed Phonofilm. By September 1925, De Forest and Case's working arrangement had fallen through. The following July, Case joined Fox Film , Hollywood's third largest studio , to found the Fox-Case Corporation. The system developed by Case and his assistant, Earl Sponable, given

7000-407: A talkie: G'schichten aus der Steiermark ( Stories from Styria ), an Eagle Film–Ottoton Film production. On September 30, the first entirely German-made feature-length dramatic talkie, Das Land ohne Frauen ( Land Without Women ), premiered. A Tobis Filmkunst production, about one-quarter of the movie contained dialogue, which was strictly segregated from the special effects and music. The response

7175-515: A third of all movies produced in Japan were shot without dialogue. The enduring popularity of the silent medium in Japanese cinema owed in great part to the tradition of the benshi , a live narrator who performed as accompaniment to a film screening. As director Akira Kurosawa later described, the benshi "not only recounted the plot of the films, they enhanced the emotional content by performing

Soundtrack - Misplaced Pages Continue

7350-415: A variety of ways. An increasing number of motion picture systems relied on gramophone records —known as sound-on-disc technology. The records themselves were often referred to as "Berliner discs", after one of the primary inventors in the field, German-American Emile Berliner . In 1902, Léon Gaumont demonstrated his sound-on-disc Chronophone, involving an electrical connection he had recently patented, to

7525-434: A widespread hit with a song from a soundtrack. Before the 1970s, soundtracks (with a few exceptions), accompanied towards musicals , and was an album that featured vocal and instrumental, (and instrumental versions of vocal songs) musical selections performed by cast members. Or cover versions of songs sung by another artist. After the 1970s, soundtracks started to include more diversity, and music consumers would anticipate

7700-409: Is a luminous stage presence who had the guts to take on one of the most iconic roles of the stage or screen." Brian Lowry of Variety described the production "as lifeless as [its] alpine backdrops." Marc Bernardin of The Hollywood Reporter commended the production's aesthetics but called it a "very expensive karaoke", and he wrote that Underwood "doesn’t acquit herself so well when it comes to

7875-437: Is also known as an M&E (music and effects) track. M&E tracks contain all sound elements minus dialogue, which is then supplied by the foreign distributor in the native language of its territory. Current dictionary entries for soundtrack document soundtrack as a noun, and as a verb. An early attempt at popularizing the term sound track was printed in the magazine Photoplay in 1929. A 1992 technical dictionary entry in

8050-493: Is looking for the perfect local singing group to perform at the annual Kaltzberg Festival. When his children arrive dressed in play clothes Maria had made from her old bedroom curtains, he is outraged and embarrassed. Maria then confronts the Captain and tells him that he does not know or understand his children, and that they need him, but this only upsets him more and he orders her to return to Nonnberg Abbey. However, upon hearing his children sing to Schraeder, his eyes are opened to

8225-615: Is possible to create a complete soundtrack recording by lifting the vocal performances from the DVD, erasing the alternate vocal masters from the CD and combining the two). Among MGM's most notable soundtrack albums were those of the films Good News , Easter Parade , Annie Get Your Gun , Singin' in the Rain , Show Boat , The Band Wagon , Seven Brides for Seven Brothers , and Gigi . Film score albums did not really become popular until

8400-410: Is simply used for promotional purposes for well known artists, or new or unknown artists. These soundtracks contain music not at all heard in the film/television series, and any artistic or lyrical connection is purely coincidental. However depending on the genre of the media the soundtrack of popular songs would have a set pattern; a lighthearted romance might feature easy listening love songs, whilst

8575-492: Is sometimes also used to differentiate the original music heard and recorded versus a rerecording or cover version . Types of soundtrack recordings include: The soundtrack to the 1937 Walt Disney animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the first commercially issued film soundtrack. It was released by RCA Victor Records on multiple 78 RPM discs in January 1938 as Songs from Walt Disney's Snow White and

8750-620: Is taken from the book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse and is based on the memoir , The Story of the Trapp Family Singers by Maria von Trapp. On June 30, 2012, NBC's chairman Bob Greenblatt announced the network's plans to broadcast a live adaptation of the Broadway musical The Sound of Music in 2013. On November 30, 2012, the network announced that country music singer and American Idol fourth season winner Carrie Underwood would star as Maria von Trapp in

8925-581: The 2012 film adaptation of Les Misérables for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress , would have been a better choice. The Sound of Music Live! received mixed reviews from entertainment critics, commending the show for its scope and supporting cast while questioning Underwood's acting capabilities. Kevin Fallon of The Daily Beast wrote: "Naturally, Underwood sounded astounding, as alive as those damned hills, every time she

SECTION 50

#1732780717051

9100-489: The Academic Press Dictionary of Science and Technology does not distinguish between the form sound track and soundtrack. The contraction soundtrack came into public consciousness with the advent of so-called soundtrack albums in the late 1940s. First conceived by movie companies as a promotional gimmick for new films, these commercially available recordings were labeled and advertised as "music from

9275-526: The Congruence-Association Model of music and multimedia . More recent empirical studies proved that the film music goes far beyond the role of an emotionalizing accessory in film contexts; contrarily, it can radically alter the empathy experienced by the viewers toward the characters on screen, attributed emotions (e.g., whether a character is happy or sad), evaluation of the scenic environments, plot anticipations, and moral judgement of

9450-703: The French Photographic Society . Four years later, Gaumont introduced the Elgéphone, a compressed-air amplification system based on the Auxetophone, developed by British inventors Horace Short and Charles Parsons. Despite high expectations, Gaumont's sound innovations had only limited commercial success. Despite some improvements, they still did not satisfactorily address the three basic issues with sound film and were expensive as well. For some years, American inventor E. E. Norton's Cameraphone

9625-566: The Kinetophone in 1895, but individual, cabinet viewing of motion pictures was soon to be outmoded by successes in film projection. In 1899, a projected sound-film system known as Cinemacrophonograph or Phonorama, based primarily on the work of Swiss-born inventor François Dussaud, was exhibited in Paris; similar to the Kinetophone, the system required individual use of earphones. An improved cylinder-based system, Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre,

9800-500: The LP era , although a few were issued in 78-rpm albums. Alex North 's score for the 1951 film version of A Streetcar Named Desire was released on a 10-inch LP by Capitol Records and sold so well that the label rereleased it on one side of a 12-inch LP with some of Max Steiner 's film music on the reverse. Steiner's score for Gone with the Wind has been recorded many times, but when

9975-463: The Mickey Mouse short Steamboat Willie . Over the course of 1928, as Warner Bros. began to rake in huge profits due to the popularity of its sound films , the other studios quickened the pace of their conversion to the new technology. Paramount, the industry leader, put out its first talkie in late September, Beggars of Life ; though it had just a few lines of dialogue, it demonstrated

10150-542: The Motion Picture Association of America , all with live-recorded sound. These were the first true sound films exhibited by a Hollywood studio. Warner Bros.' The Better 'Ole , technically similar to Don Juan , followed in October. Sound-on-film would ultimately win out over sound-on-disc because of a number of fundamental technical advantages: Nonetheless, in the early years, sound-on-disc had

10325-579: The Tri-Ergon sound system. On September 17, 1922, the Tri-Ergon group gave a public screening of sound-on-film productions—including a dramatic talkie, Der Brandstifter ( The Arsonist ) —before an invited audience at the Alhambra Kino in Berlin. By the end of the decade, Tri-Ergon would be the dominant European sound system. In 1923, two Danish engineers, Axel Petersen and Arnold Poulsen, patented

10500-525: The Troféu HQ Mix (Brazilian most important comic book award) in the category "Special Homage". As Internet access became more widespread, a similar practice developed of accompanying a printed work with a downloadable theme song , rather than a complete and physically published album. The theme songs for Nextwave , Runaways , Achewood , and Dinosaur Comics are examples of this. The novella Chasing Homer (2019) by László Krasznahorkai

10675-542: The film adaptation . Prior to being cast, Underwood personally asked Andrews for her endorsement of the role and the production, explaining that "whenever I do a cover of somebody's song or whatever, I always get permission of the artist first." Produced on a budget of around $ 9 million, The Sound of Music Live! was broadcast live from a soundstage built at Grumman Studios in Bethpage, New York . NBC, as well as producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron , emphasized that

SECTION 60

#1732780717051

10850-527: The series finale of Frasier in 2004, and prompted NBC to sign Zadan and Meron on to produce more live musicals for the network. Maria Rainer, a postulant at Nonnberg Abbey in Salzburg , is contemplating the day she has spent in the mountains. When she returns to the Abbey, she learns from the Mother Abbess that she is to be the new governess for the von Trapp children. When Maria arrives at

11025-497: The 1980s Commodore 64 computer. Koji Kondo was an early and important composer for Nintendo games. As the technology improved, polyphonic and often orchestral soundtracks replaced simple monophonic melodies starting in the late 1980s and the soundtracks to popular games such as the Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy series began to be released separately. In addition to compositions written specifically for video games,

11200-722: The 1996 Star Wars novel Shadows of the Empire (written by author Steve Perry ), Lucasfilm chose Joel McNeely to write a score. This was an eccentric, experimental project, in contrast to all other soundtracks, as the composer was allowed to convey general moods and themes, rather than having to write music to flow for specific scenes. A project called "Sine Fiction" has made some soundtracks to novels by science fiction writers like Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke , and has thus far released 19 soundtracks to science-fiction novels or short stories. All of them are available for free download. Author L. Ron Hubbard composed and recorded

11375-523: The 200th Anniversary Celebration of the U.S. Constitution in Philadelphia, The MUSE Concerts or the various Greenpeace events (i.e. The First International Greenpeace Record Project , Rainbow Warriors and Alternative NRG ) all had special music, effects and dialogue written especially for the event which later went on sale to the record and later video-buying public. Only a few cases exist of an entire soundtrack being written specifically for

11550-437: The Captain away as soon as the concert is over. Maria leads the family in one more song, during which they escape one by one and flee to the Abbey. The Nazi soldiers search the Abbey for the von Trapps to no avail, as the family decides to flee Austria over the mountains with Maria's help. Benanti had previously portrayed Maria von Trapp on Broadway in 1998. Craig Zadan and Neil Meron , who had previously worked with Borle on

11725-445: The Captain's daughter Brigitta, who confronts Maria on this. Though Maria strongly denies it, she begins to realize that Brigitta is telling the truth. Schraeder calls the children out to say good night to the guests, and Max is instantly smitten with the idea of having the children sing in the festival. Meanwhile, Maria sneaks off unnoticed and returns to the Abbey, where she confides in the Mother Abbess that she has fallen in love with

11900-526: The Gallows ). Several European nations with minor positions in the field also produced their first talking pictures—Belgium (in French), Denmark, Greece, and Romania. The Soviet Union's robust film industry came out with its first sound features in December 1930: Dziga Vertov 's nonfiction Enthusiasm had an experimental, dialogueless soundtrack; Abram Room 's documentary Plan velikikh rabot ( The Plan of

12075-747: The Great Works ) had music and spoken voiceovers. Both were made with locally developed sound-on-film systems, two of the two hundred or so movie sound systems then available somewhere in the world. In June 1931, the Nikolai Ekk drama Putevka v zhizn ( The Road to Life or A Start in Life ), premiered as the Soviet Union's first true talking picture. Throughout much of Europe, conversion of exhibition venues lagged well behind production capacity, requiring talkies to be produced in parallel silent versions or simply shown without sound in many places. While

12250-497: The Hardsell , which was then recorded and a music video to accompany with. The Brazilian graphic novel Achados e Perdidos ( Lost and Found ), by Eduardo Damasceno and Luís Felipe Garrocho , had an original soundtrack composed by musician Bruno Ito . The book was self-published in 2011 after a crowdfunding campaign and was accompanied by a CD with eight songs (one for each chapter of the story). In 2012, this graphic novel won

12425-459: The Mouse (31 minutes of dialogue) in May. On July 6, 1928, the first all-talking feature, Lights of New York , premiered. The film cost Warner Bros. only $ 23,000 to produce, but grossed $ 1,252,000, a record rate of return surpassing 5,000%. In September, the studio released another Al Jolson part-talking picture, The Singing Fool , which more than doubled The Jazz Singer' s earnings record for

12600-468: The NBC musical drama television series Smash , served as executive producers . Other credits include Rob Ashford and Beth McCarthy-Miller as directors , Ashford also was the choreographer , Priscilla Taussig served as producer , David Chase as music director and Derek McLane as production designer . Catherine Zuber was costume designer and Bernie Telsey was the casting director . The production

12775-487: The Paris studios were fully sound-equipped—a process that stretched well into 1930—a number of other early French talkies were shot in Germany. The first all-talking German feature, Atlantik , had premiered in Berlin on October 28. Yet another Elstree-made movie, it was rather less German at heart than Les Trois masques and La Route est belle were French; a BIP production with a British scenarist and German director, it

12950-533: The Royal Hungarian Patent Court in 1918; the patent award was published four years later. Whether sound was captured on cylinder, disc, or film, none of the available technology was adequate for big-league commercial purposes, and for many years the heads of the major Hollywood film studios saw little benefit in producing sound motion pictures. A number of technological developments contributed to making sound cinema commercially viable by

13125-610: The Seven Dwarfs (with the Same Characters and Sound Effects as in the Film of That Title) and has since seen numerous expansions and reissues. The first live-action musical film to have a commercially issued soundtrack album was MGM 's 1946 film biography of Show Boat composer Jerome Kern , Till the Clouds Roll By . The album was originally issued as a set of four 10-inch 78-rpm records. Only eight selections from

13300-540: The United States ). In Europe (and, to a lesser degree, elsewhere), the new development was treated with suspicion by many filmmakers and critics, who worried that a focus on dialogue would subvert the unique aesthetic virtues of silent cinema. In Japan , where the popular film tradition integrated silent movie and live vocal performance ( benshi ), talking pictures were slow to take root. Conversely, in India, sound

13475-474: The United States. By 1930, only half of the theaters had been wired for sound. Initially, all ERPI-wired theaters were made Vitaphone-compatible; most were equipped to project Movietone reels as well. However, even with access to both technologies, most of the Hollywood companies remained slow to produce talking features of their own. No studio besides Warner Bros. released even a part-talking feature until

13650-614: The United States. Though the country's film industry was among the first to produce both sound and talking features, the full changeover to sound proceeded much more slowly than in the West. It appears that the first Japanese sound film, Reimai ( Dawn ), was made in 1926 with the De Forest Phonofilm system. Using the sound-on-disc Minatoki system, the leading Nikkatsu studio produced a pair of talkies in 1929: Taii no musume ( The Captain's Daughter ) and Furusato ( Hometown ),

13825-461: The Vitaphone system, most of the film does not contain live-recorded audio, relying, like Sunrise and Don Juan , on a score and effects. When the movie's star, Al Jolson , sings, however, the film shifts to sound recorded on the set, including both his musical performances and two scenes with ad-libbed speech—one of Jolson's character, Jakie Rabinowitz (Jack Robin), addressing a cabaret audience;

14000-649: The Western Electric system infringed on the Tri-Ergon patents, stalling the introduction of American technology in many places. Just as RCA had entered the movie business to maximize its recording system's value, Tobis also established its own production operations. During 1929, most of the major European filmmaking countries began joining Hollywood in the changeover to sound. Many of the trend-setting European talkies were shot abroad as production companies leased studios while their own were being converted or as they deliberately targeted markets speaking different languages. One of Europe's first two feature-length dramatic talkies

14175-567: The advent of CD technology allowed developers to incorporate licensed songs into their soundtrack (the Grand Theft Auto series is a good example of this). Furthermore, when Microsoft released the Xbox in 2001, it featured an option allowing users to customize the soundtrack for certain games by ripping a CD to the hard-drive. As in Sound of Music Live! the music or dialogue in question

14350-455: The all-talking Niebezpieczny romans ( Dangerous Love Affair ) in October. In Italy, whose once vibrant film industry had become moribund by the late 1920s, the first talkie, La Canzone dell'amore ( The Song of Love ), also came out in October; within two years, Italian cinema would be enjoying a revival. The first movie spoken in Czech debuted in 1930 as well, Tonka Šibenice ( Tonka of

14525-476: The banner of De Forest Phonofilms . The set included the 11-minute short film From far Seville starring Concha Piquer . In 2010, a copy of the tape was found in the U.S. Library of Congress , where it is currently preserved. Critics attending the event praised the novelty but not the sound quality which received negative reviews in general. That June, De Forest entered into an extended legal battle with an employee, Freeman Harrison Owens , for title to one of

14700-411: The broadcast could "open the door to another kind of entertainment that can exist on TV." He also praised the involvement of Underwood as the star of the production, believing that she was a quick learner, and "has all of the qualities of Maria." Greenblatt was highly supportive of the project, as he was, in the words of Zadan, a "passionate devotee of theater". Zadan considered the production to be "one of

14875-430: The broadcast, contained studio pre-recordings by the original cast of all the songs used in the special, but because only the orchestral portion of the material from the album is the same as that used in the special (i.e., the vocals were sung live over a prerecorded track), this creates a similar technicality. Although the instrumental music bed from the CD will lock to picture, the vocal performances will not (although it

15050-417: The camera for particular shots. The necessity of staying within range of still microphones meant that actors also often had to limit their movements unnaturally. Show Girl in Hollywood (1930), from First National Pictures (which Warner Bros. had taken control of thanks to its profitable adventure into sound), gives a behind-the-scenes look at some of the techniques involved in shooting early talkies. Several of

15225-493: The captain and is ready to take her vows of poverty, obedience and chastity . The Mother Abbess denies her this, and encourages her to face her problem head-on and find the life she was born to live. Maria then returns to the von Trapp home and is warmly greeted by the children, whom had no longer felt the joys of singing due to her sudden departure. When she finds out that the Captain intends to marry Schraeder, she decides to see her duties through until arrangements can be made for

15400-404: The carrying the emotional weight of the production." He also panned Moyer, criticizing his vocal performance and describing "his attempt at conveying an emotional hollowness" as "mildly constipated" and "clenched." However, he lauded Benanti, Borle and McDonald's "strong" performances. 18.62 million viewers watched The Sound of Music Live! , making it the most-watched program of the night. It had

15575-491: The characters. Furthermore, eyetracking and pupillometry studies found that film music is able to influence gaze direction and pupil dilation depending on its emotional valence and semantic information conveyed. Recently, new experiments showed that film music can alter time perception while watching movies; in particular, soundtracks deemed as activating and arousing lead to time overestimation as opposed to more relaxing or sad music. Lastly, soundtracks have been proved to shape

15750-454: The commercial break following the scene where the song was featured; NBC's advertising chief Dan Lovinger considered the ads to be a way to "enhance the excitement" of the presentation for families. Prior to the broadcast, members of the real-life von Trapp family were critical of casting Underwood to play Maria, agreeing with the notion that she would be a good singer but a poor actor. They suggested that Anne Hathaway , who played Fantine in

15925-403: The commercialization of sound cinema were taken in the mid-to-late 1920s. At first, the sound films which included synchronized dialogue, known as " talking pictures ", or " talkies ", were exclusively shorts. The earliest feature-length movies with recorded sound included only music and effects. The first feature film originally presented as a talkie (although it had only limited sound sequences)

16100-712: The crucial Phonofilm patents. Although De Forest ultimately won the case in the courts, Owens is today recognized as a central innovator in the field. The following year, De Forest's studio released the first commercial dramatic film shot as a talking picture—the two-reeler Love's Old Sweet Song , directed by J. Searle Dawley and featuring Una Merkel . However, phonofilm's stock in trade was not original dramas but celebrity documentaries, popular music acts, and comedy performances. President Calvin Coolidge , opera singer Abbie Mitchell , and vaudeville stars such as Phil Baker , Ben Bernie , Eddie Cantor and Oscar Levant appeared in

16275-531: The device into a commercial product. Though sound-on-film would eventually become the universal standard for synchronized sound cinema, Lauste never successfully exploited his innovations, which came to an effective dead end. In 1914, Finnish inventor Eric Tigerstedt was granted German patent 309,536 for his sound-on-film work; that same year, he apparently demonstrated a film made with the process to an audience of scientists in Berlin. Hungarian engineer Denes Mihaly submitted his sound-on-film Projectofon concept to

16450-404: The edge over sound-on-film in two substantial ways: As sound-on-film technology improved, both of these disadvantages were overcome. The third crucial set of innovations marked a major step forward in both the live recording of sound and its effective playback: In 1913, Western Electric , the manufacturing division of AT&T, acquired the rights to the de Forest audion , the forerunner of

16625-575: The film It's a Wonderful Life (the other being on Christmas Eve), which was bumped ahead to December 20, 2013. NBC's Bob Greenblatt considered the production to be a success, and signed Meron and Zadan to produce another live musical for the 2014 holiday season. Greenblatt felt that there were enough recognizable, family-friendly musicals to make events such as The Sound of Music Live! an annual tradition, and he indicated that NBC received e-mails and phone calls from various theatrical rightsholders, expressing interest in having their musicals adapted in

16800-435: The film "a good gimmick, but that's all it was." Not until May 1928 did the group of four big studios (PDC had dropped out of the alliance), along with United Artists and others, sign with ERPI for conversion of production facilities and theaters for sound film. It was a daunting commitment; revamping a single theater cost as much as $ 15,000 (the equivalent of $ 220,000 in 2019), and there were more than 20,000 movie theaters in

16975-421: The film was reissued in 1967, MGM Records finally released an album of the famous score recorded directly from the soundtrack. Like the 1967 rerelease of the film, this version of the score was artificially enhanced for stereo . In recent years, Rhino Records has released a 2-CD set of the complete Gone With the Wind score, restored to its original mono sound. One of the biggest-selling film scores of all time

17150-417: The film were included in this first edition of the album. In order to fit the songs onto the record sides the musical material needed editing and manipulation. This was before tape existed, so the record producer needed to copy segments from the playback discs used on set, then copy and re-copy them from one disc to another adding transitions and cross-fades until the final master was created. Needless to say, it

17325-448: The film's musical score. The ground-breaking film Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was issued by Warner Bros Records as a 2-LP set containing virtually all the dialogue from the film. RCA Victor also issued a double-album set what was virtually all the dialogue from the film soundtrack of A Man for All Seasons , Decca Records issued a double-album for Man of La Mancha and Disney Music Group (formerly Buena Vista Records) issued

17500-434: The film's soundtrack consisted of a musical score and sound effects (including, in a couple of crowd scenes, "wild", nonspecific vocals). Then, on October 6, 1927, Warner Bros.' The Jazz Singer premiered. It was a smash box office success for the mid-level studio, earning a total of $ 2.625 million in the United States and abroad, almost a million dollars more than the previous record for a Warner Bros. film. Produced with

17675-545: The firm's pictures. Hollywood remained suspicious, even fearful, of the new technology. As Photoplay editor James Quirk put it in March 1924, "Talking pictures are perfected, says Dr. Lee De Forest. So is castor oil ." De Forest's process continued to be used through 1927 in the United States for dozens of short Phonofilms; in the UK it was employed a few years longer for both shorts and features by British Sound Film Productions,

17850-511: The first all-color, all-talking feature, Warner Bros.' On with the Show! , premiered. Yet most American movie theaters, especially outside of urban areas, were still not equipped for sound: while the number of sound cinemas grew from 100 to 800 between 1928 and 1929, they were still vastly outnumbered by silent theaters, which had actually grown in number as well, from 22,204 to 22,544. The studios, in parallel, were still not entirely convinced of

18025-471: The first commercial motion picture exhibition, he proposed a scheme for sound cinema that would combine his image-casting zoopraxiscope with Edison's recorded-sound technology. No agreement was reached, but within a year Edison commissioned the development of the Kinetoscope , essentially a "peep-show" system, as a visual complement to his cylinder phonograph . The two devices were brought together as

18200-423: The first feature-length movie to employ a synchronized sound system of any type throughout, its soundtrack contained a musical score and added sound effects , but no recorded dialogue—in other words, it had been staged and shot as a silent film. Accompanying Don Juan , however, were eight shorts of musical performances, mostly classical, as well as a four-minute filmed introduction by Will H. Hays , president of

18375-570: The first movie in which Marathi was spoken to be released (though Sant Tukaram was the first to go through the official censorship process); the first Gujarati-language film, Narsimha Mehta , and all-Tamil talkie, Kalava , debuted as well. The next year, Ardeshir Irani produced the first Persian-language talkie, Dukhtar-e-loor . Also in 1933, the first Cantonese-language films were produced in Hong Kong— Sha zai dongfang ( The Idiot's Wedding Night ) and Liang xing ( Conscience ); within two years,

18550-557: The first reported U.S. demonstration of a sound-on-film motion picture to members of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers . As with Lauste and Tigerstedt, Tykociner's system would never be taken advantage of commercially; however, De Forest's soon would. On April 15, 1923, at the New York City's Rivoli Theater, the first commercial screening of motion pictures with sound-on-film took place. This would become

18725-531: The front-runners came up with. In May, Warner Bros. sold back its exclusivity rights to ERPI (along with the Fox-Case sublicense) and signed a new royalty contract similar to Fox's for use of Western Electric technology. Fox and Warners pressed forward with sound cinema, moving in different directions both technologically and commercially: Fox moved into newsreels and then scored dramas, while Warners concentrated on talking features. Meanwhile, ERPI sought to corner

18900-420: The fundamental problems caused by the transition to sound were soon solved with new camera casings, known as " blimps ", designed to suppress noise and boom microphones that could be held just out of frame and moved with the actors. In 1931, a major improvement in playback fidelity was introduced: three-way speaker systems in which sound was separated into low, medium, and high frequencies and sent respectively to

19075-411: The future standard. It consisted of a set of short films varying in length and featuring some of the most popular stars of the 1920s (including Eddie Cantor , Harry Richman , Sophie Tucker , and George Jessel among others) doing stage performances such as vaudevilles , musical acts, and speeches which accompanied the screening of the silent feature film Bella Donna . All of them were presented under

19250-403: The increased level of social network interaction possible in a live broadcast, along with the feeling of being part of an "event", would encourage viewers to watch the special live instead of on-demand or from a recording. NBC's previous attempt at event television, The Million Second Quiz , was met with mixed reviews and viewership, but NBC did indicate that Subway 's advertising throughout

19425-425: The larger instruments may be pre-recorded onto a backing track and the remaining instruments may play live, or the reverse may occur in such instances as Elvis: The Concert or Sinatra: His Voice. His World. His Way both of which use isolated vocal and video performances accompanied by a live band. In the case of event soundtracks, large public gatherings such as Hands Across America , The Live Aid Concert,

19600-476: The late 1920s. Two involved contrasting approaches to synchronized sound reproduction, or playback: In 1919, American inventor Lee De Forest was awarded several patents that would lead to the first optical sound -on-film technology with commercial application. In De Forest's system, the sound track was photographically recorded onto the side of the strip of motion picture film to create a composite, or "married", print. If proper synchronization of sound and picture

19775-456: The latter directed by Kenji Mizoguchi . The rival Shochiku studio began the successful production of sound-on-film talkies in 1931 using a variable-density process called Tsuchibashi. Two years later, however, more than 80 percent of movies made in the country were still silents. Two of the country's leading directors, Mikio Naruse and Yasujirō Ozu , did not make their first sound films until 1935 and 1936, respectively. As late as 1938, over

19950-540: The lines are of varying width.) By October, the FBO-RCA alliance would lead to the creation of Hollywood's newest major studio, RKO Pictures . Meanwhile, Warner Bros. had released three more talkies, all profitable, if not at the level of The Jazz Singer : In March, Tenderloin appeared; it was billed by Warners as the first feature in which characters spoke their parts, though only 15 of its 88 minutes had dialogue. Glorious Betsy followed in April, and The Lion and

20125-481: The local film industry had fully converted to sound. Korea, where pyonsa (or byun-sa ) held a role and status similar to that of the Japanese benshi, in 1935 became the last country with a significant film industry to produce its first talking picture: Chunhyangjeon ( Korean :  춘향전 ; Hanja :  春香傳 ) is based on the seventeenth-century pansori folktale " Chunhyangga ", of which as many as fifteen film versions have been made through 2009. In

20300-439: The low-budget-oriented Film Booking Offices of America (FBO) premiered The Perfect Crime on June 17, 1928, eight months after The Jazz Singer . FBO had come under the effective control of a Western Electric competitor, General Electric 's RCA division, which was looking to market its new sound-on-film system, Photophone . Unlike Fox-Case's Movietone and De Forest's Phonofilm, which were variable-density systems, Photophone

20475-424: The market by signing up the five allied studios. The big sound film sensations of the year all took advantage of preexisting celebrity. On May 20, 1927, at New York City's Roxy Theater , Fox Movietone presented a sound film of the takeoff of Charles Lindbergh 's celebrated flight to Paris, recorded earlier that day. In June, a Fox sound newsreel depicting his return welcomes in New York City and Washington, D.C.,

20650-602: The material on the discs would not lock to picture, thereby creating the largest distinction between 'Original Motion Picture Soundtrack' which, in its strictest sense would contain music that would lock to picture if the home user would play one alongside the other and 'Original Cast Soundtrack' which in its strictest sense would refer to studio recordings of film music by the original film cast, but which had been edited or rearranged for time and content and would not lock to picture. In reality, however, soundtrack producers remain ambiguous about this distinction, and titles in which

20825-480: The memory of the scene that the viewers form, to the point of biasing their recall coherently with the music's semantic contents. Soundtrack may also refer to music used in video games. While sound effects were nearly universally used for action happening in the game, music to accompany the gameplay was a later development. Rob Hubbard and Martin Galway were early composers of music specifically for video games for

21000-489: The music on the album does lock to picture may be labeled as OCS and music from an album that does not lock to picture may be referred to as OMPS. The phrase "recorded directly from the soundtrack" was used for a while in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s to differentiate material that would lock to picture from that which would not (excluding alternate masters and alternate vocals or solos). However, partly because many 'film takes' actually consisted of several different attempts at

21175-457: The musical itself and not the 1965 film version . Meron felt that if the telecast were successful, the concept could become "another kind of entertainment that can exist on TV." By her request, Underwood's casting as Maria was personally endorsed by Julie Andrews , who starred in the 1965 film. The production was met with mixed reviews; much of its criticism was directed towards the casting of Carrie Underwood to play Maria, whom critics (including

21350-589: The name Movietone , thus became the first viable sound-on-film technology controlled by a Hollywood movie studio. The following year, Fox purchased the North American rights to the Tri-Ergon system, though the company found it inferior to Movietone and virtually impossible to integrate the two different systems to advantage. In 1927, as well, Fox retained the services of Freeman Owens, who had particular expertise in constructing cameras for synch-sound film. Parallel with improvements in sound-on-film technology,

21525-465: The original motion picture soundtrack ", or "music from and inspired by the motion picture." These phrases were soon shortened to just "original motion picture soundtrack ." More accurately, such recordings are made from a film's music track, because they usually consist of isolated music from a film, not the composite (sound) track with dialogue and sound effects. The term original soundtrack (OST) , often used for titles of albums of soundtrack music,

21700-403: The other an exchange between him and his mother. The "natural" sounds of the settings were also audible. Though the success of The Jazz Singer was due largely to Jolson, already established as one of U.S. biggest music stars, and its limited use of synchronized sound hardly qualified it as an innovative sound film (let alone the "first"), the movie's profits were proof enough to the industry that

21875-525: The pace of conversion was relatively swift in Britain—with over 60 percent of theaters equipped for sound by the end of 1930, similar to the U.S. figure—in France, by contrast, more than half of theaters nationwide were still projecting in silence by late 1932. According to scholar Colin G. Crisp, "Anxiety about resuscitating the flow of silent films was frequently expressed in the [French] industrial press, and

22050-709: The primetime broadcast. It did particularly well in Oklahoma City, the capital of Underwood's home state, where it was watched by 28% of TV viewers. At least 38.69 million viewers watched a portion of The Sound of Music Live! . Factoring in DVR viewership over the week following the broadcast, the special was viewed by 21.84 million, with 3.1 million within the first three days. Following its original airing, an encore presentation of The Sound of Music Live! aired on December 14, 2013, attracting 3.1 million viewers. It notably displaced one of NBC's two traditional airings of

22225-402: The production was not a remake of the film, but an adaptation of the musical itself; Meron iterated that "the audience will discover, within the first few minutes of watching the show, that they are not seeing a TV version of the movie. They'll know right away it's The Sound of Music , but it's a different Sound of Music than they are accustomed to seeing on film." Meron felt that if successful,

22400-404: The production. In a statement, Greenblatt justified Underwood's involvement, saying that "[Maria] was an iconic woman who will now be played by an iconic artist." On September 16, 2013, NBC revealed the full cast of the special, and released a promotional image depicting Underwood as Maria von Trapp, wearing blond braids and a dirndl , referencing one of Julie Andrews ' "most iconic moments" from

22575-460: The profoundly complicated, amazing experiences we’ve ever had", noting the additional challenges created by the live broadcast. Promoted by NBC as a "three-hour holiday event", The Sound of Music Live! was aired as part of a push by NBC to air more live entertainment specials. Among its most popular programs in recent years have been those with live components (such as The Voice and Sunday Night Football ); NBC's Jennifer Salke believed that

22750-445: The real-life von Trapp family ) believed was not experienced enough in theatre to portray such an iconic role. While her vocal performance was praised, her acting was described by critics as "amateur", "lifeless" and lacking emotion. The production was a ratings success for NBC; with a total of 18.62 million live viewers, The Sound of Music Live! brought the network its highest Thursday night viewership for an entertainment program since

22925-470: The redubbed Vitaphone operation, leading to the production of Don Juan and its accompanying shorts over the following months. During the period when Vitaphone had exclusive access to the patents, the fidelity of recordings made for Warners films was markedly superior to those made for the company's sound-on-film competitors. Meanwhile, Bell Labs —the new name for the AT&;T research operation—was working at

23100-673: The release of a book soundtrack by the same name. It was recorded in Utah, featuring artist Jenny Oaks Baker and William Arnold and was released in 2018. A soundtrack for J. R. R. Tolkien 's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings was composed by Craig Russell for the San Luis Obispo Youth Symphony. Commissioned in 1995, it was finally put on disk in 2000 by the San Luis Obispo Symphony. For

23275-431: The running time of 1000 ft of film at 90 ft/min (24 frames/s). Because of the larger diameter the minimum groove velocity of 70 ft/min (14 inches or 356 mm/s) was only slightly less than that of a standard 10-inch 78 rpm commercial disc. In 1925, the company publicly introduced a greatly improved system of electronic audio, including sensitive condenser microphones and rubber-line recorders (named after

23450-568: The selenium's resistance to electrical currents, which was used to modulate the sound produced in a telephone receiver. He called this invention the photographophone , which he summarized as: "It is truly a wonderful process: sound becomes electricity, becomes light, causes chemical actions, becomes light and electricity again, and finally sound." Ruhmer began a correspondence with the French-born, London-based Eugene Lauste , who had worked at Edison's lab between 1886 and 1892. In 1907, Lauste

23625-519: The series brought a higher level of awareness to the brand. The television special was also the first live musical special in almost fifty years on NBC. Retail chain Walmart served as the presenting sponsor for The Sound of Music Live! . NBC also produced five themed Walmart commercials to air throughout the special, featuring scenes of a family using products from the store set to songs from The Sound of Music . The five ads were timed to air during

23800-457: The short term, the introduction of live sound recording caused major difficulties in production. Cameras were noisy, so a soundproofed cabinet was used in many of the earliest talkies to isolate the loud equipment from the actors, at the expense of a drastic reduction in the ability to move the camera. For a time, multiple-camera shooting was used to compensate for the loss of mobility and innovative studio technicians could often find ways to liberate

23975-473: The song edited together, over time that term became nebulous as well. For example, in cases where the master take used in the film could not be found in its isolated form (without the M&;E), the aforementioned alternate masters and alternate vocal and solo performances might be used instead. As a result of all this ambiguity, over the years the term soundtrack began to be commonly applied to any recording from

24150-693: The sound quality was very poor and no other theaters could show the sound version of the film as no one had the Photokinema sound system installed. On Sunday, May 29, Dream Street opened at the Shubert Crescent Theater in Brooklyn with a program of short films made in Phonokinema. However, business was poor, and the program soon closed. In 1925, Sam Warner of Warner Bros. , then a small Hollywood studio with big ambitions, saw

24325-473: The sound-on-disc system were able to draw on expertise that Western Electric already had in electrical disc recording and were thus able to make faster initial progress. The main change required was to increase the playing time of the disc so that it could match that of a standard 1,000 ft (300 m) reel of 35 mm film. The chosen design used a disc nearly 16 inches (about 40 cm) in diameter rotating at 33 1/3 rpm. This could play for 11 minutes,

24500-467: The studio's recognition of the new medium's power. Interference , Paramount's first all-talker, debuted in November. The process known as "goat glanding" briefly became widespread: soundtracks, sometimes including a smatter of post-dubbed dialogue or song, were added to movies that had been shot, and in some cases released, as silents. A few minutes of singing could qualify such a newly endowed film as

24675-466: The sublicense, both Warners and ERPI received a share of Fox's related revenues. The patents of all three concerns were cross-licensed. Superior recording and amplification technology was now available to two Hollywood studios, pursuing two very different methods of sound reproduction. The new year would finally see the emergence of sound cinema as a significant commercial medium. In 1929 a "new RCA Photophone portable sound and picture reproducing system"

24850-483: The talkies' universal appeal—until mid-1930, the majority of Hollywood movies were produced in dual versions, silent as well as talking. Though few in the industry predicted it, silent film as a viable commercial medium in the United States would soon be little more than a memory. Points West , a Hoot Gibson Western released by Universal Pictures in August 1929, was the last purely silent mainstream feature put out by

25025-437: The technology was worth investing in. The development of commercial sound cinema had proceeded in fits and starts before The Jazz Singer , and the film's success did not change things overnight. Influential gossip columnist Louella Parsons ' reaction to The Jazz Singer was badly off the mark: "I have no fear that the screeching sound film will ever disturb our theaters," while MGM head of production Irving Thalberg called

25200-407: The transmitting arc-light as varying shades of light and dark bands onto a continuous roll of photographic film. He then determined that he could reverse the process and reproduce the recorded sound from this photographic strip by shining a bright light through the running filmstrip, with the resulting varying light illuminating a selenium cell. The changes in brightness caused a corresponding change to

25375-567: The triode vacuum tube . Over the next few years they developed it into a predictable and reliable device that made electronic amplification possible for the first time. Western Electric then branched-out into developing uses for the vacuum tube including public address systems and an electrical recording system for the recording industry. Beginning in 1922, the research branch of Western Electric began working intensively on recording technology for both sound-on-disc and sound-on film synchronised sound systems for motion-pictures. The engineers working on

25550-521: The truth Maria had been speaking and he embraces his children, asking Maria to stay on as governess. The Captain throws a grand party to introduce Schraeder, and when the band plays the Ländler , the captain's youngest son asks Maria to teach him the dance, and the captain steps in to help her. As the two dance, an unspoken attraction begins to arise between them, and Maria puts a stop to the dancing. However, this unspoken attraction does not go unnoticed by

25725-415: The use of a rubber damping band for recording with better frequency response onto a wax master disc ). That May, the company licensed entrepreneur Walter J. Rich to exploit the system for commercial motion pictures; he founded Vitagraph, in which Warner Bros. acquired a half interest, just one month later. In April 1926, Warners signed a contract with AT&T for exclusive use of its film sound technology for

25900-421: The voices and sound effects and providing evocative descriptions of events and images on the screen.... The most popular narrators were stars in their own right, solely responsible for the patronage of a particular theatre." Film historian Mariann Lewinsky argues, The end of silent film in the West and in Japan was imposed by the industry and the market, not by any inner need or natural evolution.... Silent cinema

26075-429: The von Trapp house, she is greeted coldly by the Captain and introduced to the children, who enter with military precision. Maria finds that the Captain has emotionally closed himself off since the death of his wife, and decides to teach his children the basics of singing to gain their trust and acceptance. A month, later the Captain returns home with Elsa Schraeder, whom he is courting, and their friend Max Detweiler, who

26250-478: The year, AT&T/Western Electric created a licensing division, Electrical Research Products Inc. (ERPI), to handle rights to the company's film-related audio technology. Vitaphone still had legal exclusivity, but having lapsed in its royalty payments, effective control of the rights was in ERPI's hands. On December 31, 1926, Warners granted Fox-Case a sublicense for the use of the Western Electric system; in exchange for

26425-465: Was The Jazz Singer , which premiered on October 6, 1927. A major hit, it was made with Vitaphone , which was at the time the leading brand of sound-on-disc technology. Sound-on-film, however, would soon become the standard for talking pictures. By the early 1930s, the talkies were a global phenomenon. In the United States, they helped secure Hollywood's position as one of the world's most powerful cultural/commercial centers of influence (see Cinema of

26600-441: Was John Williams ' music from the movie Star Wars . Many film score albums go out of print after the films finish their theatrical runs and some have become extremely rare collectors' items. In a few rare instances an entire film dialogue track was issued on records. The 1968 Franco Zeffirelli film of Romeo and Juliet was issued as a 4-LP set, as a single LP with musical and dialogue excerpts, and as an album containing only

26775-425: Was a highly pleasurable and fully mature form. It didn't lack anything, least in Japan, where there was always the human voice doing the dialogues and the commentary. Sound films were not better, just more economical. As a cinema owner you didn't have to pay the wages of musicians and benshi any more. And a good benshi was a star demanding star payment. By the same token, the viability of the benshi system facilitated

26950-416: Was a variable-area system—a refinement in the way the audio signal was inscribed on film that would ultimately become the standard. (In both sorts of systems, a specially-designed lamp, whose exposure to the film is determined by the audio input, is used to record sound photographically as a series of minuscule lines. In a variable-density process, the lines are of varying darkness; in a variable-area process,

27125-459: Was achieved in recording, it could be absolutely counted on in playback. Over the next four years, he improved his system with the help of equipment and patents licensed from another American inventor in the field, Theodore Case . At the University of Illinois , Polish-born research engineer Joseph Tykociński-Tykociner was working independently on a similar process. On June 9, 1922, he gave

27300-502: Was also shot in English as Atlantic . The entirely German Aafa-Film production It's You I Have Loved ( Dich hab ich geliebt ) opened three and a half weeks later. It was not "Germany's First Talking Film", as the marketing had it, but it was the first to be released in the United States. In 1930, the first Polish talkies premiered, using sound-on-disc systems: Moralność pani Dulskiej ( The Morality of Mrs. Dulska ) in March and

27475-419: Was asked to stand on top of things and belt. But whether it was because of nerves or lack of experience, her acting was painfully lifeless and amateur throughout the first two thirds of the lengthy ordeal. The singer, it seems, is a proud graduate of the school of 'If I don't blink, they'll think I'm acting!'" Verne Gay of Newsday liked Underwood's performance, commenting that not only could she sing, but "she

27650-400: Was awarded the first patent for sound-on-film technology, involving the transformation of sound into light waves that are photographically recorded direct onto celluloid . As described by historian Scott Eyman, It was a double system, that is, the sound was on a different piece of film from the picture.... In essence, the sound was captured by a microphone and translated into light waves via

27825-449: Was created in still a different sort of twist on multinational moviemaking: The Crimson Circle was a coproduction between director Friedrich Zelnik 's Efzet-Film company and British Sound Film Productions (BSFP). In 1928, the film had been released as the silent Der Rote Kreis in Germany, where it was shot; English dialogue was apparently dubbed in much later using the De Forest Phonofilm process controlled by BSFP's corporate parent. It

28000-820: Was described in the industry journal Projection Engineering. In Australia, Hoyts and Gilby Talkies Pty., Ltd were touring talking pictures to country towns. The same year the White Star Line installed talking picture equipment on the s.s. Majestic. The features shown on the first voyage were Show Boat and Broadway . In February 1927, an agreement was signed by five leading Hollywood movie companies: Famous Players–Lasky (soon to be part of Paramount ), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer , Universal , First National , and Cecil B. DeMille 's small but prestigious Producers Distributing Corporation (PDC). The five studios agreed to collectively select just one provider for sound conversion, and then waited to see what sort of results

28175-623: Was developed by Clément-Maurice Gratioulet and Henri Lioret of France, allowing short films of theater, opera, and ballet excerpts to be presented at the Paris Exposition in 1900. These appear to be the first publicly exhibited films with projection of both image and recorded sound. Phonorama and yet another sound-film system—Théâtroscope—were also presented at the Exposition. Three major problems persisted, leading to motion pictures and sound recording largely taking separate paths for

28350-411: Was difficult to achieve with the early sound-on-disc systems, and amplification and recording quality were also inadequate. Innovations in sound-on-film led to the first commercial screening of short motion pictures using the technology, which took place in 1923. Before sound-on-film technology became viable, soundtracks for films were commonly played live with organs or pianos. The primary steps in

28525-520: Was given a British trade screening in March 1929, as was a part-talking film made entirely in the UK: The Clue of the New Pin , a British Lion production using the sound-on-disc British Photophone system. In May, Black Waters , which British and Dominions Film Corporation promoted as the first UK all-talker, received its initial trade screening; it had been shot completely in Hollywood with

28700-421: Was performed and televised live from Grumman Studios in Bethpage, New York . Spearheaded by NBC chairman Bob Greenblatt , the network positioned the special as being a live television "event" . In preparing for the broadcast, Meron and Zadan emphasized the logistical challenges that they would face due to the live aspects of the special, and the fact that The Sound of Music Live! was an adaptation based on

28875-474: Was prepared specifically for use in or at an event such as that described above. In the case of theme parks, actors may be ensconced in large costumes where their faces may be obscured. They mime along to a prerecorded music, effects and narration track that may sound as if it was lifted from a movie, or may sound as if it had been overly dramatized for effect. In the case of cruise ships, the small stage spaces do not allow for full orchestration, so that possibly

29050-430: Was published with an original soundtrack by Miklos Szilveszter, accessible through a QR code at the start of each chapter. In Japan , such examples of music inspired by a work and not intended to soundtrack a radio play or motion picture adaptation of it are known as an image album or image song , though this definition also includes such things as film score demos inspired by concept art and songs inspired by

29225-469: Was recorded on RCA Photophone, General Electric having bought a share of AEG so they could access the Tobis-Klangfilm markets. Blackmail was a substantial hit; critical response was also positive—notorious curmudgeon Hugh Castle, for example, called it "perhaps the most intelligent mixture of sound and silence we have yet seen." On August 23, the modest-sized Austrian film industry came out with

29400-422: Was recorded, as was a sequence of live vocal effects. Apparently, dialogue scenes were also recorded, but the results were unsatisfactory and the film was never publicly screened incorporating them. On May 1, 1921, Dream Street was re-released, with love song added, at New York City's Town Hall theater, qualifying it—however haphazardly—as the first feature-length film with a live-recorded vocal sequence. However,

29575-481: Was screened around the United States: eight hours worth of projected visuals involving both slides and live action, synchronized with separately recorded lectures and musical performances played back on phonograph. Meanwhile, innovations continued on another significant front. In 1900, as part of the research he was conducting on the photophone , the German physicist Ernst Ruhmer recorded the fluctuations of

29750-412: Was several generations removed from the original and the sound quality suffered for it. The playback recordings were purposely recorded very dry (without reverberation); otherwise it would come across as too hollow sounding in large movie theatres. This made these albums sound flat and boxy. MGM Records called these "original cast albums" in the style of Decca Broadway show cast albums mostly because

29925-507: Was shown. These were the two most acclaimed sound motion pictures to date. In May, as well, Fox had released the first Hollywood fiction film with synchronized dialogue: the short They're Coming to Get Me , starring comedian Chic Sale . After rereleasing a few silent feature hits, such as Seventh Heaven , with recorded music, Fox came out with its first original Movietone feature on September 23: Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans , by acclaimed German director F. W. Murnau . As with Don Juan ,

30100-420: Was the challenge of recording fidelity. The primitive systems of the era produced sound of very low quality unless the performers were stationed directly in front of the cumbersome recording devices (acoustical horns, for the most part), imposing severe limits on the sort of films that could be created with live-recorded sound. Cinematic innovators attempted to cope with the fundamental synchronization problem in

30275-673: Was the primary competitor to the Gaumont system (sources differ on whether the Cameraphone was disc- or cylinder-based); it ultimately failed for many of the same reasons that held back the Chronophone. In 1913, Edison introduced a new cylinder-based synch-sound apparatus known, just like his 1895 system, as the Kinetophone. Instead of films being shown to individual viewers in the Kinetoscope cabinet, they were now projected onto

30450-452: Was the transformative element that led to the rapid expansion of the nation's film industry . The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is nearly as old as the concept of cinema itself. On February 27, 1888, a couple of days after photographic pioneer Eadweard Muybridge gave a lecture not far from the laboratory of Thomas Edison , the two inventors met privately. Muybridge later claimed that on this occasion, six years before

30625-465: Was underwhelming. Sweden's first talkie, Konstgjorda Svensson ( Artificial Svensson ), premiered on October 14. Eight days later, Aubert Franco-Film came out with Le Collier de la reine ( The Queen's Necklace ), shot at the Épinay studio near Paris. Conceived as a silent film, it was given a Tobis-recorded score and a single talking sequence—the first dialogue scene in a French feature. On October 31, Les Trois masques ( The Three Masks ) debuted;

#50949