What is one possible disadvantage of hearing the characters voices in the theater as opposed to silent reading the scene?

A motion picture with synchronized sound

What is one possible disadvantage of hearing the characters voices in the theater as opposed to silent reading the scene?

1908 poster advertising Gaumont's sound films. The Chronomégaphone, designed for large halls, employed compressed air to amplify the recorded sound.[1]

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 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.

The primary steps in 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) was The Jazz Singer, which premiered on October 6, 1927.[2] 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 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 was the transformative element that led to the rapid expansion of the nation's film industry.

History

Early steps

What is one possible disadvantage of hearing the characters voices in the theater as opposed to silent reading the scene?

Image from The Dickson Experimental Sound Film (1894 or 1895), produced by W.K.L. Dickson as a test of the early version of the Edison Kinetophone, combining the Kinetoscope and phonograph.

What is one possible disadvantage of hearing the characters voices in the theater as opposed to silent reading the scene?

Eric M. C. Tigerstedt (1887–1925) was one of pioneers of sound-on-film technology. Tigerstedt in 1915.

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 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.[3] 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 the Kinetophone in 1895, but individual, cabinet viewing of motion pictures was soon to be outmoded by successes in film projection.[4]

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.[5] An improved cylinder-based system, Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre, 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.[6]

Three major problems persisted, leading to motion pictures and sound recording largely taking separate paths for 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.[7] 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 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.[8]

What is one possible disadvantage of hearing the characters voices in the theater as opposed to silent reading the scene?

Poster featuring Sarah Bernhardt and giving the names of eighteen other "famous artists" shown in "living visions" at the 1900 Paris Exposition using the Gratioulet-Lioret system.

Cinematic innovators attempted to cope with the fundamental synchronization problem in 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 the French Photographic Society.[9] 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.[10] 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 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.[11]

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 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.[12] By the mid-1910s, the groundswell in commercial sound motion picture exhibition had subsided.[11] Beginning in 1914, The Photo-Drama of Creation, promoting Jehovah's Witnesses' conception of humankind's genesis, 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.[13]

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 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 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,[14] 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."[15]

Ruhmer began a correspondence with the French-born, London-based Eugene Lauste,[16] who had worked at Edison's lab between 1886 and 1892. In 1907, Lauste 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 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.[17]

In 1908, Lauste purchased a photographophone from Ruhmer, with the intention of perfecting the device into a commercial product.[16] 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.[18] Hungarian engineer Denes Mihaly submitted his sound-on-film Projectofon concept to the Royal Hungarian Patent Court in 1918; the patent award was published four years later.[19] 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.[20]

Crucial innovations

A number of technological developments contributed to making sound cinema commercially viable by the late 1920s. Two involved contrasting approaches to synchronized sound reproduction, or playback:

Advanced sound-on-film

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 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.[21]

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 the first reported U.S. demonstration of a sound-on-film motion picture to members of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.[22] As with Lauste and Tigerstedt, Tykociner's system would never be taken advantage of commercially; however, De Forest's soon would.

What is one possible disadvantage of hearing the characters voices in the theater as opposed to silent reading the scene?

Newspaper ad for a 1925 presentation of Phonofilm shorts, touting their technological distinction: no phonograph.

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 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.[23] All of them were presented under the banner of De Forest Phonofilms.[24] 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.[25][26][27] Critics attending the event praised the novelty but not the sound quality which received negative reviews in general.[28] That June, De Forest entered into an extended legal battle with an employee, Freeman Harrison Owens, for title to one of 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.[29] 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.[30] 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 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."[31] 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, a subsidiary of British Talking Pictures, which purchased the primary Phonofilm assets. By the end of 1930, the Phonofilm business would be liquidated.[32]

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 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.[33] 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 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.[34]

Domestic competition, however, 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 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.[35] In 1927, as well, Fox retained the services of Freeman Owens, who had particular expertise in constructing cameras for synch-sound film.[36]

Advanced sound-on-disc

Parallel with improvements in sound-on-film technology, 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, 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.[37] However, 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.[38] 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.

What is one possible disadvantage of hearing the characters voices in the theater as opposed to silent reading the scene?

Poster for Warner Bros.' Don Juan (1926), the first major motion picture to premiere with a full-length synchronized soundtrack. Audio recording engineer George Groves, the first in Hollywood to hold the job, would supervise sound on Woodstock, 44 years later.

In 1925, Sam Warner of Warner Bros., then a small Hollywood studio with big ambitions, saw 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 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.[39][40] Vitaphone, as this system was now called, was publicly introduced on August 6, 1926, with the premiere of Don Juan; 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 the Motion Picture Association of America, all with live-recorded sound. These were the first true sound films exhibited by a Hollywood studio.[41] Warner Bros.' The Better 'Ole, technically similar to Don Juan, followed in October.[42]

Sound-on-film would ultimately win out over sound-on-disc because of a number of fundamental technical advantages:

  • Synchronization: no interlock system was completely reliable, and a projectionist's error, or an inexactly repaired film break, or a defect in the soundtrack disc could result in the sound becoming seriously and irrecoverably out of sync with the picture
  • Editing: discs could not be directly edited, severely limiting the ability to make alterations in their accompanying films after the original release cut
  • Distribution: phonograph discs added expense and complication to film distribution
  • Wear and tear: the physical process of playing the discs degraded them, requiring their replacement after approximately twenty screenings[43]

Nonetheless, in the early years, sound-on-disc had the edge over sound-on-film in two substantial ways:

  • Production and capital cost: it was generally less expensive to record sound onto disc than onto film and the exhibition systems—turntable/interlock/projector—were cheaper to manufacture than the complex image-and-audio-pattern-reading projectors required by sound-on-film
  • Audio quality: phonograph discs, Vitaphone's in particular, had superior dynamic range to most sound-on-film processes of the day, at least during the first few playings; while sound-on-film tended to have better frequency response, this was outweighed by greater distortion and noise[44][45]

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:

What is one possible disadvantage of hearing the characters voices in the theater as opposed to silent reading the scene?

Western Electric engineer E. B. Craft, at left, demonstrating the Vitaphone projection system. A Vitaphone disc had a running time of about 11 minutes, enough to match that of a 1,000-foot (300 m) reel of 35 mm film.

Fidelity electronic recording and amplification

In 1913, Western Electric, the manufacturing division of AT&T, acquired the rights to the de Forest audion, the forerunner of 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 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, the running time of 1000 ft of film at 90 ft/min (24 frames/s).[46] 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 the use of a rubber damping band for recording with better frequency response onto a wax master disc[47]). 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.[48] In April 1926, Warners signed a contract with AT&T for exclusive use of its film sound technology for the redubbed Vitaphone operation, leading to the production of Don Juan and its accompanying shorts over the following months.[39] 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 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.[45][49]

Late in 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 the sublicense, both Warners and ERPI received a share of Fox's related revenues. The patents of all three concerns were cross-licensed.[50] 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.

Travel

In 1929 a "new RCA Photophone portable sound and picture reproducing system" was described in the industry journal Projection Engineering.[51] In Australia, Hoyts and Gilby Talkies Pty., Ltd were touring talking pictures to country towns.[52][53] 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.[54]

Triumph of the "talkies"

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 the front-runners came up with.[55] 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 the market by signing up the five allied studios.[56]

What is one possible disadvantage of hearing the characters voices in the theater as opposed to silent reading the scene?

Newspaper ad from a fully equipped theater in Tacoma, Washington, showing The Jazz Singer, on Vitaphone, and a Fox newsreel, on Movietone, together on the same bill.

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., was shown. These were the two most acclaimed sound motion pictures to date.[57] 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.[58] 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, the film's soundtrack consisted of a musical score and sound effects (including, in a couple of crowd scenes, "wild", nonspecific vocals).[59]

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.[60] Produced with 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; the other an exchange between him and his mother. The "natural" sounds of the settings were also audible.[61] 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 the technology was worth investing in.[62]

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 the film "a good gimmick, but that's all it was."[63] 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 the United States. By 1930, only half of the theaters had been wired for sound.[63]

Initially, all ERPI-wired theaters were made Vitaphone-compatible; most were equipped to project Movietone reels as well.[64] 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 the low-budget-oriented Film Booking Offices of America (FBO) premiered The Perfect Crime on June 17, 1928, eight months after The Jazz Singer.[65] 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 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, 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.

What is one possible disadvantage of hearing the characters voices in the theater as opposed to silent reading the scene?

Dorothy Mackaill and Milton Sills in The Barker, First National's inaugural talkie. The film was released in December 1928, two months after Warner Bros. acquired a controlling interest in the studio.

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 the Mouse (31 minutes of dialogue) in May.[66] 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 a Warner Bros. movie.[67] 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.[68] 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, the Mickey Mouse short Steamboat Willie.[69]

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 the studio's recognition of the new medium's power. Interference, Paramount's first all-talker, debuted in November.[70] 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.[71] A few minutes of singing could qualify such a newly endowed film as 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.[72] In late May, the first all-color, all-talking feature, Warner Bros.' On with the Show!, premiered.[73]

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.[74] The studios, in parallel, were still not entirely convinced of the talkies' universal appeal—until mid-1930, the majority of Hollywood movies were produced in dual versions, silent as well as talking.[75] 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 a major Hollywood studio.[76]

Transition: Europe

The Jazz Singer had its European sound premiere at the Piccadilly Theatre in London on September 27, 1928.[77] According to film historian Rachael Low, "Many in the industry realized at once that a change to sound production was inevitable."[78] 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 a few songs performed by Richard Tauber.[79] 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 the Western Electric system infringed on the Tri-Ergon patents, stalling the introduction of American technology in many places.[80] Just as RCA had entered the movie business to maximize its recording system's value, Tobis also established its own production operations.[81]

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 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 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 a Western Electric sound-on-film system. None of these pictures made much impact.[82]

What is one possible disadvantage of hearing the characters voices in the theater as opposed to silent reading the scene?

The Prague-raised star of Blackmail (1929), Anny Ondra, was an industry favorite, but her thick accent became an issue when the film was reshot with sound. Without post-dubbing capacity, her dialogue was simultaneously recorded offscreen by actress Joan Barry. Ondra's British film career was over.[83]

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 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."[84]

On August 23, the modest-sized Austrian film industry came out with a talkie: G'schichten aus der Steiermark (Stories from Styria), an Eagle Film–Ottoton Film production.[85] 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 was underwhelming.[86] 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; 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.[87]

Before 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.[88] 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 was also shot in English as Atlantic.[89] 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.[90]

What is one possible disadvantage of hearing the characters voices in the theater as opposed to silent reading the scene?

The first Soviet talkie, Putevka v zhizn (The Road to Life; 1931), concerns the issue of homeless youth. As Marcel Carné put it, "in the unforgettable images of this spare and pure story we can discern the effort of an entire nation."[91]

In 1930, the first Polish talkies premiered, using sound-on-disc systems: Moralność pani Dulskiej (The Morality of Mrs. Dulska) in March and the all-talking Niebezpieczny romans (Dangerous Love Affair) in October.[92] 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.[93] The first movie spoken in Czech debuted in 1930 as well, Tonka Šibenice (Tonka of the Gallows).[94] Several European nations with minor positions in the field also produced their first talking pictures—Belgium (in French), Denmark, Greece, and Romania.[95] 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 the Great Works) had music and spoken voiceovers.[96] 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.[97] 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.[98]

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 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.[99] According to scholar Colin G. Crisp, "Anxiety about resuscitating the flow of silent films was frequently expressed in the [French] industrial press, and a large section of the industry still saw the silent as a viable artistic and commercial prospect till about 1935."[100] 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.[101]

Transition: Asia

What is one possible disadvantage of hearing the characters voices in the theater as opposed to silent reading the scene?

Director Heinosuke Gosho's Madamu to nyobo (The Neighbor's Wife and Mine; 1931), a production of the Shochiku studio, was the first major commercial and critical success of Japanese sound cinema.[102]

During the 1920s and 1930s, Japan was one of the world's two largest producers of motion pictures, along with 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.[103] 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), 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.[104] Two years later, however, more than 80 percent of movies made in the country were still silents.[105] Two of the country's leading directors, Mikio Naruse and Yasujirō Ozu, did not make their first sound films until 1935 and 1936, respectively.[106] As late as 1938, over a third of all movies produced in Japan were shot without dialogue.[105]

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 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."[107] 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 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.[108]

By the same token, the viability of the benshi system facilitated 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.[109]

What is one possible disadvantage of hearing the characters voices in the theater as opposed to silent reading the scene?

Alam Ara premiered March 14, 1931, in Bombay. The first Indian talkie was so popular that "police aid had to be summoned to control the crowds."[110] It was shot with the Tanar single-system camera, which recorded sound directly onto the film.

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 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.[111] In September 1930, a song performed by Indian star Sulochana, excerpted from the silent feature Madhuri (1928), was released as a synchronized-sound short, the country's first.[112] 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.[113][114] In 1932, Ayodhyecha Raja became 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.[115] 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, the local film industry had fully converted to sound.[116] Korea, where pyonsa (or byun-sa) held a role and status similar to that of the Japanese benshi,[117] in 1935 became the last country with a significant film industry to produce its first talking picture: Chunhyangjeon (春香傳/춘향전) is based on the seventeenth-century pansori folktale "Chunhyangga", of which as many as fifteen film versions have been made through 2009.[118]

Transition: Middle East

The Middle East was very late to the film game. Films did not start to be made in the Middle East until the late 1920s for the first time. This was well after the rest of the world had adopted film and moved to “talkies.” Up until this point the Middle East had and Middle Eastern actors and actresses were only used by Western film studios. Saudi Arabia did not allow films to be made in the country until the 1960s.

Consequences

Technology

What is one possible disadvantage of hearing the characters voices in the theater as opposed to silent reading the scene?

Show Girl in Hollywood (1930), one of the first sound films about sound filmmaking, depicts microphones dangling from the rafters and multiple cameras shooting simultaneously from soundproofed booths. The poster shows a camera unboothed and unblimped, as it might be when shooting a musical number with a prerecorded soundtrack.

In 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 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 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 a large bass "woofer", a midrange driver, and a treble "tweeter."[119]

There were consequences, as well, for other technological aspects of the cinema. Proper recording and playback of sound required exact standardization of camera and projector speed. Before sound, 16 frames per second (fps) was the supposed norm, but practice varied widely. Cameras were often undercranked or overcranked to improve exposures or for dramatic effect. Projectors were commonly run too fast to shorten running time and squeeze in extra shows. Variable frame rate, however, made sound unlistenable, and a new, strict standard of 24 fps was soon established.[120] Sound also forced the abandonment of the noisy arc lights used for filming in studio interiors. The switch to quiet incandescent illumination in turn required a switch to more expensive film stock. The sensitivity of the new panchromatic film delivered superior image tonal quality and gave directors the freedom to shoot scenes at lower light levels than was previously practical.[120]

As David Bordwell describes, technological improvements continued at a swift pace: "Between 1932 and 1935, [Western Electric and RCA] created directional microphones, increased the frequency range of film recording, reduced ground noise ... and extended the volume range." These technical advances often meant new aesthetic opportunities: "Increasing the fidelity of recording ... heightened the dramatic possibilities of vocal timbre, pitch, and loudness."[121] Another basic problem—famously spoofed in the 1952 film Singin' in the Rain—was that some silent-era actors simply did not have attractive voices; though this issue was frequently overstated, there were related concerns about general vocal quality and the casting of performers for their dramatic skills in roles also requiring singing talent beyond their own. By 1935, rerecording of vocals by the original or different actors in postproduction, a process known as "looping", had become practical. The ultraviolet recording system introduced by RCA in 1936 improved the reproduction of sibilants and high notes.[122]

What is one possible disadvantage of hearing the characters voices in the theater as opposed to silent reading the scene?

Example of a variable-area sound track—the width of the white area is proportional to the amplitude of the audio signal at each instant.

With Hollywood's wholesale adoption of the talkies, the competition between the two fundamental approaches to sound-film production was soon resolved. Over the course of 1930–31, the only major players using sound-on-disc, Warner Bros. and First National, changed over to sound-on-film recording. Vitaphone's dominating presence in sound-equipped theaters, however, meant that for years to come all of the Hollywood studios pressed and distributed sound-on-disc versions of their films alongside the sound-on-film prints.[123] Fox Movietone soon followed Vitaphone into disuse as a recording and reproduction method, leaving two major American systems: the variable-area RCA Photophone and Western Electric's own variable-density process, a substantial improvement on the cross-licensed Movietone.[124] Under RCA's instigation, the two parent companies made their projection equipment compatible, meaning films shot with one system could be screened in theaters equipped for the other.[125] This left one big issue—the Tobis-Klangfilm challenge. In May 1930, Western Electric won an Austrian lawsuit that voided protection for certain Tri-Ergon patents, helping bring Tobis-Klangfilm to the negotiating table.[126] The following month an accord was reached on patent cross-licensing, full playback compatibility, and the division of the world into three parts for the provision of equipment. As a contemporary report describes:

Tobis-Klangfilm has the exclusive rights to provide equipment for: Germany, Danzig, Austria, Hungary, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, Holland, the Dutch Indies, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Finland. The Americans have the exclusive rights for the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and Russia. All other countries, among them Italy, France, and England, are open to both parties.[127]

The agreement did not resolve all the patent disputes, and further negotiations were undertaken and concords signed over the course of the 1930s. During these years, as well, the American studios began abandoning the Western Electric system for RCA Photophone's variable-area approach—by the end of 1936, only Paramount, MGM, and United Artists still had contracts with ERPI.[128]

Labor

What is one possible disadvantage of hearing the characters voices in the theater as opposed to silent reading the scene?

The unkind cover of Photoplay, December 1929, featuring Norma Talmadge. As movie historian David Thomson puts it, "sound proved the incongruity of [her] salon prettiness and tenement voice."[129]

While the introduction of sound led to a boom in the motion picture industry, it had an adverse effect on the employability of a host of Hollywood actors of the time. Suddenly those without stage experience were regarded as suspect by the studios; as suggested above, those whose heavy accents or otherwise discordant voices had previously been concealed were particularly at risk. The career of major silent star Norma Talmadge effectively came to an end in this way. The celebrated German actor Emil Jannings returned to Europe. Moviegoers found John Gilbert's voice an awkward match with his swashbuckling persona, and his star also faded.[130] Audiences now seemed to perceive certain silent-era stars as old-fashioned, even those who had the talent to succeed in the sound era. The career of Harold Lloyd, one of the top screen comedians of the 1920s, declined precipitously.[131] Lillian Gish departed, back to the stage, and other leading figures soon left acting entirely: Colleen Moore, Gloria Swanson, and Hollywood's most famous performing couple, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford.[132] After his acting career collapsed due to his Danish accent, Karl Dane committed suicide. However, the impact of sound on the careers of film actors should not be exaggerated. One statistical analysis of silent actress career length showed that the five-year ‘survival-rate’ of actresses active in 1922 was only 10% greater than those active after 1927.[133] As actress Louise Brooks suggested, there were other issues as well:

Studio heads, now forced into unprecedented decisions, decided to begin with the actors, the least palatable, the most vulnerable part of movie production. It was such a splendid opportunity, anyhow, for breaking contracts, cutting salaries, and taming the stars.... Me, they gave the salary treatment. I could stay on without the raise my contract called for, or quit, [Paramount studio chief B. P.] Schulberg said, using the questionable dodge of whether I'd be good for the talkies. Questionable, I say, because I spoke decent English in a decent voice and came from the theater. So without hesitation I quit.[134]

Buster Keaton was eager to explore the new medium, but when his studio, MGM, made the changeover to sound, he was quickly stripped of creative control. Though a number of Keaton's early talkies made impressive profits, they were artistically dismal.[135]

Several of the new medium's biggest attractions came from vaudeville and the musical theater, where performers such as Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Jeanette MacDonald, and the Marx Brothers were accustomed to the demands of both dialogue and song.[136] James Cagney and Joan Blondell, who had teamed on Broadway, were brought west together by Warner Bros. in 1930.[137] A few actors were major stars during both the silent and the sound eras: John Barrymore, Ronald Colman, Myrna Loy, William Powell, Norma Shearer, the comedy team of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, and Charlie Chaplin, whose City Lights (1931) and Modern Times (1936) employed sound almost exclusively for music and effects.[138] Janet Gaynor became a top star with the synch-sound but dialogueless Seventh Heaven and Sunrise, as did Joan Crawford with the technologically similar Our Dancing Daughters (1928).[139] Greta Garbo was the one non–native English speaker to retain Hollywood stardom on both sides of the great sound divide.[140] Silent film extra Clark Gable, who had received extensive voice training during his earlier stage career, went on to dominate the new medium for decades; similarly, English actor Boris Karloff, having appeared in dozens of silent films since 1919, found his star ascend in the sound era (though, ironically, it was a non-speaking role in 1931's Frankenstein that made this happen, but despite having a lisp, he found himself much in demand after). The new emphasis on speech also caused producers to hire many novelists, journalists, and playwrights with experience writing good dialogue. Among those who became Hollywood scriptwriters during the 1930s were Nathanael West, William Faulkner, Robert Sherwood, Aldous Huxley, and Dorothy Parker.[141]

As talking pictures emerged, with their prerecorded musical tracks, an increasing number of moviehouse orchestra musicians found themselves out of work.[142] More than just their position as film accompanists was usurped; according to historian Preston J. Hubbard, "During the 1920s live musical performances at first-run theaters became an exceedingly important aspect of the American cinema."[143] With the coming of the talkies, those featured performances—usually staged as preludes—were largely eliminated as well. The American Federation of Musicians took out newspaper advertisements protesting the replacement of live musicians with mechanical playing devices. One 1929 ad that appeared in the Pittsburgh Press features an image of a can labeled "Canned Music / Big Noise Brand / Guaranteed to Produce No Intellectual or Emotional Reaction Whatever" and reads in part:

Canned Music on Trial
This is the case of Art vs. Mechanical Music in theatres. The defendant stands accused in front of the American people of attempted corruption of musical appreciation and discouragement of musical education. Theatres in many cities are offering synchronised mechanical music as a substitute for Real Music. If the theatre-going public accepts this vitiation of its entertainment program a deplorable decline in the Art of Music is inevitable. Musical authorities know that the soul of the Art is lost in mechanization. It cannot be otherwise because the quality of music is dependent on the mood of the artist, upon the human contact, without which the essence of intellectual stimulation and emotional rapture is lost.[144]

By the following year, a reported 22,000 U.S. moviehouse musicians had lost their jobs.[145]

Commerce

What is one possible disadvantage of hearing the characters voices in the theater as opposed to silent reading the scene?

Premiering February 1, 1929, MGM's The Broadway Melody was the first smash-hit talkie from a studio other than Warner Bros. and the first sound film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.

In September 1926, Jack L. Warner, head of Warner Bros., was quoted to the effect that talking pictures would never be viable: "They fail to take into account the international language of the silent pictures, and the unconscious share of each onlooker in creating the play, the action, the plot, and the imagined dialogue for himself."[146] Much to his company's benefit, he would be proven very wrong—between the 1927–28 and 1928–29 fiscal years, Warners' profits surged from $2 million to $14 million. Sound film, in fact, was a clear boon to all the major players in the industry. During that same twelve-month span, Paramount's profits rose by $7 million, Fox's by $3.5 million, and Loew's/MGM's by $3 million.[147] RKO, which did not even exist in September 1928 and whose parent production company, FBO, was in the Hollywood minor leagues, by the end of 1929 was established as one of America's leading entertainment businesses.[148] Fueling the boom was the emergence of an important new cinematic genre made possible by sound: the musical. Over sixty Hollywood musicals were released in 1929, and more than eighty the following year.[149]

Even as the Wall Street crash of October 1929 helped plunge the United States and ultimately the global economy into depression, the popularity of the talkies at first seemed to keep Hollywood immune. The 1929–30 exhibition season was even better for the motion picture industry than the previous, with ticket sales and overall profits hitting new highs. Reality finally struck later in 1930, but sound had clearly secured Hollywood's position as one of the most important industrial fields, both commercially and culturally, in the United States. In 1929, film box-office receipts comprised 16.6 percent of total spending by Americans on recreation; by 1931, the figure had reached 21.8 percent. The motion picture business would command similar figures for the next decade and a half.[150] Hollywood ruled on the larger stage, as well. The American movie industry—already the world's most powerful—set an export record in 1929 that, by the applied measure of total feet of exposed film, was 27 percent higher than the year before.[151] Concerns that language differences would hamper U.S. film exports turned out to be largely unfounded. In fact, the expense of sound conversion was a major obstacle to many overseas producers, relatively undercapitalized by Hollywood standards. The production of multiple versions of export-bound talkies in different languages (known as "Foreign Language Version"), as well as the production of the cheaper "International Sound Version", a common approach at first, largely ceased by mid-1931, replaced by post-dubbing and subtitling. Despite trade restrictions imposed in most foreign markets, by 1937, American films commanded about 70 percent of screen time around the globe.[152]

What is one possible disadvantage of hearing the characters voices in the theater as opposed to silent reading the scene?

Poster for Acabaram-se os otários (1929), performed in Portuguese. The first Brazilian talkie was also the first anywhere in an Iberian language.

Just as the leading Hollywood studios gained from sound in relation to their foreign competitors, they did the same at home. As historian Richard B. Jewell describes, "The sound revolution crushed many small film companies and producers who were unable to meet the financial demands of sound conversion."[153] The combination of sound and the Great Depression led to a wholesale shakeout in the business, resulting in the hierarchy of the Big Five integrated companies (MGM, Paramount, Fox, Warner Bros., RKO) and the three smaller studios also called "majors" (Columbia, Universal, United Artists) that would predominate through the 1950s. Historian Thomas Schatz describes the ancillary effects:

Because the studios were forced to streamline operations and rely on their own resources, their individual house styles and corporate personalities came into much sharper focus. Thus the watershed period from the coming of sound into the early Depression saw the studio system finally coalesce, with the individual studios coming to terms with their own identities and their respective positions within the industry.[154]

The other country in which sound cinema had an immediate major commercial impact was India. As one distributor of the period said, "With the coming of the talkies, the Indian motion picture came into its own as a definite and distinctive piece of creation. This was achieved by music."[155] From its earliest days, Indian sound cinema has been defined by the musical—Alam Ara featured seven songs; a year later, Indrasabha would feature seventy. While the European film industries fought an endless battle against the popularity and economic muscle of Hollywood, ten years after the debut of Alam Ara, over 90 percent of the films showing on Indian screens were made within the country.[156]

Most of India's early talkies were shot in Bombay, which remains the leading production center, but sound filmmaking soon spread across the multilingual nation. Within just a few weeks of Alam Ara's March 1931 premiere, the Calcutta-based Madan Pictures had released both the Hindi Shirin Farhad and the Bengali Jamai Sasthi.[157] The Hindustani Heer Ranjha was produced in Lahore, Punjab, the following year. In 1934, Sati Sulochana, the first Kannada talking picture to be released, was shot in Kolhapur, Maharashtra; Srinivasa Kalyanam became the first Tamil talkie actually shot in Tamil Nadu.[114][158] Once the first talkie features appeared, the conversion to full sound production happened as rapidly in India as it did in the United States. Already by 1932, the majority of feature productions were in sound; two years later, 164 of the 172 Indian feature films were talking pictures.[159] Since 1934, with the sole exception of 1952, India has been among the top three movie-producing countries in the world every single year.[160]

Aesthetic quality

In the first, 1930 edition of his global survey The Film Till Now, British cinema pundit Paul Rotha declared, "A film in which the speech and sound effects are perfectly synchronised and coincide with their visual image on the screen is absolutely contrary to the aims of cinema. It is a degenerate and misguided attempt to destroy the real use of the film and cannot be accepted as coming within the true boundaries of the cinema."[161] Such opinions were not rare among those who cared about cinema as an art form; Alfred Hitchcock, though he directed the first commercially successful talkie produced in Europe, held that "the silent pictures were the purest form of cinema" and scoffed at many early sound films as delivering little beside "photographs of people talking".[162] In Germany, Max Reinhardt, stage producer and movie director, expressed the belief that the talkies, "bringing to the screen stage plays ... tend to make this independent art a subsidiary of the theater and really make it only a substitute for the theater instead of an art in itself ... like reproductions of paintings."[163]

What is one possible disadvantage of hearing the characters voices in the theater as opposed to silent reading the scene?

Westfront 1918 (1930) was celebrated for its expressive re-creation of battlefield sounds, like the doomful whine of an unseen grenade in flight.[164]

In the opinion of many film historians and aficionados, both at the time and subsequently, silent film had reached an aesthetic peak by the late 1920s and the early years of sound cinema delivered little that was comparable to the best of the silents.[165] For instance, despite fading into relative obscurity once its era had passed, silent cinema is represented by eleven films in Time Out's Centenary of Cinema Top One Hundred poll, held in 1995. The first year in which sound film production predominated over silent film—not only in the United States, but also in the West as a whole—was 1929; yet the years 1929 through 1933 are represented by three dialogueless pictures (Pandora's Box [1929], Zemlya [1930], City Lights [1931]) and zero talkies in the Time Out poll. (City Lights, like Sunrise, was released with a recorded score and sound effects, but is now customarily referred to by historians and industry professionals as a "silent"—spoken dialogue regarded as the crucial distinguishing factor between silent and sound dramatic cinema.) The earliest sound film to place is the French L'Atalante (1934), directed by Jean Vigo; the earliest Hollywood sound film to qualify is Bringing Up Baby (1938), directed by Howard Hawks.[166]

The first sound feature film to receive near-universal critical approbation was Der Blaue Engel (The Blue Angel); premiering on April 1, 1930, it was directed by Josef von Sternberg in both German and English versions for Berlin's UFA studio.[167] The first American talkie to be widely honored was All Quiet on the Western Front, directed by Lewis Milestone, which premiered April 21. The other internationally acclaimed sound drama of the year was Westfront 1918, directed by G. W. Pabst for Nero-Film of Berlin.[168] Historian Anton Kaes points to it as an example of "the new verisimilitude [that] rendered silent cinema's former emphasis on the hypnotic gaze and the symbolism of light and shadow, as well as its preference for allegorical characters, anachronistic."[164] Cultural historians consider the French L'Âge d'Or, directed by Luis Buñuel, which appeared late in 1930, to be of great aesthetic import; at the time, its erotic, blasphemous, anti-bourgeois content caused a scandal. Swiftly banned by Paris police chief Jean Chiappe, it was unavailable for fifty years.[169] The earliest sound movie now acknowledged by most film historians as a masterpiece is Nero-Film's M, directed by Fritz Lang, which premiered May 11, 1931.[170] As described by Roger Ebert, "Many early talkies felt they had to talk all the time, but Lang allows his camera to prowl through the streets and dives, providing a rat's-eye view."[171]

Cinematic form

"Talking film is as little needed as a singing book."[172] Such was the blunt proclamation of critic Viktor Shklovsky, one of the leaders of the Russian formalist movement, in 1927. While some regarded sound as irreconcilable with film art, others saw it as opening a new field of creative opportunity. The following year, a group of Soviet filmmakers, including Sergei Eisenstein, proclaimed that the use of image and sound in juxtaposition, the so-called contrapuntal method, would raise the cinema to "...unprecedented power and cultural height. Such a method for constructing the sound-film will not confine it to a national market, as must happen with the photographing of plays, but will give a greater possibility than ever before for the circulation throughout the world of a filmically expressed idea."[173] So far as one segment of the audience was concerned, however, the introduction of sound brought a virtual end to such circulation: Elizabeth C. Hamilton writes, "Silent films offered people who were deaf a rare opportunity to participate in a public discourse, cinema, on equal terms with hearing people. The emergence of sound film effectively separated deaf from hearing audience members once again."[174]

What is one possible disadvantage of hearing the characters voices in the theater as opposed to silent reading the scene?

Image of sumo wrestlers from Melodie der Welt (1929), "one of the initial successes of a new art form", in André Bazin's description. "It flung the whole earth onto the screen in a jigsaw of visual images and sounds."[175]

On March 12, 1929, the first feature-length talking picture made in Germany had its premiere. The inaugural Tobis Filmkunst production, it was not a drama, but a documentary sponsored by a shipping line: Melodie der Welt (Melody of the World), directed by Walter Ruttmann.[176] This was also perhaps the first feature film anywhere to significantly explore the artistic possibilities of joining the motion picture with recorded sound. As described by scholar William Moritz, the movie is "intricate, dynamic, fast-paced ... juxtapos[ing] similar cultural habits from countries around the world, with a superb orchestral score ... and many synchronized sound effects."[177] Composer Lou Lichtveld was among a number of contemporary artists struck by the film: "Melodie der Welt became the first important sound documentary, the first in which musical and unmusical sounds were composed into a single unit and in which image and sound are controlled by one and the same impulse."[178] Melodie der Welt was a direct influence on the industrial film Philips Radio (1931), directed by Dutch avant-garde filmmaker Joris Ivens and scored by Lichtveld, who described its audiovisual aims:

To render the half-musical impressions of factory sounds in a complex audio world that moved from absolute music to the purely documentary noises of nature. In this film every intermediate stage can be found: such as the movement of the machine interpreted by the music, the noises of the machine dominating the musical background, the music itself is the documentary, and those scenes where the pure sound of the machine goes solo.[179]

Many similar experiments were pursued by Dziga Vertov in his 1931 Entuziazm and by Chaplin in Modern Times, a half-decade later.

A few innovative commercial directors immediately saw the ways in which sound could be employed as an integral part of cinematic storytelling, beyond the obvious function of recording speech. In Blackmail, Hitchcock manipulated the reproduction of a character's monologue so the word "knife" would leap out from a blurry stream of sound, reflecting the subjective impression of the protagonist, who is desperate to conceal her involvement in a fatal stabbing.[180] In his first film, the Paramount Applause (1929), Rouben Mamoulian created the illusion of acoustic depth by varying the volume of ambient sound in proportion to the distance of shots. At a certain point, Mamoulian wanted the audience to hear one character singing at the same time as another prays; according to the director, "They said we couldn't record the two things—the song and the prayer—on one mike and one channel. So I said to the sound man, 'Why not use two mikes and two channels and combine the two tracks in printing?'"[181] Such methods would eventually become standard procedure in popular filmmaking.

One of the first commercial films to take full advantage of the new opportunities provided by recorded sound was Le Million, directed by René Clair and produced by Tobis's French division. Premiering in Paris in April 1931 and New York a month later, the picture was both a critical and popular success. A musical comedy with a barebones plot, it is memorable for its formal accomplishments, in particular, its emphatically artificial treatment of sound. As described by scholar Donald Crafton,

Le Million never lets us forget that the acoustic component is as much a construction as the whitewashed sets. [It] replaced dialogue with actors singing and talking in rhyming couplets. Clair created teasing confusions between on- and off-screen sound. He also experimented with asynchronous audio tricks, as in the famous scene in which a chase after a coat is synched to the cheers of an invisible football (or rugby) crowd.[182]

These and similar techniques became part of the vocabulary of the sound comedy film, though as special effects and "color", not as the basis for the kind of comprehensive, non-naturalistic design achieved by Clair. Outside of the comedic field, the sort of bold play with sound exemplified by Melodie der Welt and Le Million would be pursued very rarely in commercial production. Hollywood, in particular, incorporated sound into a reliable system of genre-based moviemaking, in which the formal possibilities of the new medium were subordinated to the traditional goals of star affirmation and straightforward storytelling. As accurately predicted in 1928 by Frank Woods, secretary of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, "The talking pictures of the future will follow the general line of treatment heretofore developed by the silent drama.... The talking scenes will require different handling, but the general construction of the story will be much the same."[183]

Further reading

  • Cameron, E.W. (1980). Sound and Cinema: The Coming of Sound to American Film. New York and Uxon, UK: Routledge. ISBN 091317856X
  • Lastra, James (2000). Sound Technology and the American Cinema. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0231115164
  • Walker, Alexander (1979). The Shattered Silents: How the Talkies Came to Stay. New York: William Morrow and Company. ISBN 0-688-03544-2

See also

  • Category:Film sound production for articles concerning the development of cinematic sound recording
  • Dubbing (filmmaking)
  • Foley (filmmaking)
  • History of film
  • List of film sound systems
  • Musical film
  • Sound stage
  • The American Fotoplayer

Notes

  1. ^ Wierzbicki (2009), p. 74; "Representative Kinematograph Shows" (1907).The Auxetophone and Other Compressed-Air Gramophones Archived September 18, 2010, at the Wayback Machine explains pneumatic amplification and includes several detailed photographs of Gaumont's Elgéphone, which was apparently a slightly later and more elaborate version of the Chronomégaphone.
  2. ^ The first talkie - "The Jazz Singer", Jolsonville, Oct. 9, 2013
  3. ^ Robinson (1997), p. 23.
  4. ^ Robertson (2001) claims that German inventor and filmmaker Oskar Messter began projecting sound motion pictures at 21 Unter den Linden in September 1896 (p. 168), but this seems to be an error. Koerber (1996) notes that after Messter acquired the Cinema Unter den Linden (located in the back room of a restaurant), it reopened under his management on September 21, 1896 (p. 53), but no source beside Robertson describes Messter as screening sound films before 1903.
  5. ^ Altman (2005), p. 158; Cosandey (1996).
  6. ^ Lloyd and Robinson (1986), p. 91; Barnier (2002), pp. 25, 29; Robertson (2001), p. 168. Gratioulet went by his given name, Clément-Maurice, and is referred to thus in many sources, including Robertson and Barnier. Robertson incorrectly states that the Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre was a presentation of the Gaumont Co.; in fact, it was presented under the aegis of Paul Decauville (Barnier, ibid.).
  7. ^ Sound engineer Mark Ulano, in "The Movies Are Born a Child of the Phonograph" (part 2 of his essay "Moving Pictures That Talk"), describes the Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre version of synchronized sound cinema:

    This system used an operator adjusted non-linkage form of primitive synchronization. The scenes to be shown were first filmed, and then the performers recorded their dialogue or songs on the Lioretograph (usually a Le Éclat concert cylinder format phonograph) trying to match tempo with the projected filmed performance. In showing the films, synchronization of sorts was achieved by adjusting the hand cranked film projector's speed to match the phonograph. the projectionist was equipped with a telephone through which he listened to the phonograph which was located in the orchestra pit.

  8. ^ Crafton (1997), p. 37.
  9. ^ Barnier (2002), p. 29.
  10. ^ Altman (2005), p. 158. If there was a drawback to the Elgéphone, it was apparently not a lack of volume. Dan Gilmore describes its predecessor technology in his 2004 essay "What's Louder than Loud? The Auxetophone": "Was the Auxetophone loud? It was painfully loud." For a more detailed report of Auxetophone-induced discomfort, see The Auxetophone and Other Compressed-Air Gramophones Archived September 18, 2010, at the Wayback Machine.
  11. ^ a b Altman (2005), pp. 158–65; Altman (1995).
  12. ^ Gomery (1985), pp. 54–55.
  13. ^ Lindvall (2007), pp. 118–25; Carey (1999), pp. 322–23.
  14. ^ Ruhmer (1901), p. 36.
  15. ^ Ruhmer (1908), p. 39.
  16. ^ a b Crawford (1931), p. 638.
  17. ^ Eyman (1997), pp. 30–31.
  18. ^ Sipilä, Kari (April 2004). "A Country That Innovates". Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland. Archived from the original on July 7, 2011. Retrieved December 8, 2009. "Eric Tigerstedt". Film Sound Sweden. Retrieved December 8, 2009. See also A. M. Pertti Kuusela, E.M.C Tigerstedt "Suomen Edison" (Insinööritieto Oy: 1981).
  19. ^ Bognár (2000), p. 197.
  20. ^ Gomery (1985), pp. 55–56.
  21. ^ Sponable (1947), part 2.
  22. ^ Crafton (1997), pp. 51–52; Moone (2004); Łotysz (2006). Note that Crafton and Łotysz describe the demonstration as taking place at an AIEE conference. Moone, writing for the journal of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign's Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, says the audience was "members of the Urbana chapter of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers."
  23. ^ MacDonald, Laurence E. (1998). The Invisible Art of Film Music: A Comprehensive History. Lanham, MD: Ardsley House. p. 5. ISBN 978-1-880157-56-5.
  24. ^ Gomery (2005), p. 30; Eyman (1997), p. 49.
  25. ^ "12 mentiras de la historia que nos tragamos sin rechistar (4)". MSN (in European Spanish). Archived from the original on February 7, 2019. Retrieved February 6, 2019.
  26. ^ EFE (November 3, 2010). "La primera película sonora era española". El País (in European Spanish). ISSN 1134-6582. Retrieved February 6, 2019.
  27. ^ López, Alfred (April 15, 2016). "¿Sabías que 'El cantor de jazz' no fue realmente la primera película sonora de la historia del cine?". 20 minutos (in European Spanish). Retrieved February 6, 2020.
  28. ^ Crafton, Donald (1999). The Talkies: American Cinema's Transition to Sound, 1926-1931. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. p. 65. ISBN 0-520-22128-1.
  29. ^ Hall, Brenda J. (July 28, 2008). "Freeman Harrison Owens (1890–1979)". Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture. Retrieved December 7, 2009.
  30. ^ A few sources indicate that the film was released in 1923, but the two most recent authoritative histories that discuss the film—Crafton (1997), p. 66; Hijiya (1992), p. 103—both give 1924. There are claims that De Forest recorded a synchronized musical score for director Fritz Lang's Siegfried (1924) when it arrived in the United States the year after its German debut—Geduld (1975), p. 100; Crafton (1997), pp. 66, 564—which would make it the first feature film with synchronized sound throughout. There is no consensus, however, concerning when this recording took place or if the film was ever actually presented with synch-sound. For a possible occasion for such a recording, see the August 24, 1925, New York Times review of Siegfried Archived April 5, 2016, at the Wayback Machine, following its American premiere at New York City's Century Theater the night before, which describes the score's performance by a live orchestra.
  31. ^ Quoted in Lasky (1989), p. 20.
  32. ^ Low (1997a), p. 203; Low (1997b), p. 183.
  33. ^ Robertson (2001), p. 168.
  34. ^ Crisp (1997), pp. 97–98; Crafton (1997), pp. 419–20.
  35. ^ Sponable (1947), part 4.
  36. ^ See Freeman Harrison Owens (1890–1979), op. cit. A number of sources erroneously state that Owens's and/or the Tri-Ergon patents were essential to the creation of the Fox-Case Movietone system.
  37. ^ Bradley (1996), p. 4; Gomery (2005), p. 29. Crafton (1997) misleadingly implies that Griffith's film had not previously been exhibited commercially before its sound-enhanced premiere. He also misidentifies Ralph Graves as Richard Grace (p. 58).
  38. ^ Scott Eyman, The Speed of Sound (1997), page 43
  39. ^ a b Crafton (1997), pp. 71–72.
  40. ^ Historical Development of Sound Films, E.I.Sponable, Journal of the SMPTE Vol. 48 April 1947
  41. ^ The eight musical shorts were Caro Nome, An Evening on the Don, La Fiesta, His Pastimes, The Kreutzer Sonata, Mischa Elman, Overture "Tannhäuser" and Vesti La Giubba.
  42. ^ Crafton (1997), pp. 76–87; Gomery (2005), pp. 38–40.
  43. ^ Liebman (2003), p. 398.
  44. ^ Schoenherr, Steven E. (March 24, 2002). "Dynamic Range". Recording Technology History. History Department at the University of San Diego. Archived from the original on September 5, 2006. Retrieved December 11, 2009.
  45. ^ a b Schoenherr, Steven E. (October 6, 1999). "Motion Picture Sound 1910–1929". Recording Technology History. History Department at the University of San Diego. Archived from the original on April 29, 2007. Retrieved December 11, 2009.
  46. ^ History of Sound Motion Pictures by Edward W. Kellogg, Journal of the SMPTE Vol. 64 June 1955
  47. ^ The Bell "Rubber Line" Recorder Archived January 17, 2013, at the Wayback Machine.
  48. ^ Crafton (1997), p. 70.
  49. ^ Schoenherr, Steven E. (January 9, 2000). "Sound Recording Research at Bell Labs". Recording Technology History. History Department at the University of San Diego. Archived from the original on May 22, 2007. Retrieved December 7, 2009.
  50. ^ Gomery (2005), pp. 42, 50. See also Motion Picture Sound 1910–1929 Archived May 13, 2008, at the Wayback Machine, perhaps the best online source for details on these developments, though here it fails to note that Fox's original deal for the Western Electric technology involved a sublicensing arrangement.
  51. ^ Danson, H. L. (September 1929). "The Portable Model RCA Photophone". Projection Engineering. Bryan Davis Publishing Co., inc. November 1929: 32. Retrieved August 6, 2021 – via InternetArchive.
  52. ^ "LOCAL & GENERAL". Geraldton Guardian and Express. Vol. I, no. 170. Western Australia. August 8, 1929. p. 2. Retrieved August 6, 2021 – via National Library of Australia.
  53. ^ Smith, Nathan (April 2020). "TOURING SOUND EQUIPMENT TO REGIONAL AREAS". National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. Retrieved August 6, 2021.
  54. ^ "TALKIES AT SEA". The Daily News. Vol. XLVIII, no. 16, 950. Western Australia. August 30, 1929. p. 10 (HOME FINAL EDITION). Retrieved August 6, 2021 – via National Library of Australia.
  55. ^ Crafton (1997), pp. 129–30.
  56. ^ Gomery (1985), p. 60; Crafton (1997), p. 131.
  57. ^ Gomery (2005), p. 51.
  58. ^ Lasky (1989), pp. 21–22.
  59. ^ Eyman (1997), pp. 149–50.
  60. ^ Glancy (1995), p. 4 [online]. The previous highest-grossing Warner Bros. film was Don Juan, which Glancy notes earned $1.693 million, foreign and domestic. Historian Douglas Crafton (1997) seeks to downplay the "total domestic gross income" of The Jazz Singer, $1.97 million (p. 528), but that figure alone would have constituted a record for the studio. Crafton's claim that The Jazz Singer "was in a distinct second or third tier of attractions compared to the most popular films of the day and even other Vitaphone talkies" (p. 529) offers a skewed perspective. Although the movie was no match for the half-dozen biggest hits of the decade, the available evidence suggests that it was one of the three highest-earning films released in 1927 and that overall its performance was comparable to the other two, The King of Kings and Wings. It is undisputed that its total earnings were more than double those of the next four Vitaphone talkies; the first three of which, according to Glancy's analysis of in-house Warner Bros. figures, "earned just under $1,000,000 each", and the fourth, Lights of New York, a quarter-million more.
  61. ^ Allen, Bob (Autumn 1997). "Why The Jazz Singer?". AMPS Newsletter. Association of Motion Picture Sound. Archived from the original on October 22, 1999. Retrieved December 12, 2009. Note that Allen, like many, exaggerates The Jazz Singer's commercial success; it was a big hit, but not "one of the big box office hits of all time".
  62. ^ Geduld (1975), p. 166.
  63. ^ a b Fleming, E.J., The Fixers, McFarland & Co., 2005, pg. 78
  64. ^ Crafton (1997), p. 148.
  65. ^ Crafton (1997), p. 140.
  66. ^ Hirschhorn (1979), pp. 59, 60.
  67. ^ Glancy (1995), pp. 4–5. Schatz (1998) says the production cost of Lights of New York totaled $75,000 (p. 64). Even if this number is accurate, the rate of return was still over 1,600%.
  68. ^ Robertson (2001), p. 180.
  69. ^ Crafton (1997), p. 390.
  70. ^ Eames (1985), p. 36.
  71. ^ Crafton (1997) describes the term's derivation: "The skeptical press disparagingly referred to these [retrofitted films] as 'goat glands' ... from outrageous cures for impotency practiced in the 1920s, including restorative elixers, tonics, and surgical procedures. It implied that producers were trying to put some new life into their old films" (pp. 168–69).
  72. ^ The first official releases from RKO, which produced only all-talking pictures, appeared still later in the year, but after the October 1928 merger that created it, the company put out a number of talkies produced by its FBO constituent.
  73. ^ Robertson (2001), p. 63.
  74. ^ Block and Wilson (2010), p. 56.
  75. ^ Crafton (1997), pp. 169–71, 253–54.
  76. ^ In 1931, two Hollywood studios would release special projects without spoken dialogue (now customarily classified as "silents"): Charles Chaplin's City Lights (United Artists) and F. W. Murnau and Robert Flaherty's Tabu (Paramount). The last totally silent feature produced in the United States for general distribution was The Poor Millionaire, released by Biltmore Pictures in April 1930. Four other silent features, all low-budget Westerns, were also released in early 1930 (Robertson [2001], p. 173).
  77. ^ As Thomas J. Saunders (1994) reports, it premiered the same month in Berlin, but as a silent. "Not until June 1929 did Berlin experience the sensation of sound as New York had in 1927—a premiere boasting dialogue and song": The Singing Fool (p. 224). In Paris, The Jazz Singer had its sound premiere in January 1929 (Crisp [1997], p. 101).
  78. ^ Low (1997a), p. 191.
  79. ^ "How the Pictures Learned to Talk: The Emergence of German Sound Film". Weimar Cinema. filmportal.de. Archived from the original on January 9, 2010. Retrieved December 7, 2009.
  80. ^ Gomery (1980), pp. 28–30.
  81. ^ See, e.g., Crisp (1997), pp. 103–4.
  82. ^ Low (1997a), pp. 178, 203–5; Low (1997b), p. 183; Crafton (1997), pp. 432; "Der Rote Kreis". Deutsches Filminstitut. Archived from the original on June 24, 2011. Retrieved December 8, 2009. IMDb.com incorrectly refers to Der Rote Kreis/The Crimson Circle as a British International Pictures (BIP) coproduction (it also spells Zelnik's first name "Frederic"). The authentic BIP production Kitty is sometimes included among the candidates for "first British talkie." In fact, the film was produced and premiered as a silent for its original 1928 release. The stars later came to New York to record dialogue, with which the film was rereleased in June 1929, after much better credentialed candidates. See sources cited above.
  83. ^ Spoto (1984), pp. 131–32, 136.
  84. ^ Quoted in Spoto (1984), p. 136.
  85. ^ Wagenleitner (1994), p. 253; Robertson (2001), p. 10.
  86. ^ Jelavich (2006), pp. 215–16; Crafton (1997), p. 595, n. 59.
  87. ^ Crisp (1997), p. 103; "Epinay ville du cinéma". Epinay-sur-Seine.fr. Archived from the original on June 12, 2010. Retrieved December 8, 2009. Erickson, Hal. "Le Collier de la reine (1929)". Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times. Retrieved December 8, 2009. Chiffaut-Moliard, Philippe (2005). "Le cinéma français en 1930". Chronologie du cinéma français (1930–1939). Cine-studies. Archived from the original on March 16, 2009. Retrieved December 8, 2009. In his 2002 book Genre, Myth, and Convention in the French Cinema, 1929–1939 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), Crisp says that Le Collier de la reine was "'merely' sonorized, not dialogued" (p. 381), but all other available detailed descriptions (including his own from 1997) mention a dialogue sequence. Crisp gives October 31 as the debut date of Les Trois masques and Cine-studies gives its release ("sortie") date as November 2. Note finally, where Crisp defines in Genre, Myth, and Convention a "feature" as being a minimum of sixty minutes long, this article follows the equally common, and Wikipedia-prevalent, standard of forty minutes or longer.
  88. ^ Crisp (1997), p. 103.
  89. ^ Chapman (2003), p. 82; Fisher, David (July 22, 2009). "Chronomedia: 1929". Chronomedia. Terra Media. Retrieved December 8, 2009.
  90. ^ Hall (1930).
  91. ^ Carné (1932), p. 105.
  92. ^ Haltof (2002), p. 24.
  93. ^ See Nichols and Bazzoni (1995), p. 98, for a description of La Canzone dell'amore and its premiere.
  94. ^ Stojanova (2006), p. 97. According to Il Cinema Ritrovato, the program for XXI Mostra Internazionale del Cinema Libero (Bologna; November 22–29, 1992), the film was shot in Paris. According to the IMDb entry on the film, it was a Czech-German coproduction. The two claims are not necessarily contradictory. According to the Czech-Slovak Film Database, it was shot as a silent film in Germany; soundtracks for Czech, German, and French versions were then recorded at the Gaumont studio in the Paris suburb of Joinville.
  95. ^ See Robertson (2001), pp. 10–14. Robertson claims Switzerland produced its first talkie in 1930, but it has not been possible to independently confirm this. The first talkies from Finland, Hungary, Norway, Portugal, and Turkey appeared in 1931, the first talkies from Ireland (English-language) and Spain and the first in Slovak in 1932, the first Dutch talkie in 1933, and the first Bulgarian talkie in 1934. In the Americas, the first Canadian talkie came out in 1929—North of '49 was a remake of the previous year's silent His Destiny. The first Brazilian talkie, Acabaram-se os otários (The End of the Simpletons), also appeared in 1929. That year, as well, the first Yiddish talkies were produced in New York: East Side Sadie (originally a silent), followed by Ad Mosay (The Eternal Prayer) (Crafton [1997], p. 414). Sources differ on whether Más fuerte que el deber, the first Mexican (and Spanish-language) talkie, came out in 1930 or 1931. The first Argentine talkie appeared in 1931 and the first Chilean talkie in 1934. Robertson asserts that the first Cuban feature talkie was a 1930 production called El Caballero de Max; every other published source surveyed cites La Serpiente roja (1937). Nineteen-thirty-one saw the first talkie produced on the African continent: South Africa's Mocdetjie, in Afrikaans. Egypt's Arabic Onchoudet el Fouad (1932) and Morocco's French-language Itto (1934) followed.
  96. ^ Rollberg (2008), pp. xxvii, 9, 174, 585, 669–70, 679, 733. Several sources name Zemlya zhazhdet (The Earth Is Thirsty), directed by Yuli Raizman, as the first Soviet sound feature. Originally produced and premiered as a silent in 1930, it was rereleased with a non-talking, music-and-effects soundtrack the following year (Rollberg [2008], p. 562).
  97. ^ Morton (2006), p. 76.
  98. ^ Rollberg (2008), pp. xxvii, 210–11, 450, 665–66.
  99. ^ Crisp (1997), p. 101; Crafton (1997), p. 155.
  100. ^ Crisp (1997), pp. 101–2.
  101. ^ Kenez (2001), p. 123.
  102. ^ Nolletti (2005), p. 18; Richie (2005), pp. 48–49.
  103. ^ Burch (1979), pp. 145–46. Note that Burch misdates Madamu to nyobo as 1932 (p. 146; see above for sources for correct 1931 date). He also incorrectly claims that Mikio Naruse made no sound films before 1936 (p. 146; see below for Naruse's 1935 sound films).
  104. ^ Anderson and Richie (1982), p. 77.
  105. ^ a b Freiberg (1987), p. 76.
  106. ^ Naruse's first talking picture, Otome-gokoro sannin shimai (Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts), as well as his widely acclaimed Tsuma yo bara no yo ni (Wife! Be Like a Rose!), also a talkie, were both produced and released in 1935. Wife! Be Like a Rose! was the first Japanese feature film to receive American commercial distribution. See Russell (2008), pp. 4, 89, 91–94; Richie (2005), pp. 60–63; "Mikio Naruse—A Modern Classic". Midnight Eye. February 11, 2007. Retrieved December 12, 2009. Jacoby, Alexander (April 2003). "Mikio Naruse". Senses of Cinema. Archived from the original on January 14, 2010. Retrieved December 12, 2009. Ozu's first talking picture, which came out the following year, was Hitori musuko (The Only Son). See Richie (1977), pp. 222–24; Leahy, James (June 2004). "The Only Son (Hitori Musuko)". Senses of Cinema. Archived from the original on October 3, 2009. Retrieved December 12, 2009.
  107. ^ Quoted in Freiberg (1987), p. 76.
  108. ^ Quoted in Sharp, Jasper (March 7, 2002). "A Page of Madness (1927)". Midnight Eye. Retrieved December 7, 2009.
  109. ^ See Freiberg (2000), "The Film Industry."
  110. ^ Quoted in Chatterji (1999), "The History of Sound."
  111. ^ Reade (1981), pp. 79–80.
  112. ^ Ranade (2006), p. 106.
  113. ^ Pradeep (2006); Narasimham (2006); Rajadhyaksha and Willemen (2002), p. 254.
  114. ^ a b Anandan, "Kalaimaamani". "Tamil Cinema History—The Early Days: 1916–1936". INDOlink Tamil Cinema. Archived from the original on July 11, 2000. Retrieved December 8, 2009.
  115. ^ Chapman (2003), p. 328; Rajadhyaksha and Willemen (2002), p. 255; Chatterji (1999), "The First Sound Films"; Bhuyan (2006), "Alam Ara: Platinum Jubilee of Sound in Indian Cinema." In March 1934 came the release of the first Kannada talking picture, Sathi Sulochana (Guy [2004]); Bhakta Dhruva (aka Dhruva Kumar) was released soon after, though it was actually completed first (Rajadhyaksha and Willemen [2002], pp. 258, 260). A few websites refer to the 1932 version of Heer Ranjha as the first Punjabi talkie; the most reliable sources all agree, however, that it is performed in Hindustani. The first Punjabi-language film is Pind di Kuri (aka Sheila; 1935). The first Assamese-language film, Joymati, also came out in 1935. Many websites echo each other in dating the first Oriya talkie, Sita Bibaha, as 1934, but the most authoritative source to definitively date it—Chapman (2003)—gives 1936 (p. 328). The Rajadhyaksha and Willemen (2002) entry gives "1934?" (p. 260).
  116. ^ Lai (2000), "The Cantonese Arena."
  117. ^ Ris (2004), pp. 35–36; Maliangkay, Roald H (March 2005). "Classifying Performances: The Art of Korean Film Narrators". Image & Narrative. Archived from the original on May 28, 2008. Retrieved December 9, 2009.
  118. ^ Lee (2000), pp. 72–74; "What Is Korea's First Sound Film ("Talkie")?". The Truth of Korean Movies. Korean Film Archive. Archived from the original on January 13, 2010. Retrieved December 9, 2009.
  119. ^ Millard (2005), p. 189.
  120. ^ a b Allen, Bob (Autumn 1995). "Let's Hear It For Sound". AMPS Newsletter. Association of Motion Picture Sound. Archived from the original on January 8, 2000. Retrieved December 13, 2009.
  121. ^ Bordwell (1985), pp. 300–1, 302.
  122. ^ Bordwell and Thompson (1995), p. 124; Bordwell (1985), pp. 301, 302. Note that Bordwell's assertion in the earlier text, "Until the late 1930s, the post-dubbing of voices gave poor fidelity, so most dialogue was recorded direct" (p. 302), refers to a 1932 source. His later (coauthored) description, which refers to the viability of looping in 1935, appears to replace the earlier one, as it should: in fact, then and now, most movie dialogue is recorded direct.
  123. ^ Crafton (1997), pp. 147–48.
  124. ^ See Bernds (1999), part 1.
  125. ^ See Crafton (1997), pp. 142–45.
  126. ^ Crafton (1997), p. 435.
  127. ^ "Outcome of Paris" (1930).
  128. ^ Crafton (1997), p. 160.
  129. ^ Thomson (1998), p. 732.
  130. ^ Crafton (1997), pp. 480, 498, 501–9; Thomson (1998), pp. 732–33, 285–87; Wlaschin (1979), pp. 34, 22, 20.
  131. ^ Crafton (1997), p. 480; Wlaschin (1979), p. 26.
  132. ^ Thomson (1998), pp. 288–89, 526–27, 728–29, 229, 585–86: Wlaschin (1979), pp. 20–21, 28–29, 33–34, 18–19, 32–33.
  133. ^ Baxter, Mike, Myths and Misses, Academia.com, pp. 15–16, retrieved June 12, 2021
  134. ^ Brooks (1956).
  135. ^ See Dardis (1980), pp. 190–91, for an analysis of the profitability of Keaton's early sound films.
  136. ^ Thomson (1998), pp. 376–77, 463–64, 487–89; Wlaschin (1979), pp. 57, 103, 118, 121–22.
  137. ^ Thomson (1998), pp. 69, 103–5, 487–89; Wlaschin (1979), pp. 50–51, 56–57.
  138. ^ Thomson (1998), pp. 45–46, 90, 167, 689–90, 425–26, 122–24; Wlaschin (1979), pp. 45–46, 54, 67, 148, 113, 16–17.
  139. ^ Thomson (1998), pp. 281, 154–56; Wlaschin (1979), pp. 87, 65–66.
  140. ^ Thomson (1998), pp. 274–76; Wlaschin (1979), p. 84.
  141. ^ Friedrich, Otto (1997). City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in 1940s (reprint ed.). Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. pp. 9. ISBN 0-520-20949-4.
  142. ^ "1920–1929". Our History. American Federation of Musicians. Archived from the original on June 6, 2012. Retrieved December 9, 2009. "1927 – With the release of the first 'talkie,' The Jazz Singer, orchestras in movie theaters were displaced. The AFM had its first encounter with wholesale unemployment brought about by technology. Within three years, 22,000 theater jobs for musicians who accompanied silent movies were lost, while only a few hundred jobs for musicians performing on soundtracks were created by the new technology. 1928 – While continuing to protest the loss of jobs due to the use of 'canned music' with motion pictures, the AFM set minimum wage scales for Vitaphone, Movietone and phonograph record work. Because synchronizing music with pictures for the movies was particularly difficult, the AFM was able to set high prices for this work."
  143. ^ Hubbard (1985), p. 429.
  144. ^ "Canned Music on Trial". Ad*Access. Duke University Libraries. Retrieved December 9, 2009. The text of the ad continues:

    Is Music Worth Saving?
    No great volume of evidence is required to answer this question. Music is a well-nigh universally beloved art. From the beginning of history, men have turned to musical expression to lighten the burdens of life, to make them happier. Aborigines, lowest in the scale of savagery, chant their song to tribal gods and play upon pipes and shark-skin drums. Musical development has kept pace with good taste and ethics throughout the ages, and has influenced the gentler nature of man more powerfully perhaps than any other factor. Has it remained for the Great Age of Science to snub the Art by setting up in its place a pale and feeble shadow of itself?

  145. ^ Oderman (2000), p. 188.
  146. ^ "Talking Movies" (1926).
  147. ^ Gomery (1985), pp. 66–67. Gomery describes the difference in profits simply between 1928 and 1929, but it seems clear from the figures cited that he is referring to the fiscal years that ended September 30. The fiscal year roughly paralleled (but was still almost a month off from) the traditional Hollywood programming year—the prime exhibition season began the first week of September with Labor Day and ran through Memorial Day at the end of May; this was followed by a fourteen-week "open season", when films with minimal expectations were released and many theaters shut down for the hot summer months. See Crafton (1997), pp. 183, 268.
  148. ^ Lasky (1989), p. 51.
  149. ^ Bradley (1996), p. 279.
  150. ^ Finler (2003), p. 376.
  151. ^ Segrave (1997) gives the figures as 282 million feet in 1929 compared to 222 million feet the year before (p. 79). Crafton (1997) reports the new mark in this peculiar way: "Exports in 1929 set a new record: 282,215,480 feet (against the old record of 9,000,000 feet (2,700,000 m) in 1919)" (p. 418). But in 1913, for instance, the U.S. exported 32 million feet of exposed film (Segrave [1997], p. 65). Crafton says of the 1929 exports, "Of course, most of this footage was silent", though he provides no figures (p. 418). In contrast, if not necessarily contradiction, Segrave points to the following: "At the very end of 1929 the New York Times reported that most U.S. talkies went abroad as originally created for domestic screening" (p. 77).
  152. ^ Eckes and Zeiler (2003), p. 102.
  153. ^ Jewell (1982), p. 9.
  154. ^ Schatz (1998), p. 70.
  155. ^ Quoted in Ganti (2004), p. 11.
  156. ^ Ganti (2004), p. 11.
  157. ^ Rajadhyaksha and Willemen (2002), p. 254; Joshi (2003), p. 14.
  158. ^ Guy (2004).
  159. ^ Rajadhyaksha and Willemen (2002), pp. 30, 32.
  160. ^ Robertson (2001), pp. 16–17; "Analysis of the UIS International Survey on Feature Film Statistics" (PDF). UNESCO Institute for Statistics. May 5, 2009. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 31, 2019. Retrieved December 13, 2009.
  161. ^ Quoted in Agate (1972), p. 82.
  162. ^ Quoted in Chapman (2003), p. 93.
  163. ^ Quoted in Crafton (1997), p. 166.
  164. ^ a b Kaes (2009), p. 212.
  165. ^ See, e.g., Crafton (1997), pp. 448–49; Brownlow (1968), p. 577.
  166. ^ Time Out Film Guide (2000), pp. x–xi.
  167. ^ Kemp (1987), pp. 1045–46.
  168. ^ Arnold, Jeremy. "Westfront 1918". Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved December 13, 2009.
  169. ^ Rosen (1987), pp. 74–76.
  170. ^ M, for instance, is the earliest sound film to appear in the 2001 Village Voice: 100 Best Films of the 20th Century Archived March 31, 2014, at the Wayback Machine poll and the 2002 Sight and Sound Top Ten (among the 60 films receiving five or more votes). See also, e.g., Ebert (2002), pp. 274–78.
  171. ^ Ebert (2002), p. 277.
  172. ^ Quoted in Kenez (2001), p. 123.
  173. ^ Eisenstein (1928), p. 259.
  174. ^ Hamilton (2004), p. 140.
  175. ^ Bazin (1967), p. 155.
  176. ^ There is disagreement on the running time of the film. The Deutsches Filminstitut's webpage on the film Archived March 11, 2007, at the Wayback Machine gives 48 minutes; the 35 Millimeter website's entry gives 40 minutes. According to filmportal.de Archived January 9, 2010, at the Wayback Machine, it is "some 40 minutes".
  177. ^ Moritz (2003), p. 25.
  178. ^ Quoted in Dibbets (1999), pp. 85–86.
  179. ^ Quoted in Dibbets (1999), p. 85.
  180. ^ See Spoto (1984), pp. 132–33; Truffaut (1984), pp. 63–65.
  181. ^ Milne (1980), p. 659. See also Crafton (1997), pp. 334–38.
  182. ^ Crafton (1997), p. 377.
  183. ^ Quoted in Bordwell (1985), p. 298. See also Bordwell and Thompson (1995), p. 125.

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{{

https://libguides.brown.edu/MES/arts_culture/film

https://arabfilminstitute.org/learning-about-arab-film-and-cinema/

  • Film Sound History well-organized bibliography of online articles and resources; part of the FilmSound website
  • Hollywood Goes for Sound charts showing transition to sound production by Hollywood studios, 1928–1929; part of the Terra Media website
  • Progressive Silent Film List (PSFL)/Early Sound Films comprehensive and detailed listing of first generation of sound films from around the world; part of the Silent Era website
  • Recording Technology History extensive chronology of developments, including subsites, by Steven E. Schoenherr; see, in particular, Motion Picture Sound
  • A Selected Bibliography of Sound and Music for Moving Pictures compiled by Miguel Mera, Royal College of Music, London; part of the School of Sound website
  • The Silent Film Bookshelf Archived January 25, 2011, at the Wayback Machine links to crucial primary and secondary source documents, a number of which cover the era of transition to sound
  • Sound Stage—The History of Motion Picture Sound informative illustrated survey; part of the American WideScreen Museum website
  • J. Domański "Mathematical synchronization of image and sound in an animated film" Archived June 12, 2016, at the Wayback Machine
  • 1913 add for Vivaphone

Historical writings

  • "Asynchronism as a Principle of Sound Film" 1934 essay by filmmaker and theorist Vsevolod Pudovkin
  • "Dialogue and Sound" essay by film historian and critic Siegfried Kracauer; first published in his book Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (1960)
  • "The Film to Come" essay by producer and composer Guido Bagier; first published in Film-Kurier, January 7, 1928
  • Handbook for Projectionists technical manual covering all major U.S. systems; issued by RCA Photophone, 1930
  • "Historical Development of Sound Films" chronology by sound-film pioneer E. I. Sponable; first published in Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, April/May 1947
  • "Madam, Will You Talk?" article on the history of Bell Laboratories' early research into sound film, by Stanley Watkins, Western Electric engineer; first published in Bell Laboratories Record, August 1946
  • "Merger of the Sound Film Industry—The Founding Agenda of Tobis" corporate manifesto first published in Film-Kurier, July 20, 1928
  • "The Official Communiqué: Foundations of the Sound-Film Accord Sales Prospects for the German Electronics Industry" article first published in Film-Kurier, July 23, 1930
  • Operating Instructions for Synchronous Reproducing Equipment technical manual for Western Electric theatrical sound projector system; issued by ERPI, December 1928
  • "Outcome of Paris: Accord Signed/Total Interchangeability—Globe Divided into Three Patent Zones—Patent Exchange" article first published in Film-Kurier, July 22, 1930
  • "The Singing Fool" review by film theorist and critic Rudolf Arnheim, ca. 1929
  • "Sound-Film Confusion" 1929 essay by Rudolf Arnheim
  • "Sound Here and There" essay by composer Paul Dessau; first published in Der Film, August 1, 1929
  • "Sound in Films" essay by director Alberto Cavalcanti; first published in Films, November 1939
  • "Theory of the Film: Sound" 1945 essay by film theorist and critic Béla Balázs
  • "What Radio Has Meant to Talking Movies" prescient essay by Universal sound engineer Charles Feldstead; first published in Radio News, April 1931

Historical films

  • Ben Bernie and All the Lads excerpts from ca. 1924 Phonofilm sound film; on The Red Hot Jazz Archive website
  • A Few Minutes with Eddie Cantor 1924 Phonofilm sound film; on Archive.org
  • Gus Visser and His Singing Duck 1925 Theodore Case sound film; on YouTube
  • President Coolidge, Taken on the White House Lawn 1924 Phonofilm sound film; on Archive.org

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sound_film&oldid=1116056039"


Page 2

Film that gives an illusion of three-dimensional depth

3D films are motion pictures made to give an illusion of three-dimensional solidity, usually with the help of special glasses worn by viewers. They have existed in some form since 1915, but had been largely relegated to a niche in the motion picture industry because of the costly hardware and processes required to produce and display a 3D film, and the lack of a standardized format for all segments of the entertainment business. Nonetheless, 3D films were prominently featured in the 1950s in American cinema, and later experienced a worldwide resurgence in the 1980s and 1990s driven by IMAX high-end theaters and Disney-themed venues. 3D films became increasingly successful throughout the 2000s, peaking with the success of 3D presentations of Avatar in December 2009, after which 3D films again decreased in popularity.[1] Certain directors have also taken more experimental approaches to 3D filmmaking, most notably celebrated auteur Jean-Luc Godard in his film Goodbye to Language.

History

Before film

The basic components of 3D film were introduced separately between 1833 and 1839. Stroboscopic animation was developed by Joseph Plateau in 1832 and published in 1833 in the form of a stroboscopic disc,[2] which he later called the fantascope and became better known as the phénakisticope. Around the very same time (1832/1833), Charles Wheatstone developed the stereoscope, but he didn't really make it public before June 1838. The first practical forms of photography were introduced in January 1839 by Louis Daguerre and Henry Fox Talbot. A combination of these elements into animated stereoscopic photography may have been conceived early on, but for decades it did not become possible to capture motion in real-time photographic recordings due to the long exposure times necessary for the light-sensitive emulsions that were used.

Charles Wheatstone got inventor Henry Fox Talbot to produce some calotype pairs for the stereoscope and received the first results in October 1840. Only a few more experimental stereoscopic photographs were made before David Brewster introduced his stereoscope with lenses in 1849. Wheatstone also approached Joseph Plateau with the suggestion to combine the stereoscope with stereoscopic photography. In 1849, Plateau published about this concept in an article about several improvements made to his fantascope and suggested a stop motion technique that would involve a series of photographs of purpose-made plaster statuettes in different poses.[3] The idea reached Jules Duboscq, an instrument maker who already marketed Plateau's Fantascope as well as the stereoscopes of Wheatstone and Brewster. In November 1852, Duboscq added the concept of his "Stéréoscope-fantascope, ou Bïoscope" to his stereoscope patent. Production of images proved very difficult, since the photographic sequence had to be carefully constructed from separate still images. The bioscope was no success and the only extant disc, without apparatus, is found in the Joseph Plateau collection of the University of Ghent. The disc contains 12 albumen image pairs of a machine in motion.[4]

Most of the other early attempts to create motion pictures also aimed to include the stereoscopic effect.

In November 1851, Antoine Claudet claimed to have created a stereoscope that showed people in motion.[5] The device initially only showed two phases, but during the next two years, Claudet worked on a camera that would record stereoscopic pairs for four different poses (patented in 1853).[6] Claudet found that the stereoscopic effect didn't work properly in this device, but believed the illusion of motion was successful.[7]

Johann Nepomuk Czermak published an article about his Stereophoroskop. His first idea to create animated images in 3D involved sticking pins in a stroboscopic disc in a sequence that would show the pin moving further into the cardboard and back. He also designed a device that would feed the image pairs from two stroboscopic discs into one lenticular stereoscope and a vertical predecessor of the zoetrope.[8]

On 27 February 1860 Peter Hubert Desvignes received British patent no. 537 for 28 monocular and stereoscopic variations of cylindrical stroboscopic devices. This included a version that used an endless band of pictures running between two spools that was intermittently lit by an electric spark.[9] Desvignes' Mimoscope, received an Honourable Mention "for ingenuity of construction" at the 1862 International Exhibition in London.[10] It could "exhibit drawings, models, single or stereoscopic photographs, so as to animate animal movements, or that of machinery, showing various other illusions."[11] Desvignes "employed models, insects and other objects, instead of pictures, with perfect success." The horizontal slits (like in Czermak's Stereophoroskop) allowed a much improved view, with both eyes, of the opposite pictures.[12]

In 1861 American engineer Coleman Sellers II received US patent No. 35,317 for the kinematoscope, a device that exhibited "stereoscopic pictures as to make them represent objects in motion". In his application he stated: "This has frequently been done with plane pictures but has never been, with stereoscopic pictures". He used three sets of stereoscopic photographs in a sequence with some duplicates to regulate the flow of a simple repetitive motion, but also described a system for very large series of pictures of complicated motion.[13][14]

On 11 August 1877, the Daily Alta newspaper announced a project by Eadward Muybridge and Leland Stanford to produce sequences of photographs of a running horse with 12 stereoscopic cameras. Muybridge had much experience with stereo photography and had already made instantaneous pictures of Stanford's horse Occident running at full speed. He eventually managed to shoot the proposed sequences of running horses in June 1878, with stereoscopic cameras. In 1898, Muybridge claimed that he had soon after placed the pictures in two synchronized zoetropes and placed mirrors as in Wheatstone's stereoscope resulting in "a very satisfactory reproduction of an apparently solid miniature horse trotting, and of another galloping".[15]

Thomas Edison demonstrated his phonograph on 29 November 1877, after previous announcements of the device for recording and replaying sound had been published earlier in the year. An article in Scientific American concluded "It is already possible, by ingenious optical contrivances, to throw stereoscopic photographs of people on screens in full view of an audience. Add the talking phonograph to counterfeit their voices and it would be difficult to carry the illusion of real presence much further". Wordsworth Donisthorpe announced in the 24 January 1878 edition of Nature that he would advance that conception: "By combining the phonograph with the kinesigraph I will undertake not only to produce a talking picture of Mr. Gladstone which, with motionless lips and unchanged expression shall positively recite his latest anti-Turkish speech in his own voice and tone. Not only this, but the life size photograph itself shall move and gesticulate precisely as he did when making the speech, the words and gestures corresponding as in real life."[16] A Dr. Phipson repeated this idea in a French photography magazine, but renamed the device "Kinétiscope" to reflect the viewing purpose rather than the recording option. This was picked up in the United States and discussed in an interview with Edison later in the year.[17] Neither Donisthorpe or Edison's later moving picture results were stereoscopic.

Early patents and tests

In the late 1890s, British film pioneer William Friese-Greene filed a patent for a 3D film process. In his patent, two films were projected side by side on screen. The viewer looked through a stereoscope to converge the two images. Because of the obtrusive mechanics behind this method, theatrical use was not practical.[18]

Frederic Eugene Ives patented his stereo camera rig in 1900. The camera had two lenses coupled together 1+34 inches (4.45 centimeters) apart.[19]

On June 10, 1915, Edwin S. Porter and William E. Waddell presented tests to an audience at the Astor Theater in New York City.[20] In red-green anaglyph, the audience was presented three reels of tests, which included rural scenes, test shots of Marie Doro, a segment of John Mason playing a number of passages from Jim the Penman (a film released by Famous Players-Lasky that year, but not in 3D), Oriental dancers, and a reel of footage of Niagara Falls.[21] However, according to Adolph Zukor in his 1953 autobiography The Public Is Never Wrong: My 50 Years in the Motion Picture Industry, nothing was produced in this process after these tests.

1909–1915: Alabastra and Kinoplastikon

By 1909 the German film market suffered much from overproduction and too much competition. German film tycoon Oskar Messter had initially gained much financial success with the Tonbild synchronized sound films of his Biophon system since 1903, but the films were losing money by the end of the decade and Messter would stop Tonbild production in 1913. Producers and exhibitors were looking into new film attractions and invested for instance in colorful imagery. The development of stereoscopic cinema seemed a logical step to lure visitors back into the movie theatres.

In 1909, German civil engineer August Engelsmann patented a process that projected filmed performances within a physical decor on an actual stage. Soon after, Messter obtained patents for a very similar process, probably by agreement with Engelsmann, and started marketing it as "Alabastra". Performers were brightly dressed and brightly lit while filmed against a black background, mostly miming their singing or musical skills or dancing to the circa four-minute pre-recorded phonographs. The film recordings would be projected from below, to appear as circa 30 inch figures on a glass pane in front of a small stage, in a setup very similar to the Pepper's ghost illusion that offered a popular stage trick technique since the 1860s. The glass pane was not visible to the audience and the projected figures seemed able to move around freely across the stage in their virtual tangible and lifelike appearance. The brightness of the figures was necessary to avoid see-through spots and made them resemble alabaster sculptures. To adapt to this appearance, several films featured Pierrot or other white clowns, while some films were probably hand-coloured. Although Alabastra was well received by the press, Messter produced few titles, hardly promoted them and abandoned it altogether a few years later. He believed the system to be uneconomical due to its need for special theatres instead of the widely available movie screens, and he didn't like that it seemed only suitable for stage productions and not for "natural" films. Nonetheless, there were numerous imitators in Germany and Messter and Engelsmann still teamed with American swindler Frank J. Goldsoll set up a short-lived variant named "Fantomo" in 1914.[22]

Rather in agreement with Messter or not, Karl Juhasz and Franz Haushofer opened a Kinoplastikon theatre in Vienna in 1911. Their patented system was very similar to Alabaster, but projected life-size figures from the wings of the stage. With much higher ticket prices than standard cinema, it was targeted at middle-class audiences to fill the gap between low-brow films and high-class theatre. Audiences reacted enthusiastically and by 1913 there reportedly were 250 theatres outside Austria, in France, Italy, United Kingdom, Russia and North America. However, the first Kinoplastikon in Paris started in January 1914 and the premiere in New York took place in the Hippodrome in March 1915. In 1913, Walter R. Booth directed 10 films for the U.K. Kinoplastikon, presumably in collaboration with Cecil Hepworth. Theodore Brown, the licensee in the U.K. also patented a variant with front and back projection and reflected decor, and Goldsoll applied for a very similar patent only 10 days later.[22] Further development and exploitation was probably haltered by World War I.

Alabastra and Kinoplastikon were often advertised as stereoscopic and screenless. Although in reality the effect was heavily dependent on glass screen projection and the films were not stereoscopic, the shows seemed truly three-dimensional as the figures were clearly separate from the background and virtually appeared inside the real, three-dimensional stage area without any visible screen.

Eventually, longer (multi-reel) films with story arcs proved to be the way out of the crisis in the movie market and supplanted the previously popular short films that mostly aimed to amuse people with tricks, gags or other brief variety and novelty attractions. Sound film, stereoscopic film and other novel techniques were relatively cumbersome to combine with multiple reels and were abandoned for a while.

Early systems of stereoscopic filmmaking (pre-1952)

What is one possible disadvantage of hearing the characters voices in the theater as opposed to silent reading the scene?

Fairall in 1922

What is one possible disadvantage of hearing the characters voices in the theater as opposed to silent reading the scene?

Fairall's 3D camera

What is one possible disadvantage of hearing the characters voices in the theater as opposed to silent reading the scene?

Audience wearing special glasses watch a 3D "stereoscopic film" at the Telekinema on the South Bank in London during the Festival of Britain 1951.

The earliest confirmed 3D film shown to an out-of-house audience was The Power of Love, which premiered at the Ambassador Hotel Theater in Los Angeles on 27 September 1922.[23][24][25] The camera rig was a product of the film's producer, Harry K. Fairall, and cinematographer Robert F. Elder.[18] It was filmed dual-strip in black and white, and single strip color anaglyphic release prints were produced using a color film invented and patented by Harry K. Fairall. A single projector could be used to display the movie but anaglyph glasses were used for viewing. The camera system and special color release print film all received U.S Patent No. 1,784,515 on Dec 9, 1930.[26][27] After a preview for exhibitors and press in New York City, the film dropped out of sight, apparently not booked by exhibitors, and is now considered lost.

Early in December 1922, William Van Doren Kelley, inventor of the Prizma color system, cashed in on the growing interest in 3D films started by Fairall's demonstration and shot footage with a camera system of his own design. Kelley then struck a deal with Samuel "Roxy" Rothafel to premiere the first in his series of "Plasticon" shorts entitled Movies of the Future at the Rivoli Theater in New York City.

Also in December 1922, Laurens Hammond (later inventor of the Hammond organ) premiered his Teleview system, which had been shown to the trade and press in October. Teleview was the first alternating-frame 3D system seen by the public. Using left-eye and right-eye prints and two interlocked projectors, left and right frames were alternately projected, each pair being shown three times to suppress flicker. Viewing devices attached to the armrests of the theater seats had rotary shutters that operated synchronously with the projector shutters, producing a clean and clear stereoscopic result. The only theater known to have installed Teleview was the Selwyn Theater in New York City, and only one show was ever presented with it: a group of short films, an exhibition of live 3D shadows, and M.A.R.S., the only Teleview feature. The show ran for several weeks, apparently doing good business as a novelty (M.A.R.S. itself got poor reviews), but Teleview was never seen again.[28]

In 1922, Frederic Eugene Ives and Jacob Leventhal began releasing their first stereoscopic shorts made over a three-year period. The first film, entitled Plastigrams, was distributed nationally by Educational Pictures in the red-and-blue anaglyph format. Ives and Leventhal then went on to produce the following stereoscopic shorts in the "Stereoscopiks Series" released by Pathé Films in 1925: Zowie (April 10), Luna-cy! (May 18), The Run-Away Taxi (December 17) and Ouch (December 17).[29] On 22 September 1924, Luna-cy! was re-released in the De Forest Phonofilm sound-on-film system.[30]

The late 1920s to early 1930s saw little interest in stereoscopic pictures. In Paris, Louis Lumiere shot footage with his stereoscopic camera in September 1933. The following March he exhibited a remake of his 1895 short film L'Arrivée du Train, this time in anaglyphic 3D, at a meeting of the French Academy of Science.[25]

In 1936, Leventhal and John Norling were hired based on their test footage to film MGM's Audioscopiks series. The prints were by Technicolor in the red-and-green anaglyph format, and were narrated by Pete Smith. The first film, Audioscopiks, premiered January 11, 1936, and The New Audioscopiks premiered January 15, 1938. Audioscopiks was nominated for the Academy Award in the category Best Short Subject, Novelty in 1936.

With the success of the two Audioscopiks films, MGM produced one more short in anaglyph 3D, another Pete Smith Specialty called Third Dimensional Murder (1941). Unlike its predecessors, this short was shot with a studio-built camera rig. Prints were by Technicolor in red-and-blue anaglyph. The short is notable for being one of the few live-action appearances of the Frankenstein Monster as conceived by Jack Pierce for Universal Studios outside of their company.

While many of these films were printed by color systems, none of them was actually in color, and the use of the color printing was only to achieve an anaglyph effect.[31]

Introduction of Polaroid

While attending Harvard University, Edwin H. Land conceived the idea of reducing glare by polarizing light. He took a leave of absence from Harvard to set up a lab and by 1929 had invented and patented a polarizing sheet.[32] In 1932, he introduced Polaroid J Sheet as a commercial product.[33] While his original intention was to create a filter for reducing glare from car headlights, Land did not underestimate the utility of his newly dubbed Polaroid filters in stereoscopic presentations.

In February 1936, Land gave the first public demonstration of Polaroid filters in conjunction with 3D photography at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.[34] The reaction was enthusiastic, and he followed it up with an installation at the New York Museum of Science.[25] It is unknown what film was run for audiences at this exhibition.

Using Polaroid filters meant an entirely new form of projection, however. Two prints, each carrying either the right or left eye view, had to be synced up in projection using an external selsyn motor. Furthermore, polarized light would be largely depolarized by a matte white screen, and only a silver screen or screen made of other reflective material would correctly reflect the separate images.

Later that year, the feature, Nozze Vagabonde appeared in Italy, followed in Germany by Zum Greifen nah (You Can Nearly Touch It), and again in 1939 with Germany's Sechs Mädel rollen ins Wochenend (Six Girls Drive Into the Weekend). The Italian film was made with the Gualtierotti camera; the two German productions with the Zeiss camera and the Vierling shooting system. All of these films were the first exhibited using Polaroid filters. The Zeiss Company in Germany manufactured glasses on a commercial basis commencing in 1936; they were also independently made around the same time in Germany by E. Käsemann and by J. Mahler.[35]

In 1939, John Norling shot In Tune With Tomorrow, the first commercial 3D film using Polaroid in the US[citation needed]. This short premiered at the 1939 New York World's Fair and was created specifically for the Chrysler Motors Pavilion. In it, a full 1939 Chrysler Plymouth is magically put together, set to music. Originally in black and white, the film was so popular that it was re-shot in color for the following year at the fair, under the title New Dimensions.[citation needed] In 1953, it was reissued by RKO as Motor Rhythm.

Another early short that utilized the Polaroid 3D process was 1940's Magic Movies: Thrills For You produced by the Pennsylvania Railroad Co. for the Golden Gate International Exposition.[citation needed] Produced by John Norling, it was filmed by Jacob Leventhal using his own rig. It consisted of shots of various views that could be seen from the Pennsylvania Railroad's trains.

In the 1940s, World War II prioritized military applications of stereoscopic photography and it once again went on the back burner in most producers' minds.

The "golden era" (1952–1954)

What aficionados consider the "golden era" of 3D began in late 1952 with the release of the first color stereoscopic feature, Bwana Devil, produced, written and directed by Arch Oboler. The film was shot in "Natural Vision", a process that was co-created and controlled by M. L. Gunzberg. Gunzberg, who built the rig with his brother, Julian, and two other associates, shopped it without success to various studios before Oboler used it for this feature, which went into production with the title, The Lions of Gulu.[36] The critically panned film was nevertheless highly successful with audiences due to the novelty of 3D, which increased Hollywood interest in 3D during a period that had seen declining box-office admissions.[37]

As with practically all of the features made during this boom, Bwana Devil was projected dual-strip, with Polaroid filters. During the 1950s, the familiar disposable anaglyph glasses made of cardboard were mainly used for comic books, two shorts by exploitation specialist Dan Sonney, and three shorts produced by Lippert Productions. However, even the Lippert shorts were available in the dual-strip format alternatively.

Because the features utilized two projectors, the capacity limit of film being loaded onto each projector (about 6,000 feet (1,800 m), or an hour's worth of film) meant that an intermission was necessary for every feature-length film. Quite often, intermission points were written into the script at a major plot point.

During Christmas of 1952, producer Sol Lesser quickly premiered the dual-strip showcase called Stereo Techniques in Chicago.[38] Lesser acquired the rights to five dual-strip shorts. Two of them, Now is the Time (to Put On Your Glasses) and Around is Around, were directed by Norman McLaren in 1951 for the National Film Board of Canada. The other three films were produced in Britain for Festival of Britain in 1951 by Raymond Spottiswoode. These were A Solid Explanation, Royal River, and The Black Swan.

James Mage was also an early pioneer in the 3D craze. Using his 16 mm 3D Bolex system, he premiered his Triorama program on February 10, 1953, with his four shorts: Sunday In Stereo, Indian Summer, American Life, and This is Bolex Stereo.[39] This show is considered lost.

Another early 3D film during the boom was the Lippert Productions short, A Day in the Country, narrated by Joe Besser and composed mostly of test footage. Unlike all of the other Lippert shorts, which were available in both dual-strip and anaglyph, this production was released in anaglyph only.

April 1953 saw two groundbreaking features in 3D: Columbia's Man in the Dark and Warner Bros. House of Wax, the first 3D feature with stereophonic sound. House of Wax, outside of Cinerama, was the first time many American audiences heard recorded stereophonic sound. It was also the film that typecast Vincent Price as a horror star as well as the "King of 3-D" after he became the actor to star in the most 3D features (the others were The Mad Magician, Dangerous Mission, and Son of Sinbad). The success of these two films proved that major studios now had a method of getting filmgoers back into theaters and away from television sets, which were causing a steady decline in attendance.

The Walt Disney Studios entered 3D with its May 28, 1953, release of Melody, which accompanied the first 3D western, Columbia's Fort Ti at its Los Angeles opening. It was later shown at Disneyland's Fantasyland Theater in 1957 as part of a program with Disney's other short Working for Peanuts, entitled, 3-D Jamboree. The show was hosted by the Mousketeers and was in color.

Universal-International released their first 3D feature on May 27, 1953, It Came from Outer Space, with stereophonic sound. Following that was Paramount's first feature, Sangaree with Fernando Lamas and Arlene Dahl.

Columbia released several 3D westerns produced by Sam Katzman and directed by William Castle. Castle would later specialize in various technical in-theater gimmicks for such Columbia and Allied Artists features as 13 Ghosts, House on Haunted Hill, and The Tingler. Columbia also produced the only slapstick comedies conceived for 3D. The Three Stooges starred in Spooks and Pardon My Backfire; dialect comic Harry Mimmo starred in Down the Hatch. Producer Jules White was optimistic about the possibilities of 3D as applied to slapstick (with pies and other projectiles aimed at the audience), but only two of his stereoscopic shorts were shown in 3D. Down the Hatch was released as a conventional, "flat" motion picture. (Columbia has since printed Down the Hatch in 3D for film festivals.)

John Ireland, Joanne Dru and Macdonald Carey starred in the Jack Broder color production Hannah Lee, which premiered June 19, 1953. The film was directed by Ireland, who sued Broder for his salary. Broder counter-sued, claiming that Ireland went over production costs with the film.[citation needed]

Another famous entry in the golden era of 3D was the 3 Dimensional Pictures production of Robot Monster. The film was allegedly scribed in an hour by screenwriter Wyott Ordung and filmed in a period of two weeks on a shoestring budget.[citation needed] Despite these shortcomings and the fact that the crew had no previous experience with the newly built camera rig, luck was on the cinematographer's side, as many find the 3D photography in the film is well shot and aligned. Robot Monster also has a notable score by then up-and-coming composer Elmer Bernstein. The film was released June 24, 1953, and went out with the short Stardust in Your Eyes, which starred nightclub comedian, Slick Slavin.[citation needed]

20th Century Fox produced their only 3D feature, Inferno in 1953, starring Rhonda Fleming. Fleming, who also starred in Those Redheads From Seattle, and Jivaro, shares the spot for being the actress to appear in the most 3D features with Patricia Medina, who starred in Sangaree, Phantom of the Rue Morgue and Drums of Tahiti. Darryl F. Zanuck expressed little interest in stereoscopic systems, and at that point was preparing to premiere the new widescreen film system, CinemaScope.

The first decline in the theatrical 3D craze started in August and September 1953. The factors causing this decline were:

  • Two prints had to be projected simultaneously.[citation needed]
  • The prints had to remain exactly alike after repair, or synchronization would be lost.[citation needed]
  • It sometimes required two projectionists to keep sync working properly.[citation needed]
  • When either prints or shutters became out of sync, even for a single frame, the picture became virtually unwatchable and accounted for headaches and eyestrain.[citation needed]
  • The necessary silver projection screen was very directional and caused sideline seating to be unusable with both 3D and regular films, due to the angular darkening of these screens. Later films that opened in wider-seated venues often premiered flat for that reason (such as Kiss Me Kate at the Radio City Music Hall).[citation needed]
  • A mandatory intermission was needed to properly prepare the theater's projectors for the showing of the second half of the film.[citation needed]

Because projection booth operators were at many times careless, even at preview screenings of 3D films, trade and newspaper critics claimed that certain films were "hard on the eyes."[citation needed]

Sol Lesser attempted to follow up Stereo Techniques with a new showcase, this time five shorts that he himself produced.[citation needed] The project was to be called The 3-D Follies and was to be distributed by RKO.[citation needed] Unfortunately, because of financial difficulties and the general loss of interest in 3D, Lesser canceled the project during the summer of 1953, making it the first 3D film to be aborted in production.[citation needed] Two of the three shorts were shot: Carmenesque, a burlesque number starring exotic dancer Lili St. Cyr, and Fun in the Sun, a sports short directed by famed set designer/director William Cameron Menzies, who also directed the 3D feature The Maze for Allied Artists.

Although it was more expensive to install, the major competing realism process was wide-screen, but two-dimensional, anamorphic, first utilized by Fox with CinemaScope and its September premiere in The Robe. Anamorphic films needed only a single print, so synchronization was not an issue. Cinerama was also a competitor from the start and had better quality control than 3D because it was owned by one company that focused on quality control. However, most of the 3D features past the summer of 1953 were released in the flat widescreen formats ranging from 1.66:1 to 1.85:1. In early studio advertisements and articles about widescreen and 3D formats, widescreen systems were referred to as "3D", causing some confusion among scholars.[citation needed]

There was no single instance of combining CinemaScope with 3D until 1960, with a film called September Storm, and even then, that was a blow-up from a non-anamorphic negative.[citation needed] September Storm also went out with the last dual-strip short, Space Attack, which was actually shot in 1954 under the title The Adventures of Sam Space.

In December 1953, 3D made a comeback with the release of several important 3D films, including MGM's musical Kiss Me, Kate. Kate was the hill over which 3D had to pass to survive. MGM tested it in six theaters: three in 3D and three-flat.[citation needed] According to trade ads of the time, the 3D version was so well-received that the film quickly went into a wide stereoscopic release.[citation needed] However, most publications, including Kenneth Macgowan's classic film reference book Behind the Screen, state that the film did much better as a "regular" release. The film, adapted from the popular Cole Porter Broadway musical, starred the MGM songbird team of Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson as the leads, supported by Ann Miller, Keenan Wynn, Bobby Van, James Whitmore, Kurt Kasznar and Tommy Rall. The film also prominently promoted its use of stereophonic sound.

Several other features that helped put 3D back on the map that month were the John Wayne feature Hondo (distributed by Warner Bros.), Columbia's Miss Sadie Thompson with Rita Hayworth, and Paramount's Money From Home with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Paramount also released the cartoon shorts Boo Moon with Casper, the Friendly Ghost and Popeye, Ace of Space with Popeye the Sailor. Paramount Pictures released a 3D Korean War film Cease Fire filmed on actual Korean locations in 1953.[40]

Top Banana, based on the popular stage musical with Phil Silvers, was brought to the screen with the original cast. Although it was merely a filmed stage production, the idea was that every audience member would feel they would have the best seat in the house through color photography and 3D.[citation needed] Although the film was shot and edited in 3D, United Artists, the distributor, felt the production was uneconomical in stereoscopic form and released the film flat on January 27, 1954.[citation needed] It remains one of two "Golden era" 3D features, along with another United Artists feature, Southwest Passage (with John Ireland and Joanne Dru), that are currently considered lost (although flat versions survive).

A string of successful films filmed in 3D followed the second wave, but many were widely or exclusively shown flat. Some highlights are:

  • The French Line, starring Jane Russell and Gilbert Roland, a Howard Hughes/RKO production. The film became notorious for being released without an MPAA seal of approval after several suggestive lyrics were included, as well as one of Ms. Russell's particularly revealing costumes.[citation needed] Playing up her sex appeal, one tagline for the film was, "It'll knock both of your eyes out!" The film was later cut and approved by the MPAA for a general flat release, despite having a wide and profitable 3D release.[citation needed]
  • Taza, Son of Cochise, a sequel to 1950s Broken Arrow, which starred Rock Hudson in the title role, Barbara Rush as the love interest, and Rex Reason (billed as Bart Roberts) as his renegade brother. Originally released flat through Universal-International. It was directed by the great stylist Douglas Sirk, and his striking visual sense made the film a huge success when it was "re-premiered" in 3D in 2006 at the Second 3D Expo in Hollywood.
  • Two ape films: Phantom of the Rue Morgue, featuring Karl Malden and Patricia Medina, produced by Warner Bros. and based on Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", and Gorilla at Large, a Panoramic Production starring Cameron Mitchell, distributed flat and 3D through Fox.
  • Creature from the Black Lagoon, starring Richard Carlson and Julie Adams, directed by Jack Arnold. Although arguably the most famous 3D film, it was typically seen in 3D only in large urban theaters and shown flat in the many smaller neighborhood theaters.[41] It was the only 3D feature that spawned a 3D sequel, Revenge of the Creature, which was in turn followed by The Creature Walks Among Us, shot flat.
  • Dial M for Murder, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Ray Milland, Robert Cummings, and Grace Kelly, is considered by aficionados of 3D to be one of the best examples of the process. Although available in 3D in 1954, there are no known playdates in 3D,[citation needed] since Warner Bros. had just instated a simultaneous 3D/2D release policy. The film's screening in 3D in February 1980 at the York Theater in San Francisco did so well that Warner Bros. re-released the film in 3D in February 1982. The film is now available on 3D Blu-ray, marking the first time it was released on home video in its 3D presentation.
  • Gog, the last episode in Ivan Tors' Office of Scientific Investigation (OSI) trilogy dealing with realistic science fiction (following The Magnetic Monster and Riders to the Stars). Most theaters showed it flat.
  • The Diamond (released in the United States as The Diamond Wizard), a 1954 British crime film starring Dennis O'Keefe. The only stereoscopic feature shot in Britain, released flat in both the UK and US.
  • Irwin Allen's Dangerous Mission released by RKO in 1954 featuring Allen's trademarks of an all-star cast facing a disaster (a forest fire). Bosley Crowther's New York Times review mentions that it was shown flat.
  • Son of Sinbad, another RKO/Howard Hughes production, starring Dale Robertson, Lili St. Cyr, and Vincent Price. The film was shelved after Hughes ran into difficulty with The French Line, and was not released until 1955, at which time it went out flat, converted to the SuperScope process.

3D's final decline was in the late spring of 1954, for the same reasons as the previous lull, as well as the further success of widescreen formats with theater operators. Even though Polaroid had created a well-designed "Tell-Tale Filter Kit" for the purpose of recognizing and adjusting out of sync and phase 3D,[citation needed] exhibitors still felt uncomfortable with the system and turned their focus instead to processes such as CinemaScope. The last 3D feature to be released in that format during the "Golden era" was Revenge of the Creature, on February 23, 1955. Ironically, the film had a wide release in 3D and was well received at the box office.[42]

Revival (1960–1984) in single strip format

Stereoscopic films largely remained dormant for the first part of the 1960s, with those that were released usually being anaglyph exploitation films. One film of notoriety was the Beaver-Champion/Warner Bros. production, The Mask (1961). The film was shot in 2-D, but to enhance the bizarre qualities of the dream-world that is induced when the main character puts on a cursed tribal mask, these scenes went to anaglyph 3D. These scenes were printed by Technicolor on their first run in red/green anaglyph.

Although 3D films appeared sparsely during the early 1960s, the true second wave of 3D cinema was set into motion by Arch Oboler, the producer who had started the craze of the 1950s. Using a new technology called Space-Vision 3D. The origin of "Space-Vision 3D" goes back to Colonel Robert Vincent Bernier, a forgotten innovator in the history of stereoscopic motion pictures. His Trioptiscope Space-Vision lens was the gold standard for the production and exhibition of 3-D films for nearly 30 years.[43] "Space-Vision 3D" stereoscopic films were printed with two images, one above the other, in a single academy ratio frame, on a single strip, and needed only one projector fitted with a special lens. This so-called "over and under" technique eliminated the need for dual projector set-ups, and produced widescreen, but darker, less vivid, polarized 3D images. Unlike earlier dual system, it could stay in perfect synchronization, unless improperly spliced in repair.

Arch Oboler once again had the vision for the system that no one else would touch, and put it to use on his film entitled The Bubble, which starred Michael Cole, Deborah Walley, and Johnny Desmond. As with Bwana Devil, the critics panned The Bubble, but audiences flocked to see it, and it became financially sound enough to promote the use of the system to other studios, particularly independents, who did not have the money for expensive dual-strip prints of their productions.

In 1970, Stereovision, a new entity founded by director/inventor Allan Silliphant and optical designer Chris Condon, developed a different 35 mm single-strip format, which printed two images squeezed side by side and used an anamorphic lens to widen the pictures through Polaroid filters. Louis K. Sher (Sherpix) and Stereovision released the softcore sex comedy The Stewardesses (self-rated X, but later re-rated R by the MPAA). The film cost US$100,000 to produce, and ran for months in several markets.[citation needed] eventually earning $27 million in North America, alone ($140 million in constant-2010 dollars) in fewer than 800 theaters, becoming the most profitable 3-Dimensional film to date, and in purely relative terms, one of the most profitable films ever. It was later released in 70 mm 3D. Some 36 films worldwide were made with Stereovision over 25 years, using either a widescreen (above-below), anamorphic (side by side) or 70 mm 3D formats.[citation needed] In 2009 The Stewardesses was remastered by Chris Condon and director Ed Meyer, releasing it in XpanD 3D, RealD Cinema and Dolby 3D.

The quality of the 1970s 3D films was not much more inventive, as many were either softcore and even hardcore adult films, horror films, or a combination of both. Paul Morrisey's Flesh For Frankenstein (aka Andy Warhol's Frankenstein) was a superlative example of such a combination.

Between 1981 and 1983 there was a new Hollywood 3D craze started by the spaghetti western Comin' at Ya!. When Parasite was released it was billed as the first horror film to come out in 3D in over 20 years. Horror films and reissues of 1950s 3D classics (such as Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder) dominated the 3D releases that followed. The second sequel in the Friday the 13th series, Friday the 13th Part III, was released very successfully. Apparently saying "part 3 in 3D" was considered too cumbersome so it was shortened in the titles of Jaws 3-D and Amityville 3-D, which emphasized the screen effects to the point of being annoying at times, especially when flashlights were shone into the eyes of the audience.

The science fiction film Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone was the most expensive 3D film made up to that point with production costs about the same as Star Wars but not nearly the same box office success, causing the craze to fade quickly through spring 1983. Other sci-fi/fantasy films were released as well including Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn and Treasure of the Four Crowns, which was widely criticized for poor editing and plot holes, but did feature some truly spectacular closeups.

3D releases after the second craze included The Man Who Wasn't There (1983), Silent Madness and the 1985 animated film Starchaser: The Legend of Orin, whose plot seemed to borrow heavily from Star Wars.

Only Comin' At Ya!, Parasite, and Friday the 13th Part III have been officially released on VHS and/or DVD in 3D in the United States (although Amityville 3D has seen a 3D DVD release in the United Kingdom). Most of the 1980s 3D films and some of the classic 1950s films such as House of Wax were released on the now defunct Video Disc (VHD) format in Japan as part of a system that used shutter glasses. Most of these have been unofficially transferred to DVD and are available on the grey market through sites such as eBay.

Stereoscopic movies were also popular in other parts of the world, such as My Dear Kuttichathan, a Malayalam film which was shot with stereoscopic 3D and released in 1984.

Rebirth of 3D (1985–2003)

In the mid-1980s, IMAX began producing non-fiction films for its nascent 3D business, starting with We Are Born of Stars (Roman Kroitor, 1985). A key point was that this production, as with all subsequent IMAX productions, emphasized mathematical correctness of the 3D rendition and thus largely eliminated the eye fatigue and pain that resulted from the approximate geometries of previous 3D incarnations. In addition, and in contrast to previous 35mm-based 3D presentations, the very large field of view provided by IMAX allowed a much broader 3D "stage", arguably as important in 3D film as it is theatre.

The Walt Disney Company also began more prominent use of 3D films in special venues to impress audiences with Magic Journeys (1982) and Captain EO (Francis Ford Coppola, 1986, starring Michael Jackson) being notable examples. In the same year, the National Film Board of Canada production Transitions (Colin Low), created for Expo 86 in Vancouver, was the first IMAX presentation using polarized glasses. Echoes of the Sun (Roman Kroitor, 1990) was the first IMAX film to be presented using alternate-eye shutterglass technology, a development required because the dome screen precluded the use of polarized technology.

From 1990 onward, numerous films were produced by all three parties to satisfy the demands of their various high-profile special attractions and IMAX's expanding 3D network. Films of special note during this period include the extremely successful Into the Deep (Graeme Ferguson, 1995) and the first IMAX 3D fiction film Wings of Courage (1996), by director Jean-Jacques Annaud, about the pilot Henri Guillaumet.

Other stereoscopic films produced in this period include:

  • The Last Buffalo (Stephen Low, 1990)
  • Jim Henson's Muppet*Vision 3D (Jim Henson, 1991)
  • Imagine (John Weiley, 1993)
  • Honey, I Shrunk the Audience (Daniel Rustuccio, 1994)
  • Into the Deep (Graeme Ferguson, 1995)
  • Across the Sea of Time (Stephen Low, 1995)
  • Wings of Courage (Jean-Jacques Annaud, 1996)
  • L5, First City in Space (Graeme Ferguson, 1996)
  • T2 3-D: Battle Across Time (James Cameron, 1996)
  • Paint Misbehavin (Roman Kroitor and Peter Stephenson, 1997)
  • IMAX Nutcracker (1997)
  • The Hidden Dimension (1997)
  • T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous (Brett Leonard, 1998)
  • Mark Twain's America (Stephen Low, 1998)
  • Siegfried & Roy: The Magic Box (Brett Leonard, 1999)
  • Galapagos (Al Giddings and David Clark, 1999)
  • Encounter in the Third Dimension (Ben Stassen, 1999)
  • Alien Adventure (Ben Stassen, 1999)
  • Ultimate G's (2000)
  • Cyberworld (Hugh Murray, 2000)
  • Cirque du Soleil: Journey of Man (Keith Melton, 2000)
  • Haunted Castle (Ben Stassen, 2001)
  • Panda Vision (Ben Stassen, 2001)
  • Space Station 3D (Toni Myers, 2002)
  • SOS Planet (Ben Stassen, 2002)
  • Ocean Wonderland (2003)
  • Falling in Love Again (Munro Ferguson, 2003)
  • Misadventures in 3D (Ben Stassen, 2003)

By 2004, 54% of IMAX theaters (133 of 248) were capable of showing 3D films.[44]

Shortly thereafter, higher quality computer animation, competition from DVDs and other media, digital projection, digital video capture, and the use of sophisticated IMAX 70mm film projectors, created an opportunity for another wave of 3D films.[45][46]

Mainstream resurgence (2003–present)

In 2003, Ghosts of the Abyss by James Cameron was released as the first full-length 3D IMAX feature filmed with the Reality Camera System. This camera system used the latest HD video cameras, not film, and was built for Cameron by Vince Pace, to his specifications. The same camera system was used to film Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over (2003), Aliens of the Deep IMAX (2005), and The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D (2005).

In 2004, Las Vegas Hilton released Star Trek: The Experience which included two films. One of the films, Borg Invasion 4-D (Ty Granoroli), was in 3D. In August of the same year, rap group Insane Clown Posse released their ninth studio album Hell's Pit. One of two versions of the album contained a DVD featuring a 3D short film for the track "Bowling Balls", shot in high-definition video.[47]

What is one possible disadvantage of hearing the characters voices in the theater as opposed to silent reading the scene?

Shooting of the film Hidden Universe 3D with IMAX camera.[48]

In November 2004, The Polar Express was released as IMAX's first full-length, animated 3D feature. It was released in 3,584 theaters in 2D, and only 66 IMAX locations. The return from those few 3D theaters was about 25% of the total. The 3D version earned about 14 times as much per screen as the 2D version. This pattern continued and prompted a greatly intensified interest in 3D and 3D presentation of animated films.

In June 2005, the Mann's Chinese 6 theatre in Hollywood became the first commercial film theatre to be equipped with the Digital 3D format. Both Singin' in the Rain and The Polar Express were tested in the Digital 3D format over the course of several months. In November 2005, Walt Disney Studio Entertainment released Chicken Little in digital 3D format.

The Butler's in Love, a short film directed by David Arquette and starring Elizabeth Berkley and Thomas Jane[49] was released on June 23, 2008. The film was shot at the former Industrial Light & Magic studios using KernerFX's prototype Kernercam stereoscopic camera rig.

Ben Walters suggested in 2009 that both filmmakers and film exhibitors regain interest in 3D film. There was more 3D exhibition equipment, and more dramatic films being shot in 3D format. One incentive is that the technology is more mature. Shooting in 3D format is less limited, and the result is more stable. Another incentive was the fact that while 2D ticket sales were in an overall state of decline, revenues from 3D tickets continued to grow at the time.[50]

Through the entire history of 3D presentations, techniques to convert existing 2D images for 3D presentation have existed. Few have been effective or survived. The combination of digital and digitized source material with relatively cost-effective digital post-processing has spawned a new wave of conversion products. In June 2006, IMAX and Warner Bros. released Superman Returns including 20 minutes of 3D images converted from the 2D original digital footage. George Lucas announced that he would re-release his Star Wars films in 3D based on a conversion process from the company In-Three. Later on in 2011, it was announced that Lucas was working with the company Prime Focus on this conversion.[51]

In late 2005, Steven Spielberg told the press he was involved in patenting a 3D cinema system that did not need glasses, based on plasma screens. A computer splits each film-frame, and then projects the two split images onto the screen at differing angles, to be picked up by tiny angled ridges on the screen.[citation needed]

Animated films Open Season, and The Ant Bully, were released in analog 3D in 2006. Monster House and The Nightmare Before Christmas were released on XpanD 3D, RealD and Dolby 3D systems in 2006.

On May 19, 2007 Scar3D opened at the Cannes Film Market. It was the first US-produced 3D full-length feature film to be completed in Real D 3D. It has been the #1 film at the box office in several countries around the world, including Russia where it opened in 3D on 295 screens.

On January 19, 2008, U2 3D was released; it was the first live-action digital 3D film. In the same year others 3D films included Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Bolt.

On January 16, 2009, Lionsgate released My Bloody Valentine 3D, the first horror film and first R-rated film to be projected in Real D 3D.[52] It was released to 1,033 3D screens, the most ever for this format, and 1,501 regular screens. Another R-rated film, The Final Destination, was released later that year in August on even more screens. It was the first of its series to be released in HD 3D. Major 3D films in 2009 included Coraline, Monsters vs. Aliens, Up, X Games 3D: The Movie, The Final Destination, Disney's A Christmas Carol, and Avatar.[53] Avatar has gone on to be one of the most expensive films of all time, with a budget at $237 million; it is also the highest-grossing film of all time. The main technologies used to exhibit these films, and many others released around the time and up to the present, are Real D 3D, Dolby 3D, XpanD 3D, MasterImage 3D, and IMAX 3D.

March and April 2010 saw three major 3D releases clustered together, with Alice in Wonderland hitting US theaters on March 5, 2010, How to Train Your Dragon on March 26, 2010, and Clash of the Titans on April 2, 2010. On May 13 of the same year, China's first IMAX 3D film started shooting. The pre-production of the first 3D film shot in France, Derrière les murs, began in May 2010 and was released in mid-2011.

On October 1, 2010 Scar3D was the first-ever stereoscopic 3D Video-on-demand film released through major cable broadcasters for 3D televisions in the United States. Released in the United States on May 21, 2010, Shrek Forever After by DreamWorks Animation (Paramount Pictures) used the Real D 3D system, also released in IMAX 3D.

World 3-D Expositions

In September 2003, Sabucat Productions organized the first World 3-D Exposition, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the original craze. The Expo was held at Grauman's Egyptian Theatre. During the two-week festival, over 30 of the 50 "golden era" stereoscopic features (as well as shorts) were screened, many coming from the collection of film historian and archivist Robert Furmanek, who had spent the previous 15 years painstakingly tracking down and preserving each film to its original glory. In attendance were many stars from each film, respectively, and some were moved to tears by the sold-out seating with audiences of film buffs from all over the world who came to remember their previous glories.

In May 2006, the second World 3-D Exposition was announced for September of that year, presented by the 3-D Film Preservation Fund. Along with the favorites of the previous exposition were newly discovered features and shorts, and like the previous Expo, guests from each film. Expo II was announced as being the locale for the world premiere of several films never before seen in 3D, including The Diamond Wizard and the Universal short, Hawaiian Nights with Mamie Van Doren and Pinky Lee. Other "re-premieres" of films not seen since their original release in stereoscopic form included Cease Fire!, Taza, Son of Cochise, Wings of the Hawk, and Those Redheads From Seattle. Also shown were the long-lost shorts Carmenesque and A Day in the Country (both 1953) and William Van Doren Kelley's two Plasticon shorts (1922 and 1923).

Audience decline

In the wake of its initial popularity and corresponding increase in the number of screens, more films are being released in the 3D format. For instance, only 45% of the premiere weekend box office earnings of Kung Fu Panda 2 came from 3D screenings as opposed to 60% for Shrek Forever After in 2010.[54] In addition, the premiere of Cars 2 opening weekend gross consisted of only 37% from 3D theatres.[55] Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 and Captain America: The First Avenger were major releases that achieved similar percentages: 43% and 40% respectively.[56] In view of this trend, there has been box office analysis concluding the implementation of 3D presentation is apparently backfiring by discouraging people from going to film theatres at all. As Brandon Gray of Box Office Mojo notes, "In each case, 3D's more-money-from-fewer-people approach has simply led to less money from even fewer people."[57] Parallel, the number of televisions sold with support for 3D television has dropped, let alone those sold with actual 3D goggles.

According to the Motion Picture Association of America, despite a record total of 47 3D films being released in 2011, the overall domestic box office receipts were down 18% to $1.8 billion from $2.2 billion in 2010.[58] Although revenues as a whole increased during 2012, the bulk has so far come from 2D presentations as exemplified by little over 50% of filmgoers opting to see the likes of The Avengers and 32% choosing Brave in their 3D versions. Conflicting reasons are respectively offered by studios and exhibitors: whereas the former blame more expensive 3D ticket prices, the latter argue that the quality of films in general is at fault. However, despite the perceived decline of 3D in the U.S. market, studio chiefs are optimistic of better receipts internationally, where there still appears to be a strong appetite for the format.[59][60]

Studios are also using 3D to generate additional income from films that are already commercially successful. Such re-releases usually involve a conversion from 2D. For example, Disney has reissued both The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast, with plans to add some of its other well-known titles.[61] Titanic has also been modified for 3D,[62] and there are also plans to similarly present all six Star Wars films.[63]

Jeffrey Katzenberg, a producer of 3D films and one of the leading proponents of the format, blames oversaturation of the market with inferior films, especially ones photographed conventionally and then digitally processed in post-production. He claims that such films have led audiences to conclude that the format is not worth the often much higher ticket price.[64] Daniel Engber, a columnist for Slate, comes to a similar conclusion: "What happened to 3-D? It may have died from a case of acute septicemia—too much crap in the system."[65]

Film critic Mark Kermode, a noted detractor of 3D, has surmised that there is an emerging policy of distributors to limit the availability of 2D versions, thus "railroading" the 3D format into cinemas whether the paying filmgoer likes it or not. This was especially prevalent during the release of Prometheus in 2012, where only 30% of prints for theatrical exhibition (at least in the UK) were in 2D.[66] His suspicions were later reinforced by a substantial number of complaints about Dredd from those who wished to see it in 2D but were denied the opportunity.[67] In July 2017, IMAX announced that they will begin to focus on screening more Hollywood tentpole movies in 2D (even if there's a 3D version) and have fewer 3D screenings of movies in North America, citing that moviegoers in North America prefer 2D films over 3D films.[68]

Techniques

Stereoscopic motion pictures can be produced through a variety of different methods. Over the years the popularity of systems being widely employed in film theaters has waxed and waned. Though anaglyph was sometimes used prior to 1948, during the early "Golden Era" of 3D cinematography of the 1950s the polarization system was used for every single feature-length film in the United States, and all but one short film.[69] In the 21st century, polarization 3D systems have continued to dominate the scene, though during the 1960s and 1970s some classic films which were converted to anaglyph for theaters not equipped for polarization, and were even shown in 3D on television.[70] In the years following the mid-1980s, some films were made with short segments in anaglyph 3D. The following are some of the technical details and methodologies employed in some of the more notable 3D film systems that have been developed.

Producing 3D films

Live action

The standard for shooting live-action films in 3D involves using two cameras mounted so that their lenses are about as far apart from each other as the average pair of human eyes, recording two separate images for both the left eye and the right eye. In principle, two normal 2D cameras could be put side-to-side but this is problematic in many ways. The only real option is to invest in new stereoscopic cameras. Moreover, some cinematographic tricks that are simple with a 2D camera become impossible when filming in 3D. This means those otherwise cheap tricks need to be replaced by expensive CGI.[71]

In 2008, Journey to the Center of the Earth became the first live-action feature film to be shot with the earliest Fusion Camera System released in Digital 3D and was later followed by several others. Avatar (2009) was shot in a 3D process that is based on how the human eye looks at an image. It was an improvement to the existing 3D camera system. Many 3D camera rigs still in use simply pair two cameras side by side, while newer rigs are paired with a beam splitter or both camera lenses built into one unit. While Digital Cinema cameras are not a requirement for 3D they are the predominant medium for most of what is photographed. Film options include IMAX 3D and Cine 160.

Animation

In the 1930s and 1940s Fleischer Studio made several cartoons with extensive stereoscopic 3D backgrounds, including several Popeye, Betty Boop, and Superman cartoons.

In the early to mid-1950s, only half of the major Animation film studios operation experimented with creating traditional 3D animated short subjects. Walt Disney Studio produced two traditional animation short for stereoscopic 3D, for cinemas. Adventures in Music: Melody (1953), and the Donald Duck cartoon Working for Peanuts (1953). Warner Brothers only produced a single cartoon in 3D: Lumber Jack-Rabbit (1953) starring Bugs Bunny. Famous Studio produced two cartoons in 3D, the Popeye cartoon Popeye, the Ace of Space (1953), and the Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoon Boo Moon (1954). Walter Lantz Studio produced the Woody Woodpecker cartoon Hypnotic Hick (1953), which was distributed by Universal.

From the late 1950s until the mid-2000s almost no animation was produced for 3D display in theaters. Although several films used 3D backgrounds. One exception is Starchaser: The Legend of Orin.

CGI animated films can be rendered as stereoscopic 3D version by using two virtual cameras. Stop-motion animated 3D films are photographed with two cameras similar to live action 3D films.

In 2004 The Polar Express was the first stereoscopic 3D computer-animated feature film. The 3D version was solely release in Imax theaters. In November 2005, Walt Disney Studio Entertainment released Chicken Little in digital 3D format, being Disney's first CGI-animated film in 3D. The film was converted from 2D into 3D in post production. nWave Pictures' Fly Me to the Moon (2008) was actually the first animated film created for 3D and released exclusively in 3D in digital theaters around the world. No other animation films have released solely in 3D since. The first 3D feature by DreamWorks Animation, Monsters vs Aliens, followed in 2009 and used a new digital rendering process called InTru3D, which was developed by Intel to create more realistic animated 3D images. InTru3D is not used to exhibit 3D films in theaters; they are shown in either RealD 3D or IMAX 3D.

2D to 3D conversion

In the case of 2D CGI animated films that were generated from 3D models, it is possible to return to the models to generate a 3D version.

For all other 2D films, different techniques must be employed. For example, for the 3D re-release of the 1993 film The Nightmare Before Christmas, Walt Disney Pictures scanned each original frame and manipulated them to produce left-eye and right-eye versions. Dozens of films have now been converted from 2D to 3D. There are several approaches used for 2D to 3D conversion, most notably depth-based methods.[72]

However, conversion to 3D has problems. Information is unavailable as 2D does not have information for a perspective view. Some TVs have a 3D engine to convert 2D content to 3D. Usually, on high frame rate content (and on some slower processors even normal frame rate) the processor is not fast enough and lag is possible. This can lead to strange visual effects.[73]

Displaying 3D films

Anaglyph

What is one possible disadvantage of hearing the characters voices in the theater as opposed to silent reading the scene?

The traditional 3D glasses, with modern red and cyan color filters, similar to the red/green and red/blue lenses used to view early anaglyph films.

Anaglyph images were the earliest method of presenting theatrical 3D, and the one most commonly associated with stereoscopy by the public at large, mostly because of non-theatrical 3D media such as comic books and 3D television broadcasts, where polarization is not practical. They were made popular because of the ease of their production and exhibition. The first anaglyph film was invented in 1915 by Edwin S Porter. Though the earliest theatrical presentations were done with this system, most 3D films from the 1950s and 1980s were originally shown polarized.[74]

In an anaglyph, the two images are superimposed in an additive light setting through two filters, one red and one cyan. In a subtractive light setting, the two images are printed in the same complementary colors on white paper. Glasses with colored filters in each eye separate the appropriate images by canceling the filter color out and rendering the complementary color black.

Anaglyph images are much easier to view than either parallel sighting or crossed eye stereograms, although the latter types offer bright and accurate color rendering, particularly in the red component, which is muted, or desaturated with even the best color anaglyphs. A compensating technique, commonly known as Anachrome, uses a slightly more transparent cyan filter in the patented glasses associated with the technique. Process reconfigures the typical anaglyph image to have less parallax.

An alternative to the usual red and cyan filter system of anaglyph is ColorCode 3-D, a patented anaglyph system which was invented in order to present an anaglyph image in conjunction with the NTSC television standard, in which the red channel is often compromised. ColorCode uses the complementary colors of yellow and dark blue on-screen, and the colors of the glasses' lenses are amber and dark blue.

The polarization 3D system has been the standard for theatrical presentations since it was used for Bwana Devil in 1952,[74] though early Imax presentations were done using the eclipse system and in the 1960s and 1970s classic 3D films were sometimes converted to anaglyph for special presentations. The polarization system has better color fidelity and less ghosting than the anaglyph system. In the post-'50s era, anaglyph has been used instead of polarization in feature presentations where only part of the film is in 3D such as in the 3D segment of Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare and the 3D segments of Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over.

Anaglyph is also used in printed materials and in 3D television broadcasts where polarization is not practical. 3D polarized televisions and other displays only became available from several manufacturers in 2008; these generate polarization on the receiving end.

Polarization systems

What is one possible disadvantage of hearing the characters voices in the theater as opposed to silent reading the scene?

cardboard 3D linear polarized glasses from the 1980s similar to those used in the 1950s. Though some were plain white, they often had the name of the theatre and/or graphics from the film

To present a stereoscopic motion picture, two images are projected superimposed onto the same screen through different polarizing filters. The viewer wears low-cost glasses which also contain a pair of polarizing filters oriented differently (clockwise/counterclockwise with circular polarization or at 90 degree angles, usually 45 and 135 degrees,[75] with linear polarization). As each filter passes only that light which is similarly polarized and blocks the light polarized differently, each eye sees a different image. This is used to produce a three-dimensional effect by projecting the same scene into both eyes, but depicted from slightly different perspectives. Since no head tracking is involved, the entire audience can view the stereoscopic images at the same time.

What is one possible disadvantage of hearing the characters voices in the theater as opposed to silent reading the scene?

Resembling sunglasses, RealD circular polarized glasses are now the standard for theatrical releases and theme park attractions.

Circular polarization has an advantage over linear polarization, in that the viewer does not need to have their head upright and aligned with the screen for the polarization to work properly. With linear polarization, turning the glasses sideways causes the filters to go out of alignment with the screen filters causing the image to fade and for each eye to see the opposite frame more easily. For circular polarization, the polarizing effect works regardless of how the viewer's head is aligned with the screen such as tilted sideways, or even upside down. The left eye will still only see the image intended for it, and vice versa, without fading or crosstalk. Nonetheless, 3D cinema films are made to be viewed without head tilt, and any significant head tilt will result in incorrect parallax and prevent binocular fusion.

In the case of RealD a circularly polarizing liquid crystal filter which can switch polarity 144 times per second is placed in front of the projector lens. Only one projector is needed, as the left and right eye images are displayed alternately. Sony features a new system called RealD XLS, which shows both circular polarized images simultaneously: A single 4K projector (4096×2160 resolution) displays both 2K images (2048×1080 resolution) on top of each other at the same time, a special lens attachment polarizes and projects the images.[76]

Optical attachments can be added to traditional 35mm projectors to adapt them for projecting film in the "over-and-under" format, in which each pair of images is stacked within one frame of film. The two images are projected through different polarizers and superimposed on the screen. This is a very cost-effective way to convert a theater for 3-D as all that is needed are the attachments and a non-depolarizing screen surface, rather than a conversion to digital 3-D projection. Thomson Technicolor currently produces an adapter of this type.[77] A metallic screen is necessary for these systems as reflection from non-metallic surfaces destroys the polarization of the light.

Polarized stereoscopic pictures have been around since 1936, when Edwin H. Land first applied it to motion pictures. The so-called "3-D movie craze" in the years 1952 through 1955 was almost entirely offered in theaters using linear polarizing projection and glasses. Only a minute amount of the total 3D films shown in the period used the anaglyph color filter method. Linear polarization was likewise used with consumer level stereo projectors. Polarization was also used during the 3D revival of the 1980s.

In the 2000s, computer animation, competition from DVDs and other media, digital projection, and the use of sophisticated IMAX 70mm film projectors, have created an opportunity for a new wave of polarized 3D films.[45][46]

All types of polarization will result in a darkening of the displayed image and poorer contrast compared to non-3D images. Light from lamps is normally emitted as a random collection of polarizations, while a polarization filter only passes a fraction of the light. As a result, the screen image is darker. This darkening can be compensated by increasing the brightness of the projector light source. If the initial polarization filter is inserted between the lamp and the image generation element, the light intensity striking the image element is not any higher than normal without the polarizing filter, and overall image contrast transmitted to the screen is not affected.

Active shutter

What is one possible disadvantage of hearing the characters voices in the theater as opposed to silent reading the scene?

A pair of LCD shutter glasses used to view XpanD 3D films. The thick frames conceal the electronics and batteries.

In this technology, a mechanism is used to block light from each appropriate eye when the converse eye's image is projected on the screen.

The technology originated with the Eclipse Method, in which the projector alternates between left and right images, and opens and closes the shutters in the glasses or viewer in synchronization with the images on the screen.[citation needed] This was the basis of the Teleview system which was used briefly in 1922.[28][78]

A newer implementation of the Eclipse Method came with LCD shutter glasses. Glasses containing liquid crystal that will let light through in synchronization with the images on the cinema, television or computer screen, using the concept of alternate-frame sequencing. This is the method used by nVidia, XpanD 3D, and earlier IMAX systems. A drawback of this method is the need for each person viewing to wear expensive, electronic glasses that must be synchronized with the display system using a wireless signal or attached wire. The shutter-glasses are heavier than most polarized glasses, though lighter models are no heavier than some sunglasses or deluxe polarized glasses.[79] However these systems do not require a silver screen for projected images.

Liquid crystal light valves work by rotating light between two polarizing filters. Due to these internal polarizers, LCD shutter-glasses darken the display image of any LCD, plasma, or projector image source, which has the result that images appear dimmer and contrast is lower than for normal non-3D viewing. This is not necessarily a usage problem; for some types of displays which are already very bright with poor grayish black levels, LCD shutter glasses may actually improve the image quality.

Interference filter technology

Dolby 3D uses specific wavelengths of red, green, and blue for the right eye, and different wavelengths of red, green, and blue for the left eye. Glasses which filter out the very specific wavelengths allow the wearer to see a 3D image. This technology eliminates the expensive silver screens required for polarized systems such as RealD, which is the most common 3D display system in theaters. It does, however, require much more expensive glasses than the polarized systems. It is also known as spectral comb filtering or wavelength multiplex visualization

The recently introduced Omega 3D/Panavision 3D system also uses this technology, though with a wider spectrum and more "teeth" to the "comb" (5 for each eye in the Omega/Panavision system). The use of more spectral bands per eye eliminates the need to color process the image, required by the Dolby system. Evenly dividing the visible spectrum between the eyes gives the viewer a more relaxed "feel" as the light energy and color balance is nearly 50-50. Like the Dolby system, the Omega system can be used with white or silver screens. But it can be used with either film or digital projectors, unlike the Dolby filters that are only used on a digital system with a color correcting processor provided by Dolby. The Omega/Panavision system also claims that their glasses are cheaper to manufacture than those used by Dolby.[80] In June 2012 the Omega 3D/Panavision 3D system was discontinued by DPVO Theatrical, who marketed it on behalf of Panavision, citing "challenging global economic and 3D market conditions".[81] Although DPVO dissolved its business operations, Omega Optical continues promoting and selling 3D systems to non-theatrical markets. Omega Optical's 3D system contains projection filters and 3D glasses. In addition to the passive stereoscopic 3D system, Omega Optical has produced enhanced anaglyph 3D glasses. The Omega's red/cyan anaglyph glasses use complex metal oxide thin film coatings and high quality annealed glass optics.

Autostereoscopy

In this method, glasses are not necessary to see the stereoscopic image. Lenticular lens and parallax barrier technologies involve imposing two (or more) images on the same sheet, in narrow, alternating strips, and using a screen that either blocks one of the two images' strips (in the case of parallax barriers) or uses equally narrow lenses to bend the strips of image and make it appear to fill the entire image (in the case of lenticular prints). To produce the stereoscopic effect, the person must be positioned so that one eye sees one of the two images and the other sees the other.

Both images are projected onto a high-gain, corrugated screen which reflects light at acute angles. In order to see the stereoscopic image, the viewer must sit within a very narrow angle that is nearly perpendicular to the screen, limiting the size of the audience. Lenticular was used for theatrical presentation of numerous shorts in Russia from 1940 to 1948[70] and in 1946 for the feature-length film Robinson Crusoe.[82]

Though its use in theatrical presentations has been rather limited, lenticular has been widely used for a variety of novelty items and has even been used in amateur 3D photography.[83][84] Recent use includes the Fujifilm FinePix Real 3D with an autostereoscopic display that was released in 2009. Other examples for this technology include autostereoscopic LCD displays on monitors, notebooks, TVs, mobile phones and gaming devices, such as the Nintendo 3DS.

Health effects

Some viewers have complained of headaches and eyestrain after watching 3D films.[85] Motion sickness, in addition to other health concerns,[86] are more easily induced by 3D presentations. One published study shows that of those who watch 3D films, nearly 55% experience varying levels of headaches, nausea and disorientation.[87]

There are two primary effects of 3D film that are unnatural for human vision: crosstalk between the eyes, caused by imperfect image separation, and the mismatch between convergence and accommodation, caused by the difference between an object's perceived position in front of, or behind the screen and the real origin of that light on the screen.

It is believed that approximately 12% of people are unable to properly see 3D images, due to a variety of medical conditions.[88][89] According to another experiment up to 30% of people have very weak stereoscopic vision preventing them from depth perception based on stereo disparity. This nullifies or greatly decreases immersion effects of digital stereo to them.[90]

It has recently been discovered that each of the rods and cones in animal eyes can measure the distance to the point on the object that is in focus at the particular rod or cone. Each rod or cone can act as a passive LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging). The lens selects the point on the object for each pixel to which the distance is measured; that is, humans can see in 3D separately with each eye.[91] If the brain uses this ability in addition to the stereoscopic effect and other cues no stereoscopic system can present a true 3D picture to the brain.

The French National Research Agency (ANR) has sponsored multidisciplinary research in order to understand the effects of 3D film viewing, its grammar, and its acceptance.[92]

Criticism

After Toy Story, there were 10 really bad CG movies because everybody thought the success of that film was CG and not great characters that were beautifully designed and heartwarming. Now, you've got people quickly converting movies from 2D to 3D, which is not what we did. They're expecting the same result, when in fact they will probably work against the adoption of 3D because they'll be putting out an inferior product.

— Avatar director James Cameron[93]

Most of the cues required to provide humans with relative depth information are already present in traditional 2D films. For example, closer objects occlude further ones, distant objects are desaturated and hazy relative to near ones, and the brain subconsciously "knows" the distance of many objects when the height is known (e.g. a human figure subtending only a small amount of the screen is more likely to be 2 m tall and far away than 10 cm tall and close). In fact, only two of these depth cues are not already present in 2D films: stereopsis (or parallax) and the focus of the eyeball (accommodation).

3D film-making addresses accurate presentation of stereopsis but not of accommodation, and therefore is insufficient in providing a complete 3D illusion. However, promising results from research aimed at overcoming this shortcoming were presented at the 2010 Stereoscopic Displays and Applications conference in San Jose, U.S.[94]

Film critic Mark Kermode[95] argued that 3D adds "not that much" value to a film, and said that, while he liked Avatar, the many impressive things he saw in the film had nothing to do with 3D. Kermode has been an outspoken critic of 3D film describing the effect as a "nonsense" and recommends using two right or left lenses from the 3D glasses to cut out the "pointy, pointy 3D stereoscopic vision", although this technique still does not improve the huge brightness loss from a 3D film.[96] Versions of these "2-D glasses" are being marketed.[97]

As pointed out in the article "Virtual Space – the movies of the future"[98][failed verification] in real life the 3D effect, or stereoscopic vision, depends on the distance between the eyes, which is only about 2+12 inches. The depth perception this affords is only noticeable near to the head – at about arms length. It is only useful for such tasks as threading a needle. It follows that in films portraying real life, where nothing is ever shown so close to the camera, the 3D effect is not noticeable and is soon forgotten as the film proceeds.

Director Christopher Nolan has criticised the notion that traditional film does not allow depth perception, saying "I think it's a misnomer to call it 3D versus 2D. The whole point of cinematic imagery is it's three dimensional... You know 95% of our depth cues come from occlusion, resolution, color and so forth, so the idea of calling a 2D movie a '2D movie' is a little misleading."[99] Nolan also criticised that shooting on the required digital video does not offer a high enough quality image[100] and that 3D cameras cannot be equipped with prime (non-zoom) lenses.[99]

Late film critic Roger Ebert repeatedly criticized 3D film as being "too dim", sometimes distracting or even nausea-inducing, and argued that it is an expensive technology that adds nothing of value to the film-going experience (since 2-D films already provide a sufficient illusion of 3D).[101] While Ebert was "not opposed to 3-D as an option", he opposed it as a replacement for traditional film, and preferred 2-D technologies such as MaxiVision48 that improve image area/resolution and frames per second.[101]

Brightness concerns

Most 3D systems will cut down the brightness of the picture considerably – the light loss can be as high as 88%. Some of this loss may be compensated by running the projector's bulb at higher power or using more powerful bulbs.[102]

The 2D brightness cinema standard is 14 foot-lamberts (48 candela per square metre), as set by the SMPTE standard 196M. As of 2012[update], there is no official standard for 3D brightness. According to the industry de facto standard, however, the "acceptable brightness range" goes as low as 3.5 fL (12 cd/m2) – just 25% of the standard 2D brightness.[103]

Among others, Christopher Nolan has criticized the huge brightness loss: "You're not that aware of it because once you're 'in that world,' your eye compensates, but having struggled for years to get theaters up to the proper brightness, we're not sticking polarized filters in everything."[104]

In September 2012, the DCI standards body issued a "recommended practice" calling for a 3D projection brightness of 7 fL (24 cd/m2), with an acceptable range of 5–9 fL (17–31 cd/m2).[2] It is not known how many theaters actually achieve such light levels with current technology. Prototype laser projection systems have reached 14 fL (48 cd/m2) for 3D on a cinema screen.[3]

Post-conversion

Another major criticism is that many of the films in the 21st century to date were not filmed in 3D, but converted into 3-D after filming. Filmmakers who have criticized the quality of this process include James Cameron (whose film Avatar was created mostly in 3D from the ground up, with some portions of the film created in 2D,[105] and is largely credited with the revival of 3D) and Michael Bay.[93] However, Cameron has said that quality 2D to 3D conversions can be done if they take the time they need and the director is involved.[106] Cameron's Titanic was converted into 3D in 2012, taking 60 weeks and costing $18 million.

In contrast, computer-animated films for which the original computer models are still available can be rendered in 3D easily, as the depth information is still available and does not need to be inferred or approximated. This has been done with Toy Story, among others.[107]

See also

  • What is one possible disadvantage of hearing the characters voices in the theater as opposed to silent reading the scene?
    Film portal

  • Cinematography
  • Digital cinema
  • List of 3D films (1914–2004)
  • List of 3D films (2005–present)
  • 2D to 3D conversion
  • Depth perception
  • Stereoscopy
  • Autostereoscopy
  • 3D display
    • 3D television
  • 4D film
  • Volumetric display
  • 3-D Film Preservation Fund
  • Motion capture
  • Stereoscopic video game
  • Surround sound
  • 3D formats
    • Digital 3D
    • Disney Digital 3-D
    • RealD 3D
    • Dolby 3D
    • XpanD 3D
    • MasterImage 3D
    • IMAX 3D
    • 4DX

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What is one possible disadvantage of hearing the characters voices in the theater as opposed to silent reading the scene?

  • "How They Make Movies Leap at You". Popular Science: 97–99. April 1953. Retrieved December 23, 2016.

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