Wednesday 13 August 2014

The History of Sound at the Movies

This is the first lesson in a six part course by John Hess and FilmmakerIQ.com. (The course will cover science/microphones, recording, editing, foley, and ADR.) 

The inclusion of sound at the movies was one of the most dramatic changes in all of film history. Dive into the early experiments of Edison trying to incorporate sound from film's inception, through the experiments in the early 1920s, The Jazz Singer and the industry sound overhaul, and finally the multi-channel surround and modern movie sound technologies.


1 comment:

Unknown said...

John Hess has gone up in the world, with longer lessons for us made with fancier movie making equipment. His delivery is rushed and this lesson reads like he got the facts from a text book, but it's still movie making history.

Hess's passion for movies makes him view movie history with the wisdom of hindsight. For example, he says Edison was wrong thinking that people would want to view movies individually. I'm not so sure history has proved Edison wrong. He goes on to say that sound was the final key for unlocking cinema's amazing power. I don't think the inventions are over.

The message here is that sound is an important part of a movie. Even the worst sound film will outsell the best silent movie. It's good to see Al Johnson's wonderful extempore dialogue in The Jazz Singer add another dimension to the movie. And it's interesting to find out the best place to go in the cinema for sound.