the impact sound had on early cinema

The impact sound had on early cinema

Before the modern cinema that we know today, sound in film did not exist. Methods such as using an Vitaphone were used instead. The Vitaphone was used from 1926-1931 and created by the Warner Bros, it used an analog sound-on-disc system with huge popularity from the filming community. Vitaphone worked by not having the sound effect or dialogue voiced onto the film itself but by being issued separately onto a phonograph record which would then be played whilst the film was projected. One of the most well known films to using the Vitaphone method was 'The Jazz Singer' (1927) which incorporated only music and sound effects into its film to simulate reality and also create mood. Some argue the Vitaphone evolved film and shaped it into what it is today, the transition into sound drew more attention to film increasing its popularity and subsequently films evolution. However, the introduction of Vitaphone also came with its difficulties. As film transitioned from silent into sound, some cinemas experienced issues with facilitating the sound systems needed for decent sound quality and therefore their miss fortune lead to the closer of some cinemas as well as some cinemas not having the correct equipment to play sound. As well as this, synchronization with the film itself had to be perfected with the record, otherwise it would not make sense.  

Another issue some film creators faced was the introduction of microphones, as microphones were new and had not been developed at catching sound quality like they do today, many creators struggled with them catching too much sound. The smallest of sounds would be picked up on set making microphones exceptionally difficult to work with-microphones that this can happen to are known as 'omnidirectional.' Due to the difficulty of working with microphones many found it too hard to adapt to the demand of film with sound. Adding sound into film also created a huge demand in the field for new work that had never before existed. The prospect of this excited many, also allowing the opportunity for African Americans who were still facing oppression to work in a new market. 

Reflecting on the cinema we see today, sound is expected and for a film to not have sound is often considered 'strange' or 'not normal' a huge contrast to when sound was first introduced. Sound is now used as such an important characteristic of a film that for each sound or audio clip used in a film it can be considered 'Diegetic, non Diegetic or internal diegetic .'  Diegetic means sound that we can hear as can the character, where as non diegetic means the sound that we as an audience can hear but the character can't and internal diegetic is the monologue the audience can hear of the characters thoughts for example; the film Jaws. on diegetic sounds would be audio such as the splashing water or characters speaking whereas non diegetic sounds like be audio such as the traditional 'Jaws' theme song we will know.