Hello dear readers and welcome to our new blog dedicated to the exploration of sound in film. If you couldn’t already tell, we are very passionate about film and filmmaking, especially when it comes to sound and how it is produced. This blog is our love letter to the dedicated professionals who go up and beyond to deliver an unforgettable experience to film-goers.
Our blog is going to discuss various aspects of sound production, from the drawing board to the big screen. We are also going to delve deeper into the exploration of different devices used to record and reproduce sound in cinema.
Before we do any of that though, we want to share a few words on why we believe that sound is important for the holistic cinematic experience. Many tend to relegate it to a second fiddle, choosing to focus on image, but it’s much more than that and we hope you’ll agree.
The Emergence of Talkies and Their Opponents
The first film to have synchronised dialogue and music was The Jazz Singer in 1927 and it completely changed the landscape of Hollywood and the world by large. The audience absolutely loved it, judging by the commercial success of The Jazz Singer and following early talkies, but not everyone was happy about it.
Actors got the brunt of it as many performers, especially foreign-born ones suddenly found themselves jobless as they couldn’t make the transition to sound due to their accents or their inability to perform well when they have lines to deliver.
Some film critics and theorists were also against the introduction of sound in cinema. During the early experiments with sound at the beginning of the 20th century, film critic Hugo Munsterberg was an opponent to the marrying of sound with picture, arguing that ‘[sound] interfered with the chance of the moving pictures to develop their original nature’, calling potential sound films ‘mere mechanical imitation of the theatre’.
This sort of reasoning perhaps sounds odd to contemporary readers, but back then cinema was still young and trying to find its footing. The first cinephiles wanted to cement film as a new art form and to do so, many tried to explain how cinema exists separately from the other established arts, hence why they wanted to avoid any resemblance to theatre.
Soviet director Dziga Vertov shared that belief and exemplified it with his film Man with a Movie Camera (1929). The silent film takes you around Moscow and makes you experience the city in a way never seen before. You might notice that the film came out two years after the first talkie which stands as a statement of opposition to sound cinema. Vertov himself called his film an experiment to create a uniquely cinematic language.
Why Sound Matters
Some readers might think that these arguments are a thing of the past, but you’d be surprised. Many critics, theorists and film-goers still think of sound as a film component lesser than image.
However, if you want to create a realistic representation of life, sound is necessary. Not only necessary but vital and its production is much more labour-heavy than commonly known, as you will find out by reading this blog.
Of course, sound doesn’t just benefit realism; fantasy, sci-fi and horror heavily rely on sound to create a world different than our own and immerse you in it.
Whatever you do in film, sound should be and will be your best friend if you want a moving picture that can completely engulf you.