The art of sound pictures (1930)

SOUND TECHNIQUE 229 is synchronized with the film upon which the pictures are already recorded. Then the two strips of film are taken to the laboratory, and the sound and picture records are put on the same film. This process of dubbing on orchestration or other sound effects, such as the shooting of guns, the squealing of pigs, the roaring of floods, etc., may be performed in the same way on a film which already carries both picture and dialogue records. The volume and intensity of the music and other sounds are then softened in the process of dubbing, so that the dialogue comes out clearly against the background of rushing water or violin obligato. This type of synchronization is most frequently employed when dialogue takes place supposedly in the back room of a night club, with an orchestra playing on the stage behind closed doors. In this situation in real life, conversation in the room could be heard very distinctly, while faint orchestra tunes would creep in as a background from the distant stage. It is up to the laboratory technicians to prepare the sound record in such a way that it will give the natural intensity of sound when combined with dialogue and picture records on the same strip of film. There is still another method of recording sound and synchronizing it with a strip of ordinary silent picture film. This is the so-called Vitaphone record, first used by the Warner Brothers. According to the Vitaphone method, the sound record is simply recorded on a wax disc similar to a phonograph record. The disc record is S5mchronized electrically with the sound film record in precisely the same way that the sound film is synchronized with the silent film by the method of interlocking. In making records on the Vitaphone, the sound vibrations are picked