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SOUND PERSONNEL AND ORGANIZATION
Carl Dreher*
With the advent of sound in the motion picture industry, some peculiar problems of employment and organization arose. An intricate and highly evolved business had to assimilate, in the space of a year or two, a large body of technicians from another field, train them in its methods, and in turn modify its own technique to meet new and exacting requirements. The speed with which the amalgamation was accomplished speaks well for the adaptability of both the film group and the majority of the newcomers. The problems which arose, overshadowed at the time by questions of major technical and economic importance, are still of sufficient interest to justify some consideration in the present course, especially as their complete solution lies in the future.
Since the moving picture background is familiar to most readers of this paper, it is unnecessary to discuss it here. The history of sound recording and reproduction is in many respects analogous, with the addition of an important factor : the electrical technique based largely on the vacuum tube and its associated circuits. The early phonograph art resembled motion pictures in the fusion of esthetic and mechanical elements. In each case the artist has to reach the public through a machine. Early attempts to combine the two processes failed, largely because the sound reproducing elements were still too imperfect. In the meantime the radio art had started on its development. For a time, during the first two decades of the century, radio was purely a business of telegraph signalling without wires. The potentialities of the vacuum tube as an amplifier and generator of currents of almost any frequency promoted the spread of radio technique into the wire telephone art, the phonograph industry, and the amusement business.
*Director of the Sound Department, RKO Studios.
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