Hollywood Spectator (1937-39)

Hollywood Spectator Page Five her, to resent a cruel fate’s trick in giving to another a part she needed to keep her from starving. It is our own emotional reaction we see in the faces the camera picks out in close-ups; our own eyes grow moist when those of the girls do. I know stage people do not take kindly to my reiteration that the screen will supercede the theatre, that it is the greatest of all the arts. I am sorry they disagree, but I applaud the sincerity of their loyalty to the older art. But I can not see what the theatre can do to equal the dramatic force of the screen’s purely mechanical treatment which makes this Stage Show sequence so deeply touching. * * * SCREEN AND SYMPHONIC MUSIC . . . HEN writing my review of One Hundred Men and a Girl for the last SPECTATOR, I dwelt upon the stirring effect of the symphonic music numbers played by an orchestra directed by Leopold Stokowski. I wrote that the screen could present such music to an audience with greater impressiveness than it could be presented on a concert platform, basing the contention upon the fact that the picture’s orchestra numbers made a greater appeal to my emotions than any music I had heard elsewhere. Since writing the review I have learned the reason for the extraordinary quality of the symphonic interludes. The manner of recording brought the symphonies to us with a better balance of sound than an orchestra could achieve in an auditorium in which the location of a seat, in relation to each division of the orchestra, must interfere with a proper balance of the tonal quality of the various divisions as heard by the occupant of each seat. A person sitting nearer the basses than the violins would not hear the mixture as it would be heard by a person in the relative position on the opposite side of the house. This difficulty has been overcome in as far as motion pictures are concerned. Believing the matter of importance to both picture people and music lovers, I will allow Walter R. Greene, of the RCA Manufacturing Co., to explain the process fully. Multiple Channel Recording . . . ARKING one of the greatest advances in the history of music from the screen, “multiple channel’’ recording makes its appearance in 100 Men and a Girl, writes Mr. Greene. Recorded by the RCA Manufacturing Co., at the Academy of Music, Philadelphia, the classical selections which Stokowski conducts with his orchestra are the most perfect renditions of music yet heard from the screen. Multiple channel recording is a method devised by Leopold Stokowski, through which the music is reproduced in the theatre with finer quality than ever before. After months of tests and experiments, in association with RCA engineers, Stokowski worked out the system to a practical point. Multiple channel recording is vastly different from anything hitherto employed. Previously, in pre-recording selections, it has been the practice to record the orchestra on one sound track, and the singer on another. The two were ultimately blended in the finished print. Only two tracks and channels were employed. Used Fourteen Microphones . . . NSTEAD of the single microphone used to make a single sound track, no less than fourteen microphones were used to make six simultaneous sound tracks for the orchestra number in One Hundred Men and a Girl. The six principal divisions of the orchestra, namely the violins, woodwinds, brasses, cello and basses, harp and percussions, were separated somewhat farther than usual on the stage; and microphones, placed close to these individual groups, were connected to six separate sets of film recorders, all driven in exact synchronism so that individual recordings of the woodwinds, brasses, violins, etc., were obtained. Later, at Universal studios, these recordings were run simultaneously on six separate reproducing machines, and all passed through a common control panel or mixer, to blend in any manner desired, and to produce a perfect balance of the whole orchestra on the finished sound track. The reason for the procedure is this: A symphony orchestra has inherent weaknesses, impossible to overcome without mechanical and electrical aid. For instance, in fortissimo passages, the fine tones of the violins are drowned out by the more strident tone of the brasses; the woodwinds are lost in the heavier passages; the violas and cellos suffer. Preserves Balance of Tone . . . ITH each section of the orchestra registered on its individual sound track, it was possible, later, to mix these tracks so that the violins, for instance, would have strength to be heard in passages where the violins should predominate, or where their obligato would otherwise be smothered by the balance of the orchestra. Stokowski himself directed the orchestra-tracks for final recording, using a control box with a dial for each of the sound tracks. By altering the volume of each track, as you alter the volume of your radio, each group of instruments was finally recorded in the finished track with the perfection which Stokowski wished. “Now audiences will be able to hear the works of the masters exactly as the composer dreamed them,’’ Stokowski said, relative to the recording in One Hundred Men and a Girl. “No one has heretofore heard these selections in the full beauty of the composer’s imagination, because of the inherent weakness of the symphony orchestra. The reproductions are superior to the original renditions from which they are taken." * * * ARE DIRECTORS SLIPPING? . . . ROMINENT British director, Alfred Hitchcock, thinks the importance of directors is on the wane and that producers will be the dominant factors in the actual making of motion pictures. If that day ever comes, good pictures will be rarer than they are