How to add sound to amateur films (1954)

tape costs by using a speed of only 3J inches per second. This involves some loss of quality in music, but can still provide good speech reproduction suitable for commentaries. Before settling for either of these speeds, you should consider the merits of a third speed: 4-8 inches per second. This is high enough to give good music, low enough to offer some economy. But its real merit appears during editing. Running at 16 f.p.s., 16-mm. or 9-5-mm. film has a linear speed of 4-8 inches per second. So if you cut a shot out of your film after recording sound on tape, you have only to cut the same length from the tape to preserve synchronism. With 8 mm., the film runs at 2-4 inches per second, so you have to cut out twice as much tape as film. Few, if any, commercial recorders run at this speed. When the capstan is driven by a spring belt, however, it is a fairly simple matter to provide the driving motor with a smaller pulley to reduce the speed from 1\ to 4-8 inches per second. Start Marks Whichever speed you use, and however you control it, you must take care to start your projector with picture and sound in step. The audience will not be well impressed if you have to make people scurry around the screen until the picture catches up with the sound. You can get over this quite simply by marking both film and tape near the beginning at a point where they should be in step. The film is best marked by splicing a length of black leader before the first title and punching a round hole in the appropriate frame. Mark the corresponding point on the tape by a piece of white self-adhesive plastic tape on the shiny side. Alternatively, use the more common transparent tape over a slip of white paper. Do not try to start projector and recorder simultaneously. It is far more satisfactory to record a short piece of music on the tape to precede the film. Have the projector already threaded with the marked frame in the gate. Then switch it 74