How to add sound to amateur films (1954)

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Dialogue You have learnt how to use mood music and sound effects. You can readily provide your films with commentaries by an unseen speaker. Why not try to give voices to the characters on the screen? The nearer you approach realism, the more difficult it is to achieve perfection. It is not easy to add and synchronise all the sounds associated with even a simple sequence. If you attempt to record dialogue, everything becomes more difficult still. The sound must fit the lip movements perfectly. If it is in error by only a fraction of a second, the illusion of reality is destroyed. The sound track must apparently include all the natural sounds of the sequence. Yet you must exclude many confusing noises arising from the movements of the actors. Aeroplanes and motor-cycles apparently prefer to roar past when a sound film is being made. In some cases this will involve the scrapping of expensive film stock even though the magnetic recording medium can be used again. Problems like this are a challenge to the patience and ingenuity of the amateur. That they can be mastered is shown by the successful sound films which are produced from time to time, principally by clubs. Lip 'Synchronisation The essential of a good "talkie" is perfect lip-synchronisation. The sound must be reproduced precisely in step with the lip movements of the actors. The professional film maker achieves this by recording picture and sound on two separate perforated films which run at exactly the same speed. He can edit these separately, destroying and 129