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220 TERRY RAMSAYE [J. S. M. P. E.
Now the alleged technicians on this job insisted on delaying the work for two days and transporting and installing a ponderous belt driven film phonograph, despite the fact that two perfect sound projecting machines were already available in the plant. I had the boldness to protest against the unnecessary delay and expense.
"But," the experts screamed at me, "we have to keep away from the noise of the projector gears when we re-record." They were so unutterably dense that they did not realize that it takes a microphone to electrically listen to a noise.
Every executive concerned with the making of sound pictures can tell you plenty of stories as bad as that one, and some a great deal worse.
The situation is, however, no more serious in the field of sound than it once was in simple motion picture photography. As late as 1916, I found laboratory experts running around with mysterious little black books in their pockets, with secret formulas for making various tones on film. These secrets they so carefully guarded as their capital of skill had been published to the world for years by George Eastman. They were well known to any interested person who could read. I have always thought that an introduction to the art of reading would be a great help to the movie industry anyway.
I am inclined to have a little more patience with the present problems on the sound recording operations in the field when I recall experiences with an endeavor to put panchromatic film into studio and newsreel operations about fifteen years ago. Some of the best cameramen in the business assured me that they could get the same or better results with ordinary ortho stock and some trick filter of their own devising. When I started to talk to them about absorption bands, they walked away tapping their heads. The status of panchromatic stock today is ample answer.
We can anticipate that some day sound recording mechanisms will be about as foolproof as the cameras are now. But that will not come soon enough to save the necks of the alleged recordists who refuse to qualify.
It seems fairly clear that we may hope for a great simplification of sound recording equipment. In one of my annoyed hours the other day, I found that in producing Pathe* Sound News with the excellent but ponderous camions made by the General Electric Company, we used 44.63 ton-miles per second of edited screen time. Operating a big fleet of these big trucks makes newsreel production closely re