Motion Picture Magazine (Aug 1928-Jan 1929)

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The underpaid theater is full in the throes of a mad scramble for movie gold. And as usual, the artists of the once silent drama are contentedly asleep at the switch, while the famished wolves of the too highly touted legitimate stage threaten their fat, and fatuous, opulence. Every possible sign points a road to ruin for the film actor. He will soon be as rare in pictures as are the vanishing Americans. So competent an authority as Variety, the theatrical trade paper, asserts that already a third of the picture players are definitely out. By the time the pampered darlings of yesterday's screen come to something approximating life, they will be safely back driving taxicabs, digging ditches, waiting on table or taking in floors to scrub. In their places will be the sonorous voices of wellcured hams, and a gang of discoveries drawing fifty dollars a week for six time-clock days of uninspired labor. One may imagine movies of the future enacted entirely by mechanical men, Robots. And the potentially greatest art the ages has evolved reduced to a series of nauseous mechanisms operated by mathematically minded laborers whose appreciation of anything artistic is less than the rainfall on a painted desert. Commercialism is king. The Dollar Devil all-powerful. The most lucid and sensible statement yet made regarding sound in the cinema is that of Lasky. He declares that five years from now all pictures will have sound to lend dramatic emphasis, and that a percentage of productions will be all-dialogue. Meantime, sound must be regarded as an epochal step in the evolution of screen entertainment, and not as a short-lived novelty. For the present Paramount will make silent counterparts of all sound pictures. And this will, of course, continue until at least the majority of theaters are wired. Lasky promises a half-hundred sound films, most of which will contain some dialogue. The most encouraging words emanating from this leader of the industry voice a conviction that unhurried production is essential to sound films of quality, and deplore a helter-skelter sausage machine production of inferior pictures for the sake of cashing-in on a sudden vogue. MACHINES ARE NOT BRAINS THERE may be those mean enough to say that Mr. Lasky and Mr. Schenck and others who counsel caution, find themselves somewhat trouser-less in being caught unprepared to participate in the present profits. But the fact remains that Lasky has the right idea, and that within a year the public will be as critical of sound pictures as of silent. The play remains the thing. And not all the engineers in the telephone company can substitute a noise for a drama. Even Lasky betrays the too-apparent cause of the industry's limitations by flinging in the remark that the sole purpose of a motion picture is to provide entertainment. Until pictures are created with a view to the spiritual, mental and moral, inspiration, enlightenment and elevation of mankind, they will continue to provide only pabulum to the mentally indigent. Which may masquerade as entertainment. The air of mystery which surrounds sound production in all the studios continues thick as a London fog. A cloak of mystery generally shrouds ignorance. And the picture business is still profoundly ignorant regarding its new addition. But valiantly enough the problems are being solved. Each day sees its fresh list of discoveries, accomplishments. And these are often astounding to the initiate as well as the layman. The construction of sound stages, for instance, is a matter calling for considerable technical knowledge. In erecting the great buildings First National has on its Burbank lot, it developed that walls and floors must be on separate foundations with rubber packing and air-joints connecting floor and walls at the foundation. This in order to prevent vibration. The foundations themselves are provided by piers of reinforced concrete deeply sunken, and twenty-foot trenches surround the buildings to eliminate surface vibrations. All wood used must be kiln-dried to get rid of resin, which generates electricity; and nails must never be used in hard wood, nor penetrate more than two thicknesses of soft wood. All joints, no matter of what material, must have special insulators. Bolts must have leaden washers. Doors must be of a thickness to repel sound, and the entire floor area is of earth laid over an insulating layer of shock-absorbing concrete. JEWELS OF RUBBER EVERYONE from star to prop boy must be shod in rubber-soled shoes while on a sound set. It has been discovered that even beads and bangles register too noisily on the sensitive sound devices, and rubber jewels are actually worn in some sequences. A camera muffler has been invented, and is doing quite nicely pending the perfection of a silent camera. The muffler is a soundproof case attached to the body of the camera with rubber discs that still the whirring of shutters and film sprockets. At First National, too, they are declared to be working on a television device for use in connection with sound films. This is said to be something like a telephone with a twelve-inch-square vision screen above it. This is linked up with the intra-studio wires and will enable executives to see and hear scenes of pictures without being on the stages. One projection room has been equipped to broadcast either by wire or radio the films shown on its screen. The proposition of voice-doubling is again to the fore with an announcement made before the Society of Motion Picture Engineers regarding the perfection of a revocalizing machine which is alleged to make possible the perfect synchronization of one actor's actions and another actor's voice. The picture may be shot in silence, and synchronized for dialogue at any subsequent time. Moreover, the inventor insists that words in any desired tongue may be made to emerge from the kissable lips of our movie maids; and men, too, for that matter. Thus it will be possible to produce audible Westerns with a cast composed of native Czecho-Slovakians, Latvaks, and Tierra del Fuegians. The de'se-dem-and-dose contingent may appear in sassiety drammers. Miss Bow, from Brooklyn, may speak Bulgarian when her pictures are heard in that country. Even dog pictures may be made by Great Danes. In fact, all sorts of unique occurrences may happen. Right now, one studio has engaged a man to voice-double for animals. A temperamental parrot experiencing a sudden rush of religion to the vocal chords, may be sworn for (and at) by this accomplished being. And the next instant may find him barking for a whole hunt of hounds silenced by stage fright. He can buzz like a bee, or roar like a rhino. Every phase of vocal monkey-business is included in his unhuman repertoire. Just another unsung genius of the sibilant celluloid. 120 &