Sound motion pictures : from the laboratory to their presentation (1929)

224 SOUND MOTION PICTURES Brothers and the Fox Film Corporation, as recorded in the previous chapter, was effected at a series of meetings held under the auspices of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Each division of the industry met in session and discussed projects and listened to lectures on the phase of the work in its own domain. Later, on May 2, 1928, the Academy held its first educational session on the subject, when the writers' guild of the Academy heard a description of the various systems of sound recording. The speaker of the meeting was Roy Pomeroy, a technician who had made a study of the subject of sound for the Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation. Here the technique of the talking script was discussed at great length. This convention was soon followed by an assembly of the technicians, at which the agenda pertained to the installation and operation of recording systems. Another meeting was held by the directors, who considered their own problems. In addition, there was a joint convocation of writers and directors, which included a pertinent demonstration by the Fox Film Corporation; and, finally, the actors' branch met to consider the contribution they were to make. Since then regular, periodical discussions have been held by these various branches of the industry, with the happy result of bringing home to the personnel the problems that had arisen and the expedients that had been adopted for solving them. Meanwhile each great company erected soundproof stages and auxiliary rooms with the thoroughness characteristic of American industry, as I have reported in the previous chapter on the Studio, and as I write every major studio is equipped for the taking of motion pictures with sound. More than one hundred stages have already been equipped, and there are an equal number of portable equipments now in use. In the beginning it was felt that the addition of sound to