Introduction and detailed information about sound films

Introduction

Talkies refer to movies that are broadcast simultaneously with sound, as opposed to silent movies. In 1900, the first talkies were shown in Paris, and it was ten years before reliable synchronized sound technology matured and became commercially available. In April 1923, the first synchronized sound film was released in New York. In October 1927, the first feature film with sound, The Jazz Singer, was released, which made the musical comedian Joelson famous.

In the early 1930s, talkies became a global phenomenon. In the United States, talkies made Hollywood one of the most influential cultural and commercial centers in the world. Many European filmmakers and critics were skeptical of the new technology. They worried that too much dialogue would weaken the special beauty of silent films. In Japan, popular films were usually silent films plus live performances, so talkies were slow to develop. In India, sound became an important factor in the rapid development of the country's film industry. Production method

Early films only had pictures, and the film itself did not produce sound. The characters in the play spoke indirectly through movements, postures, and inserted subtitles. The operating rate for shooting and showing silent films is 16 frames per second. During the silent film period, film developed into a purely visual art.

Two films with different photosensitive properties were used when shooting, one to capture the picture and the other to record the sound track. After a series of processes, the sound track and the picture were When combined on a positive film to make a film copy and projected, the projector is equipped with a sound reproduction device, which can restore the sound track to sound while showing the picture

With the development of technology, the sound film Production gradually became possible, but in the early days, talkies were a completely new thing to the public. Many major studios were not optimistic about this market, fearing that they would lose their established audience. At this time, Warner Bros.'s film company was facing the crisis of bankruptcy. , so they took talkies as a bet and filmed jazz singers. Unexpectedly, they achieved unprecedented success. Because they were widely welcomed by the audience, other film companies also followed suit. Since then, talkies have become an irresistible torrent.

Magnetic recording has replaced photosensitive recording in most of the filmmaking process. When movies developed from silent to sound, in order to ensure the quality of sound reproduction, the shooting and projection speed was improved from the original 16 frames per second to 24 frames per second. Due to the emergence of talkies, film has developed from a purely visual art in the silent period to an art that combines audio and video. Development History

On August 27, 1910, Thomas Alva Edison announced his latest invention: the talking film. A select audience was invited to Edison's laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey, to see the movie machine that linked the sound of a phonograph to the images on a movie camera.

Others also tried to invent the talkie, but none succeeded. Edison's contribution was that he recorded sounds and images at the same time, which no one else could do. By using a machine that could record both sound and photography, Edison was able to allow actors to move freely back and forth during filming in a way that had never been possible before.

It took Edison two years of effort to successfully develop the talkie.

On October 6, 1927, when the audience in New York was watching "The Jazz Singer" (translated as "The Jazz Singer") produced by Warner Bros., they suddenly heard the protagonist say: "Wait a minute." "Wait a minute, wait a minute, you haven't heard anything yet." This sentence marks the beginning of a new era. The film made vaudeville comedian Joelson famous.

According to the information, the complete sound film is Warner's "Lights of New York" on July 6, 1928.

In 1936, Chaplin produced his last silent film, "Modern Times," which marked the end of silent films. The beginning of silent films

In its heyday, so-called silent films were often accompanied by music or sound effects. In August 1926, "Don Juan" starring John Barrymore premiered at the Warner Theater in New York. The premiere used a Vitaphone sound system, which used 331/3 records per second to synchronize the sound and picture of the film. New inventions soon followed, and in October 1927 Warner's "The Jazz Singer" sounded the death knell for silent films.

By 1930, only 5% of Hollywood films were silent films. Warner Brothers adopted the more convenient film-carrying sound technology developed by Western Electric. This technology required a projection speed of 24 frames per second, thus the birth of This is a standard that is still used today. This change revolutionized the form of motion picture film.

The full frame of a 35mm silent film is roughly square, with a ratio of 1.33:1 (or 4:3, like a TV picture). When the earliest sound was printed on film in 1927, it was 1.21:1.

In 1932, producers and exhibitors jointly established a standard for the width of sound tracks on film, creating the new 1.37:1 ratio. With the establishment of this industry-wide technical guideline, the number of dialogues, songs and dances in movies has increased dramatically. In the 1930s, movie audiences doubled. The film industry continued to look for new developments, and soon, it began to experience the color revolution, beginning a new era. Invention process Birth

After the birth of film in 1895, it was "the great dumb" for a long time. In order to make up for the shortcomings of this "dumb", people have thought of various ways to make it "speak". In the beginning, movie theaters let voice actors stand behind the scenes and speak when movies were shown. This method was used for a while and then was eliminated. Later, someone came up with another idea: providing musical accompaniment at the movie screening. This method was relatively popular and lasted for nearly thirty years until the advent of talkies. After all, these methods only make up for the audience's hearing deficiencies, but cannot fundamentally solve the problem of the audience's expectations for the film's timbre. As a result, talkies emerged in response to the development of technology and the needs of the audience.

The real sound film was "Lights of New York" filmed by a Hollywood film company on July 6, 1928. In the same year, sound films entered China's high-end theaters. In fact, before the birth of real talkies, our country had conducted experimental screenings of talkies and discussed and debated the prospects of talkies.

In 1914, Shanghai's Victoria Theater screened a sound film of wax disk pronunciation. Because it was experimental, it did not attract much attention. Recording methods

The recording methods of contemporary films include simultaneous recording and post-recording. The two recording methods can be used at the same time, and this is how many movies are handled now. Creating sounds

With the advancement of recording technology and the rise of digital music, sound effects engineers can not only allow the audience to listen to sounds that are impossible to hear in daily life, but can even create sounds for films that do not exist in reality. sound effects. Especially in science fiction films, disaster films and other movies, digital technology is not only used in the picture, but also in the sound. Significance

1. Influence on the means of expression in film art.

2. Improvisation has almost completely disappeared.

3. Drama and film have firmly established their development advantages.

4. The emergence of musicals.

5. Influenced the expansion of Hollywood movies. The Rise

The Invention of Talkies

Talkies are not a new thing. As early as 1899, movies were able to make some sounds in Edison's laboratory. Lumière, Méliès, and others had naively used the idea of ??speaking behind a screen to make movies sound. Before 1900, EMI held several screenings of song records. At the same time, Barron and Laust designed an ingenious method of synchronizing sound and picture.

In the first 10 years of the 20th century, the efforts of French Henri Jolly and Gaumont have achieved success. At the same time, Edison and Actaeon were in the United States, Hepworth, Rooster and Williamson were in England, and Magnuson and Paulson were in Scandinavia. They also achieved the same results.

However, at this time the film was still in the stage of silent art. People have figured out how to synchronize actions and lines, and use compressed air to amplify the sound so that the 6,000 people gathered at the Gaumont Theater can hear it. However, the sound produced has a strong nasal sound, and the synchronization method is still imperfect. . The actors had to match the movements of their lips to the sounds "reproduced" by the gramophone record. By 1914, talkies had all but been abandoned.

The phonograph evolved from the telephone, which itself evolved from the telegraph. Wireless telegraphy - invented almost at the same time as cinema - and the subsequent development of radio broadcasting, made it possible to solve some of the problems existing in talkies through the electrical recording of "loudspeakers" and "three-stage vacuum tubes" (Lee de Foer) The solution was solved by the sound amplification method invented by St. The big electrical companies that made radio equipment became the owners of the patent rights for the talkie movie machine.

These patent rights were monopolized by two major groups at the time, namely the "General Electric Company-Western Electric Company" group in the United States and the "A.E.G.-Tobes Company-Klan Film Company" in Germany. .

"Western Electric Company" once proposed the use of its recording methods to some major American film companies also controlled by Morgan Bank. But these companies were reluctant to accept talkies that threatened Hollywood's hegemony.

"Western Electric Company" was disappointed and turned to Warner Brothers. The small film company founded by the latter two acquired the old company "Vitagraph" and a small screening network consisting of 15 theaters.

The two producers were interested in using loudspeakers instead of orchestras in movie theaters. In their early sound films, the sound produced by the "Vitaphone" sound film machine was limited to some music and some noisy sounds.

Although "Warner" had signed contracts with two of its stars - actor John Barrymore and dog star Lin Tintin - it was still in a state of bankruptcy at the time. As a last resort, the company decided to risk filming an opera film "Don Juan" starring Barrymore. The success of this talkie greatly encouraged the continued production of such films. Warner Bros. used its last remaining capital to make the film, hiring Al Jolson, a famous arcade singer, and directing his performance by the less famous Alain Crossland. The script of the film is somewhat similar to Dupont's film "Baruch", which tells the story of a poor Jewish singer's rise to fame. Based on this theme, the film is interspersed with many famous songs and ditties.

The film was a huge success. It grossed $3.5 million in the United States, almost equaling the record set by "Ben-Hur." But the latter record was soon broken by Warner Bros.'s another new film "The Musical" starring Al Jolson, which grossed a whopping $5 million. Seeing this brilliant achievement, other Hollywood companies also began to seek patent rights for sound films. William Foss already had a "Moviton" adapted from a German invention. Other companies also had to accept tough terms from GE Western. Soon the Radio Company controlled by Rockefeller also developed a "Foto style" talkie, but it was boycotted by other companies. In order to take advantage of this kind of sound movie machine, the Rockefeller Foundation specially set up a new film company in Hollywood-"RKO Picture Company", which was the combination of "EMI Film Trading Company", "Mutual Film Company" and "Triangle Picture Company" These old companies were merged with a large joint venture that used to operate amusement parks, the "Case-Offen Company", and were supported by various radio companies (such as "C.B.S.", "Marconi", etc.) a company. Early films United States

In 1926, Warner Bros. Pictures filmed the opera "Don Juan" starring J. Barrymore (directed by A. Crosland) with records and singing.

On October 6, 1927, "The Jazz Singer" with singing, dialogue and sound, directed by A. Crosland and starring A. Qiaosheng, premiered. This was the first film in the world Audio feature film. On July 6, 1928, Warner released "Lights of New York," a "100 percent sound film." Since then, talkies have been fully developed. By 1930, all feature films were sound films, except for Chaplin who continued to shoot several silent films.

Among the directors who were the first to adapt to sound film production and shoot creative films were: R. Marmoulian's "Bravo" (1929) and "Dr. Jekyll" (1929), which used a subjective lens 1932), L. Milestone's "All Quiet on the Western Front" (1930) and "Front Page News" (1931), Lubitsch's "A Review of Love" (1929) and "The Smiling Lieutenant" (1931), K .Vidor's "Hallelujah" (1930). Chaplin also made his first talkie, The Great Dictator (1940).

Hollywood production companies were established one after another in 1912. With the establishment of RKO Pictures Co., Ltd. in 1928, eight major companies in the American film industry were formed. They include five larger film companies, namely Paramount (founded in 1914), 20th Century Fox (founded in 1915, merged in 1935), MGM (merged in 1924), Warner Brothers (1923) and RKO (1928); 3 smaller companies, Universal (1912), Columbia (1924), and United Artists (1919). Part One

On October 6, 1927, Al Jolson played the leading role in "The Jazz Singer," a talkie that started playing today. His voice was a little dull and not as clear as the telephone transmission. The actors' movements are disconnected from their words. The voice didn't have the same cadence as on the radio. But anyway, this is a first.

The plot of "The Jazz Singer" partly reflects Jolson's real life. Like the protagonist he plays, Joelson comes from a Jewish family that is very dissatisfied with the career of a jazz singer. Jolson's estrangement from his parents and subsequent rise to prominence are the tense and moving aspects of this film. Playing a black man, he sang soulfully the hymns "Col Niedry" and "Mama." Werner Erland and Longinia Bethel play the father and mother respectively. Domestic Films

In March 1931, the first wax disk sound feature film "Song Girl Red Peony" shot by the Shanghai Star Company was released to the public at the Shin Kong Theater, marking the birth of China's first sound film. come out.

On June 21, 1931, my country's first sound film with on-screen pronunciation, "The Sky Has Sunny", was screened.

There are two technologies for sound movies: "Lapan sounding" and "On-film sounding". The former is to burn the sound on a turntable, play it simultaneously with the film during the projection, and dub the film; this is also the method used when the world's talkies first came out. This was the case with the American "The Jazz Singer", the world's first talkie produced in 1927. The latter is a technique commonly used today for recording sound on film. Due to cost and technical reasons, "Song Girl Red Peony" uses the low-cost and simple method of wax pan sound production. Therefore, it should actually be called China's first "wax pan sound" sound film.

"Song Girl Red Peony" is written by Hong Shen, directed by Zhang Shichuan, and stars Butterfly and others. The film describes the female singer Hong Mudan who not only suffered a lot of abuse after marrying a husband whose life was degenerate, but her artistic career also declined. But when her husband sold her daughter and was imprisoned for accidentally killing someone, Hong Mudan endured the humiliation and abided by womanly ethics and worked hard to save her husband. The film describes the joys and sorrows of the opera artist's life, and also exposes the persecution of women's body and mind by feudal ethics. In addition to the dialogue, the film takes advantage of "sound" to insert four Peking Opera clips (sung by Mei Lanfang) including "Muke Village", "Yutangchun", and "Silang Visits His Mother", which further adds to the film's charm. Sensational effect. This is exactly the same as the world's first talkie, which took the life of a singer as its theme. The film started shooting in the middle of 1930 and went through five trials before being completed by the end of the year. It cost 120,000 yuan in old coins. It was previewed at the Star Theater in January 1931 and officially released at the Shin Kong Theater on March 15. The film was released to great fanfare and caused a sensation in major cities across the country, and was distributed to countries such as the Philippines and Indonesia. But strictly speaking, "Songstress Red Peony" can only be regarded as a "semi-sound film" because it only pays attention to the sound of dialogue and ignores the sound effects of the surrounding environment. Therefore, it seems that there is only sound when people are talking or singing. Everything else around him was silent. This was of course also a common problem with early talkies.

Another talkie that started shooting at the same time as this film was "Poppy" produced by "Youlian" Company.

It also uses wax pan sound production technology to describe the scenes before and after a pair of theater actors perform the play "Farewell My Concubine". The two films are technically slightly different. In "Song Girl Red Peony", after the film was shot, the actors were asked to lip-sync dubbing while looking at the screen, which is equivalent to our post-production dubbing today. In "Poppy", the voices were first recorded on a record, and then the actors performed according to the played sounds on the spot. Compared with the two, each has its own merits. "Poppy" was performed slightly later than "The Red Peony" and was performed in May 1931.

There are obvious technical shortcomings in the sound films produced by Lapan. The coordination between recording and projection is the biggest problem. Especially once the film is partially broken, it will be difficult for the subsequent plot to match the sound. There may even be a comedy where a man is opening his mouth on the screen, but a female voice comes out of the loudspeaker. Therefore, in the same year when these two films were released, some film companies also began to trial-produce "on-film sound" sound films. They are "After the Rain, Sunny" co-produced by two companies, Great China and Jinan, and "Spring Scenery" filmed by Tianyi Company. Both films were produced using equipment rented from abroad and with the participation and assistance of foreigners. The first completed film, "The Sky Has Sunny", was previewed at the Hongkou Grand Theater on June 3, 1931. Since the film rented Japanese equipment and went to Japan for filming, it soon encountered resistance from the audience. In 1933, Henson Film Company used self-developed recording equipment to shoot "Spring Tide", becoming China's first sound film with on-film sound produced using domestically produced recording equipment.

Due to financial and technical reasons, many film companies continued to produce silent films after the advent of sound films. This formed the special phenomenon of long-term coexistence of early silent films and sound films in China. It was not until 1936 that the filming of silent films finally stopped, and the transformation of Chinese films from silent to sound was completely completed. Daguanlou

Daguanlou Cinema was built in 1905. Before that, it had two predecessors: Tycoon Tea Garden and Ma Siyuan Tea House. In 1931, it screened the first sound film in my country's history, "The Songstress Red Peony". At that time, its first manager Ren Jingfeng filmed the movie "Dingjun Mountain", marking the birth of the first movie in Chinese history.

In the 1930s, Daguan Tower allowed men and women to sit together for the first time;

In 1931, it screened the first talkie film in the history of our country, "Song Girl Red Peony";

In the 1940s, it was the first theater to purchase a 35mm fixed-mounted projector from the French EMI company;

In 1948, it screened the first color film "Life and Death" "Hate";

In the 1960s, it screened wide-screen movies for the first time;

In 1961, it was converted into the only three-dimensional cinema in Beijing;

1986 In 2006, it was the first to build a large-screen cinema.

From silent films to talkies, from ordinary screens to wide screens... the Grand View Tower has witnessed the development of Chinese films. Film Festival

Dublin International Film Festival

Held in Dublin, the capital of Germany, for 10 days every March

Brussels International Film Festival

Founded in 1974, it is held every January in Brussels, the capital of Belgium, for about two weeks.

Krakow International Short Film Festival

Founded in 1961, it is held every year from May to June in the historical city of Krakow, Poland for 8 days

Berlin Film Festival

Founded in 1951, it is held every year from February to March in Berlin, Germany, for about two weeks.

Stuttgart Animation Film Festival

Founded in 1988, it is held in Stuttgart, Germany from January to April every year for about 5 days.

Moscow Film Festival

Founded in 1959, it is held every two years from July to August for about two weeks.

Cannes Film Festival

Founded in 1939, it is held in Cannes, France every May for about two weeks.

Nantes Three Continents International Film Festival

Founded in 1979, it is held in Nantes, France from November to December every year and lasts for about 6 days.

Montpellier Film Festival

Founded in 1978, it focuses on screening Chinese films and is known as the "Chinese Film Festival". It is held in Montpellier, France from February to March every year and lasts for about 6 days.

Rotterdam International Film Festival

Founded in 1970, it is held in Rotterdam, Netherlands, from January to February every year and lasts for about 10 days.

Zagreb International Animation Film Festival

Founded in 1972, it is held every two years and is held in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, from May to June. About 5 days.

Monte Carlo International Television Festival

Founded in 1961, it is one of the most important television festivals in Europe. It is held in Monte Carlo, Principality of Monaco, from January to February every year for 10 years. About days.

Stockholm Film Festival

Founded in 1990, it is held in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, every November for about 9 days.

Venice Film Festival

Founded in 1932, it is the world's first international film festival. Held in Venice, Italy every year from August to September, it lasts for about two weeks. Software introduction

Talking Movie is a very cool image/sound recording software that makes full use of the windowsphone7.1 SDK application. Editing time intervals of pictures, inserting new pictures, etc. Introduction to features: Simultaneous recording of sounds and images, as well as their time relationship (new feature of Mango SDK) Realistic playback and reproduction of the recorded scene, taking photos directly within the application (new feature of Mango SDK) Synthesize/output Microsoft Powerpoint files, freely edit the relative positions of pictures and sounds, add and delete pictures, and have multiple recording quality options to adapt to different application scenarios. Integrated automatic adaptation to Simplified and Traditional Chinese and English interfaces. Requirements

System requirements: wp7.0, wp7.8, wp8.0