(OT) In the old days..

[Dr_Strange_Love]

I'm talking in about the beginning of sound films, lets say from 20's til the 30's. How exactly did they synchronize sound with the picture? This was before chrystal sync motors I persume. Lets take King Kong for example, a Bell & Howell camera was used with no motor inside the only way to have the picture in 24 fps was by turning hand cranking the camera so it was probably off around 0.1-1 frames per second during scenes (wild guess), but even with the limited technology it was still possible to sync the sound & film!

So heres my question; How on earth did they accomplish this?

[sunrise]

Very big question!

There where lots of different sound systems in the beginning, ranging from Sound On Disc (a grammophone playing along with the film) to various optical systems and later magnetic film.

Camera setups where also changed on some films to a multicamera setup so that the dialogue wasn't edited (and an orchestra playing along).

michael

[Mystic Mot]

Lets take King Kong for example, a Bell & Howell camera was used with no motor inside

Be carefull! It's not because you see an hand cranked Bell & Howell (not a Mitchell ???) in King Kong they really use this one... Electric motors were actually already avalaible.

[MovieStuff]

They used line locking synchronous motors to run both the camera and the sound recorder, which was optical and recorded the optical track on 35mm negative. There were rarely recorders actually on the set in the studio but, usually, in another part of the building where all the recorders were situated. A giant "switch board" let them route the sound from one soundstage to a particular recorder on the second floor or where ever the sound lab was. The sound stage and the sound lab might have even been in two seperate buildings on different parts of the studio complex.

As a side note, early sound mixers were considered too valuable to use on B pictures like seriels and the such. Creative sound guys found they could surprint one sound effect on top of another to get a "mix" of music and effects, etc. A sort of "sound on sound" but in optical. The quality was actually quite good. Strangely enough, these were generally "mixed" this way long before editing of the final seriel, which is why the music in seriels was so sporadic and uneven except for the titles. They need incoherent music so they could jump cut to a gun shot with music built in, regardless of where they were in the score prior to cutting in the gun shot. I had to research all of this when I rebuilt the missing audio track for "Terry and the Pirates", an old seriel from the late 30s or early 40s. Interesting stuff.

Roger

[Dr_Strange_Love]

Thanks for all the answers, this has been quite a ''pickle'' for me. I am really surprised with their technological abilities, I'm quite impressed
!

[tlatosmd]

Lets take King Kong for example, a Bell & Howell camera was used with no motor inside

Be carefull! It's not because you see an hand cranked Bell & Howell (not a Mitchell ???) in King Kong they really use this one... Electric motors were actually already avalaible.

As much as I know, clockworks were introduced to most movie cameras prior to WWI in order to maintain a steady framerate. When enough tension to maintain a steady framerate had run out, they automatically stopped. Standardized framerates were something like 6, 9, and 12fps, I think, while projection speed always was 24fps (resulting in those fast-paced silent movies). With R8 in 1932, 16fps was added to that list, and even to projectors.

With the advent of talkies, 24fps was established as the standard for soundfilms, and all professional 24fps cameras from then on were built with eletronic motors, as handcranked soundrecording is impossible, even if you'd send synch pulses from your handcranked camera to your sound recording device, projectors would still run at steady framerates, resulting in constant unbearable speed and pitch changes. Obviously, even clockworks didn't offer the steadiness needed.

I think even prior to WWII, the most reliable and economical two-band system turned out to be clapping at the start and at the end of takes to get synchronizing spots when re-combining picture and audio on one medium, used especially for news footage, be it with or without synch pulse, up to the advent of video.