Editing Sound film (section)

=== Advanced sound-on-disc ===
[[File:The Voice From The Screen (Oct 1926).webm|thumb|The Voice From the Screen (1926), a film demonstrating the [[Vitaphone]] [[sound-on-disc]] process|left]]
Parallel with improvements in sound-on-film technology, a number of companies were making progress with systems that recorded movie sound on phonograph discs. In sound-on-disc technology from the era, a phonograph turntable is connected by a mechanical [[interlock]] to a specially modified [[movie projector|film projector]], allowing for synchronization. In 1921, the [[Photokinema]] sound-on-disc system developed by Orlando Kellum was employed to add synchronized sound sequences to [[D. W. Griffith]]'s failed silent film ''[[Dream Street (film)|Dream Street]]''. A love song, performed by star Ralph Graves, was recorded, as was a sequence of live vocal effects. Apparently, dialogue scenes were also recorded, but the results were unsatisfactory and the film was never publicly screened incorporating them. On May 1, 1921, ''Dream Street'' was re-released, with love song added, at New York City's Town Hall theater, qualifying it—however haphazardly—as the first feature-length film with a live-recorded vocal sequence.<ref>Bradley (1996), p. 4; Gomery (2005), p. 29. Crafton (1997) misleadingly implies that Griffith's film had not previously been exhibited commercially before its sound-enhanced premiere. He also misidentifies Ralph Graves as Richard Grace (p. 58).</ref>  However, the sound quality was very poor and no other theaters could show the sound version of the film as no one had the Photokinema sound system installed.<ref>[[Scott Eyman]], ''The Speed of Sound'' (1997), page 43</ref> On Sunday, May 29, ''Dream Street'' opened at the Shubert Crescent Theater in [[Brooklyn]] with a program of short films made in Phonokinema. However, business was poor, and the program soon closed.

[[File:Don Juan (1926).webm|220px|thumb|right|''[[Don Juan (1926 film)|Don Juan]]'']]
[[File:DonJuanPoster2.jpg|thumb|alt=Illustration of a man dressed in an orange-and-purple Elizabethan costume with puffy shoulders and sheer leggings. Accompanying text provides film credits, dominated by the name of star John Barrymore.|Poster for [[Warner Bros.]]' ''[[Don Juan (1926 film)|Don Juan]]'' (1926), the first major motion picture to premiere with a full-length synchronized [[soundtrack]]. Audio recording engineer [[George Groves (sound engineer)|George Groves]], the first in Hollywood to hold the job, would supervise sound on ''[[Woodstock (film)|Woodstock]]'', 44 years later.]]
In 1925, [[Sam Warner]] of [[Warner Bros.]], then a small Hollywood studio with big ambitions, saw a demonstration of the Western Electric sound-on-disc system and was sufficiently impressed to persuade his brothers to agree to experiment with using this system at New York City's [[Vitagraph Studios]], which they had recently purchased. The tests were convincing to the Warner Brothers, if not to the executives of some other picture companies who witnessed them. Consequently, in April 1926 the Western Electric Company entered into a contract with Warner Brothers and W. J. Rich, a financier, giving them an exclusive license for recording and reproducing sound pictures under the Western Electric system. To exploit this license the Vitaphone Corporation was organized with Samuel L. Warner as its president.<ref name="Crafton 1997, pp. 71–72">Crafton (1997), pp. 71–72.</ref><ref>Historical Development of Sound Films, E.I.Sponable, Journal of the SMPTE Vol. 48 April 1947</ref> [[Vitaphone]], as this system was now called, was publicly introduced on August 6, 1926, with the premiere of ''[[Don Juan (1926 film)|Don Juan]]''; the first feature-length movie to employ a synchronized sound system of any type throughout, its [[soundtrack]] contained a musical [[film score|score]] and added [[sound effects]], but no recorded dialogue—in other words, it had been staged and shot as a silent film. Accompanying ''Don Juan'', however, were eight shorts of musical performances, mostly classical, as well as a four-minute filmed introduction by [[Will H. Hays]], president of the [[Motion Picture Association of America]], all with live-recorded sound. These were the first true sound films exhibited by a Hollywood studio.<ref>The eight musical shorts were ''Caro Nome'', ''An Evening on the Don'', ''La Fiesta'', ''His Pastimes'', ''The Kreutzer Sonata'', ''Mischa Elman'', ''Overture "Tannhäuser"'' and ''Vesti La Giubba''.</ref> Warner Bros.' ''[[The Better 'Ole (1926 film)|The Better 'Ole]]'', technically similar to ''Don Juan'', followed in October.<ref>Crafton (1997), pp. 76–87; Gomery (2005), pp. 38–40.</ref>

Sound-on-film would ultimately win out over sound-on-disc because of a number of fundamental technical advantages:
* Synchronization: no interlock system was completely reliable, and a projectionist's error, or an inexactly repaired film break, or a defect in the soundtrack disc could result in the sound becoming seriously and irrecoverably out of sync with the picture
* Editing: discs could not be directly edited, severely limiting the ability to make alterations in their accompanying films after the original release cut
* Distribution: phonograph discs added expense and complication to film distribution
* Wear and tear: the physical process of playing the discs degraded them, requiring their replacement after approximately twenty screenings<ref>Liebman (2003), p. 398.</ref>

Nonetheless, in the early years, sound-on-disc had the edge over sound-on-film in two substantial ways:
* Production and capital cost: it was generally less expensive to record sound onto disc than onto film and the exhibition systems—turntable/interlock/projector—were cheaper to manufacture than the complex image-and-audio-pattern-reading projectors required by sound-on-film
* Audio quality: phonograph discs, Vitaphone's in particular, had superior [[dynamic range]] to most sound-on-film processes of the day, at least during the first few playings; while sound-on-film tended to have better [[frequency response]], this was outweighed by greater [[distortion]] and [[signal noise|noise]]<ref>{{cite web|author=Schoenherr, Steven E.|url=http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/recording/dynamic.html|title=Dynamic Range|work=Recording Technology History|publisher=History Department at the University of San Diego|date=March 24, 2002|access-date=December 11, 2009|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20060905003034/http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/recording/dynamic.html |archive-date = September 5, 2006|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref name=MPS>{{cite web|author=Schoenherr, Steven E.|url=http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/recording/motionpicture1.html|title=Motion Picture Sound 1910–1929|work=Recording Technology History|publisher=History Department at the University of San Diego|date=October 6, 1999|access-date=December 11, 2009|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20070429191100/http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/recording/motionpicture1.html |archive-date = April 29, 2007|url-status=dead}}</ref>

As sound-on-film technology improved, both of these disadvantages were overcome.

The third crucial set of innovations marked a major step forward in both the live recording of sound and its effective playback:
[[File:VitaphoneDemo.jpg|thumb|right|upright=1.25|alt=Two suited men stand in a studio with a large film projector and other electrical equipment. The man on the left is holding a large phonograph record.|[[Western Electric]] engineer E. B. Craft, at left, demonstrating the [[Vitaphone]] projection system. A Vitaphone disc had a running time of about 11 minutes, enough to match that of a {{convert|1000|ft|m|adj=on}} reel of 35&nbsp;mm film.]]