Singin' in the Rain: A Glance of the History of the Sound Film

Singin' in the Rain, a classic musical film produced by Stanley Donen, premiered in April 1952.

This film introduces the history of Hollywood's transition from the silent to the sound film era. While enjoying the singing and dancing performances, the audience can also understand the first major revolution in film history – from silent to sound film. Therefore, Singin' in the Rain is not only a classic of film history, but also an important material for the study of the development of sound films.

Today, I’ll use the detailed analysis of "Singin' in the Rain" as an example and try to briefly tell the development of the film from silent to sound.

1. The Emergence of Sound Films: Caters to the Audiences

The subtitles shown in silent films are the special language of these kinds of film.

In silent films, subtitles play a great role in film narrative, making some information that is not easy to express in the picture can be conveyed to the audience.

But watching this kind of text will inevitably interrupt the audience's watching experience, even bringing the audience out of their feeling about the play, it’s a fatal weakness. Silent film is doomed to be eliminated with the progress of projection technology.

In the film Singin' in the Rain, Casey and Donner meet in a scene, and through Casey's mouth, the shortcomings of silent movies are exposed:

"The film is entertaining, but the characterization is unsatisfactory."

Why is it not satisfactory? Because "they don't talk, they don't act, they just pretend."

It’s obvious that the audience is eager to see the picture and hear the sound at the same time. Therefore, from the beginning of film birth, scientists have begun to develop sound films.

In the silent film era, in order to make the film not so dull, there was often a live band in the cinema, so that some people thought that the film was always with sound.

In the film Singin' in the Rain, there are scenes of live accompaniment by the band.

However, what people want to see in a sound film is the lines and sounds synchronized with the pictures.

Therefore, in 1927, "The Jazz Singer" broke the box office record as soon as it was released. It can be said that as soon as the sound film was born, it showed strong vitality and became an irresistible trend.

However, at the beginning of the release of sound films, there are a lot of people who hold a negative attitude towards it.

As reflected in Singin' in the Rain, at first people think that someone is hiding behind the screen and talking. But when people get that it’s a new technology, they think it is "just a toy" and don’t know what the future will be. There is a process from suspicion to acceptance about sound film.

In fact, the sound film which combines sound and picture is different from the silent film in terms of production technology, performance and expression, which needs the audience to adapt gradually at that time.

2. The Development of Recording Technology: Transformation of the shooting process

There is a shooting scene in the film Singin' in the Rain from Simpson Production Company. This shot of about 50 seconds shows us how silent movies shoot very well.

At first, we see the shooting of "Indigenous Dance". The director holds a trumpet and gives orders at any time during the shooting process, and there are people walking back and forth from time to time.

From this point of view, the shooting of silent movies is more convenient. In the same studio, multiple films or crews can be allowed to shoot at the same time because there are no sound restrictions.

Since there are few restrictions on silent film production, as long as the picture is not interrupted, even if the camera has a lot of noise, it does not matter. Thus, in the silent film era, the efficiency of shooting and the use of photographic sites is much higher than that in the sound film period, and the cost is also much lower than that.

Compared with silent films, sound films are subject to much greater restrictions. In the film Singin' in the Rain, there is a slogan "Quiet While Recording", I believe most audiences will not notice it at all, which should be a milestone in film history.

This requirement led to drastic changes in the filmmaking process: the director could no longer talks to the actors while filming, and several crews could no longer film in the same studio.

These changes are because of the sound film was appeared and sound should be considered while shooting.

It is also the moment when the sound is most valued. "In order to record the sound, they would rather sacrifice the picture to a certain extent". Thus, they installed the camera in the camera cabin, which makes the scheduling of the camera very difficult. Nowadays, recording is not so important in shooting progress since it can be post produced.

Interestingly, the loss of recording priority is due to the advancement of recording technology:

Recording has developed from wax disc recording technology, optical recording technology and magnetic recording technology to digital recording technology, which makes recording technically not a problem, and also frees the director and photography department.

3. How does the Early Recording Scene look like?

In the film Singin' in the Rain, there is a scene we can get some information about the shooting of early sound films: there are microphones, microphone cars and live recording scenes.

At that time, the microphone was very heavy, and the microphone car was made of wood, reflecting the poor equipment pf sound film shooting. Moreover, the cameras at that time were not low-noise, so it had to be placed in the camera cabin.

However, in this scene, the camera is not installed in the camera cabin, so it is likely that the pre-recording process is used, and the sound recorded on the spot is only used as a reference.

There is a photo of the studio in the early days of Hollywood sound films, from which it can be seen that the microphone is suspended by a long pole from the microphone car.

In the early days of sound film, the microphone was so heavy that it could not be held by the recording assistant for a long time, so it had to be hung by a long, thick and strong pole on the microphone car.

At that time, the shooting cabin was treated with sound insulation, the front window was equipped with optical glass, through which the camera lens shot. There were wheels under the house, so that its position can be adjusted according to the angle and distance when shooting.

After adjusting the position of the photography cabin, the recording cabin often moved with it to facilitate recording. The picture above is the recording cabin, and the upper right corner is the optical recorder.

4. Technical Problems of Sound films: how to solve the problem of asynchronous sound and picture in the early stage?

"Singin' in the Rain" shows the formation of the post-dubbing process. Due to the asynchronization of sound and picture, "a original female voice is dubbed by a male voice, vice versa", later the recording workers are inspired to replace the simultaneous voice through dubbing, which makes the post-dubbing process successful.

In this film, a live scene using the pre-recording process is shown, that is, recording in advance, then the sound is played on the spot during shooting, and let the actors follow the sound played by lip-synching.

In the film, you can see the pre-recording and playback shooting scene. Two speakers are used for playback, and a sturdy wooden microphone cart is used to hoist the microphone for pickup.

The sound recorded on the spot is only used as a reference to facilitate synchronization during editing, and in the editing process, the editor would use pre-dubbing sound.

The reason why musical scenes are recorded in advance is that music requires a continuity and cannot be interrupted in the middle, while the records with a large number of dialogues can be disconnected and edited, so when shooting the musical scenes, the post-dubbing process is adopted.

It did not take much time to invent the three recording techniques of sound film-simultaneous recording technique, pre-recording technique and post-dubbing technique, which are almost as long as the history of sound film.

The film "Singin' in the Rain" can be used as a vivid textbook of film recording history, so that more audiences can understand the hard exploration of sound film. Besides, the film itself has long become a classic in the film history, whether you are a musical film fans or classical film fans, will enjoy it very much.