The World's Din by Peter Hoar

Author:Peter Hoar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Otago University Press
Published: 2019-02-01T16:00:00+00:00

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Rowland Chubb (second from right) cashed in on the ‘British Biograph’ brand when he toured films of the San Francisco earthquake aftermath during 1906. This equipment (‘gas tank, Edison cylinder phonograph and laced cinematograph’) was typically used by exhibitors during the early twentieth century. Dave McWilliams, Auckland’s Film History 1896–1941, 8

These examples show how film exhibitors developed formats and strategies for their displays that featured audio technologies as separate but equal parts of the entertainment. The recordings seem to have been most often played in sets before, between or after film showings, but usually not during them.

The timing of when recordings were played may have given performers time to set up the next stage of the entertainment. Or it may have been that the operator of the film and sound technologies could only do one thing at a time: these machines were quite difficult to work properly. Nonetheless, it is clear that both audiences and performers expected film to be accompanied by sound, even if this simultaneity was a long way from synchrony. The specialised technologies that played sound recordings and films at the same time were semi-experimental devices and did not attain lasting commercial success, even though the machines impressed some viewers. The kinetophone of 1895 is an early example. Another such technology, the Gaumont Chronophone, toured New Zealand in 1906 and moved one viewer to write that the effect was ‘highly pleasing’ and that ‘for all the songs, the sound kept pace with the singer’s lips as seen on the screen’.72

The effect of the Chronophone pleased many who witnessed and heard it.73 In Dunedin it played to a ‘very large and appreciative audience’. The close match between the songs and the ‘facial movements of the performers’ was highly successful during the varied musical items. The operatic selections led one viewer to predict that ‘one of these days no doubt a whole opera may be seen and listened to under similar conditions’.74

Another device that matched music with images toured New Zealand in 1909. The Cinephone had already become popular in Britain and America. A local description summed up its appearance and possibilities:

A gramophone projects its glittering brass funnel through the picture screen, and, while the film shows some music-hall artists at the other end of the world doing their ‘turn’, the ‘phone brings you within range of their voices or of the strains to which they are dancing. Thus you may go down to Fullers’ any night and witness a turn at the Empire in London. Bye and bye you won’t need to cross the seas in order to do London. You’ll be able to turn it on without leaving Port Nick [Port Nicholson].75

But ‘Footlight’ went on to add that the tone was neither full nor melodious and that the Cinephone was more an interesting auxiliary to the pictures. Others also found the sound inadequate.76 New Zealanders might be able to see the music-hall greats of London’s Empire ‘without leaving Port Nick’ but hearing them was still difficult, at least at the pictures.

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