What Is Vitaphone?
The process which was designed to bring sound in films is called Vitaphone. It was meant to be played when a projector is displaying the film. It consists of a disc and was used to enrich the experience with sound. However, there is more efficient and effective method which is printing sound directly on to the film. Because of this reason, vitaphone was the last method of sound that was used in Hollywood. But there are still a number of vitaphone films preserved and you can even watch these films projected on a vitaphone system.
A record player and a film projector were connected together to form a vitaphone system. While playing the film, the sound was carefully synced with the film. So when the projector was turned on, the record player also turns on making the sound synced with the picture.
The system was effective especially when the sound was properly synced and was considered a major advancement. The sound was also audible in the theatre as amplification methods were used. But the older systems in which record player and projector were separate, the amplification of sound was low so audience was not able to hear it. Memorable sound pictures like The Jazz Singer was created using the vitaphone technology which was owned by Warner Brothers.
But before Warner Brothers, this technology was developed by Bell Laboratories. Bell made some adjustments before selling this technology to theatre owners. But after some time theatres were extremely frustrated because of advent of sound on film and they have already invested much in vitaphone. But the owners have to upgrade to better systems as audience demanded so. Even to this day the sound systems are on constant change.
There were number of drawbacks in vitaphones which ultimately resulted in its failure. Firstly, it was difficult to distribute films using vitaphone as the distributors have to make sure that a disc is sent along with the film. Another problem was that the projectionists must possess skills in syncing the film and sound. The pictures in vitaphone films were very difficult to edit. So most of directors and editors preferred sound on film technology as compared to vitaphone technology.
Category: Technology