Витафон: Фильмді дыбыстау жүйесінің тарихы

Sound system for film

Vitaphone was a sound film system used for feature films and nearly 1,000 short subjects made by Warner Bros. and its sister studio First National from 1926 to 1931. Vitaphone is the last major analog sound on disc system and the only one that was widely used and commercially successful. The soundtrack is not printed on the film, but issued separately on phonograph records. The discs, recorded at 33 1/3 rpm (a speed first used for this system) and typically in diameter, are played on a turntable physically coupled to the projector motor while the film is projected. Its frequency response is 4300 Hz. Many early talkies, such as The Jazz Singer (1927), used the Vitaphone system. The name "Vitaphone" derived from the Latin and Greek words, respectively, for "living" and "sound". The "Vitaphone" trademark was later associated with cartoons and other short subjects that have optical soundtracks and do not use discs.

In the early 1920s, Western Electric was developing both sound on film and sound on disc systems, aided by the purchase of Lee De Forest's Audion amplifier tube in 1913, consequent advances in public address systems, and the first practical condenser microphone, which Western Electric engineer E. C. Wente had created in 1916 and greatly improved in 1922. De Forest debuted his own Phonofilm sound on film system in New York City on April 15, 1923, but due to the relatively poor sound quality of Phonofilm and the impressive state of the art sound heard in Western Electric's private demonstrations, the Warner Brothers decided to go forward with the industrial giant and the more familiar disc technology. The business was established at Western Electric's Bell Laboratories in New York City and acquired by Warner Bros. in April 1925. Warner Bros. introduced Vitaphone on August 5, 1926, with the premiere of their silent feature Don Juan, which had been retrofitted with a symphonic musical score and sound effects. There was no spoken dialog. The feature was preceded by a program of short subjects with live recorded sound, nearly all featuring classical instrumentalists and opera stars. The only "pop music" artist was guitarist Roy Smeck and the only actual "talkie" was the short film that opened the program: four minutes of introductory remarks by motion picture industry spokesman Will Hays. Don Juan was able to draw huge sums of money at the box office, After its financial failure, Paramount head Adolph Zukor offered Sam Warner a deal as an executive producer for Paramount if he brought Vitaphone with him. Sam, not wanting to take any more of Harry Warner's refusal to move forward with using sound in future Warner films, agreed to accept Zukor's offer, Sam then pushed ahead with a new Vitaphone feature starring Al Jolson, the Broadway dynamo who had already scored a big hit with early Vitaphone audiences in A Plantation Act, a musical short released on October 7, 1926. On October 6, 1927, The Jazz Singer premiered at the Warner Theater in New York City, broke box office records, established Warner Bros. as a major player in Hollywood, and is traditionally credited with single handedly launching the talkie revolution. At first, the production of Vitaphone shorts and the recording of orchestral scores were strictly a New York phenomenon, taking advantage of the bountiful supply of stage and concert hall talent there, but the Warners soon migrated some of this activity to their more spacious facilities on the West Coast. Dance band leader Henry Halstead is given credit for starring in the first Vitaphone short subject filmed in Hollywood instead of New York. Carnival Night in Paris (1927) featured the Henry Halstead Orchestra and a cast of hundreds of costumed dancers in a Carnival atmosphere.

In 1924–1925, when Western Electric established the format of the system which would eventually be named Vitaphone, they settled on a diameter disc rotating at 33 1/3 rpm as a good practical compromise of disc size and speed. The slow speed permitted the 11 minute playing time needed to match the maximum running time of a then standard 1000 foot (300 meter) reel of film projected at 24 fps, yet the increased diameter preserved the average effective groove velocity, and therefore the sound quality, of a smaller, shorter playing record rotating at the then standard speed of about 78 rpm. Like ordinary pre vinyl records, Vitaphone discs were made of a shellac compound rendered lightly abrasive by its major constituent, finely pulverized rock. Such records were played with a very inexpensive, imprecisely mass produced steel needle with a point that quickly wore to fit the contour of the groove, but then went on to wear out in the course of playing one disc side, after which it was meant to be discarded and replaced. Unlike ordinary records, Vitaphone discs were recorded inside out, so that the groove started near the synchronization arrow scribed in the blank area around the label and proceeded outward. During playback, the needle would therefore be fresh where the groove's undulations were most closely packed and needed the most accurate tracing, and suffering from wear only as the much more widely spaced and easily traced undulations toward the edge of the disc were encountered. Initially, Vitaphone discs had a recording on one side only, each reel of film having its own disc. As the sound on disc method was slowly relegated to second class status, cost cutting changes were instituted, first by making use of both sides of each disc for non consecutive reels of film, then by reducing the discs to in diameter. The use of RCA Victor's new "Vitrolac", a lightweight, flexible and less abrasive vinyl based compound, made it possible to downsize the discs while actually improving their sound quality. There were exceptions to the standard size of 1920s Vitaphone discs. In the case of very short films, such as trailers and some of the earliest musical shorts, the recording, still cut at 33 1/3 rpm and working outward from a minimum diameter of about , was pressed on a disc when the smaller size sufficed.

Warners bought the Vitagraph studio in 1925 and used its Brooklyn, New York facility for working out practical sound film production techniques and filming musical shorts. The previously nameless Western Electric sound on disc system was named Vitaphone, deriving from the Warner owned Vitagraph name. Although Warners' sound feature films were made in Hollywood, most of the short subjects were made in New York, and Vitaphone shorts became a fixture in movie theater programs through 1940. Many major names in show business filmed their acts for posterity, and many stars of the future made their screen debuts for Vitaphone. Performers in early Vitaphone shorts filmed at the Flatbush studios include Al Jolson, Humphrey Bogart, Jimmy Stewart, Bob Hope, Adelaide Hall, Spencer Tracy, Jack Benny, Sammy Davis Jr., Sylvia Sidney, Pat O'Brien, Ruth Etting, Mischa Elman, Frances Langford, Betty Hutton, Burns and Allen, Giovanni Martinelli, Xavier Cugat, Bill Robinson, Lillian Roth, Joan Blondell, Judith Anderson, Ethel Merman, Abbe Lane, Eleanor Powell, Helen Morgan, The Nicholas Brothers, Milton Berle, Leo Carrillo, Harriet Nelson, Brian Donlevy, Jane Froman, Jack Haley, Phil Silvers, Roger Wolfe Kahn, Judy Canova, Nina Mae McKinney, Marjorie Main, Rose Marie, Joe Penner, Ethel Waters, June Allyson, Shemp Howard, Lanny Ross, Lionel Stander, Edgar Bergen, and Cyd Charisse.

In 1991, The Vitaphone Project was started by a group of five vintage record collectors and movie enthusiasts. Since the soundtrack discs and film prints of Vitaphone productions often became separated, The Vitaphone Project searches for original 16 inch soundtrack discs and mute film elements that go with surviving soundtrack discs. The Vitaphone Project borrows or purchases soundtrack discs from private collectors and often works with the restoration labs at the University of California at Los Angeles to create new 35mm preservation prints that combine the original picture and sound elements. The Vitaphone Project also often partners with the Library of Congress and the British Film Institute. As of December 2016, The Vitaphone Project had located about 6,500 soundtrack discs in private collections and helped preserve 125 films, 12 of which were feature length films. They have also raised $400,000 in donations, with Hugh Hefner being a notable donor.

Warner Bros. was careful to preserve the Vitaphone and Vitagraph brand names, just as it had preserved the First National brand name for its second echelon feature films. Vitaphone had made its reputation largely for its short subjects, so the Warner live action shorts and animated cartoons were copyrighted by The Vitaphone Corporation until 1959 and marketed under the Vitaphone brand name. Vitagraph had ceased operations in 1925. In 1932, producer Leon Schlesinger made a very low budget series of six John Wayne western features. These were so very cheap that Warner Bros. elected not to put its own name on them, or even the First National name. They were released under the Vitagraph name, which Warner still owned. Warner Bros. stopped making live action short subjects in 1956, and The Vitaphone Corporation was officially dissolved at the end of 1959. Warner then used the brand names for various purposes, to keep them active legally. In the 1950s, the Warner Bros. record label boasted "Vitaphonic" high fidelity recording. In the 1960s, the end titles of Merrie Melodies cartoons (beginning with From Hare to Heir 1960) carried the legend "A Vitaphone Release". Looney Tunes of the same period (beginning with that same year's Hopalong Casualty) were credited as "A Vitagraph Release". By late 1968, the Vitaphone/Vitagraph titles had become interchangeable between the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series titles.

Vitaphone was among the first 25 inductees into the TECnology Hall of Fame at its establishment in 2004, an honor given to "products and innovations that have had an enduring impact on the development of audio technology." The award notes that Vitaphone, though short lived, helped in popularizing theater sound and was critical in stimulating the development of the modern sound reinforcement system. Though operating on principles so different as to make it unrecognizable to a Vitaphone engineer, DTS is a sound on disc system, the first to gain wide adoption since the abandonment of Vitaphone.