1.
Colleen Moore
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Colleen Moore was an American film actress who began her career during the silent film era. Moore became one of the most fashionable stars of the era, a huge star in her day, approximately half of Moores films are now considered lost, including her first talking picture from 1929. As well, what was perhaps her most celebrated film during her lifetime, Flaming Youth, is now mostly lost, Moore took a brief hiatus from acting between 1929 and 1933, just as sound was being added to motion pictures. After the hiatus, her four sound pictures released in 1933 and 1934 were not financial successes, Moore then retired permanently from screen acting. After her film career, Moore maintained her wealth through astute investments and she later wrote a how-to book about investing in the stock market. The dollhouse is estimated to have a current worth of 7 million dollars, born Kathleen Morrison on August 19,1899 in Port Huron, Michigan, Moore was the eldest child of Charles R. and Agnes Kelly Morrison. The family remained in Port Huron during the years of Moores life, at first living with her grandmother Mary Kelly. By 1905 the family moved to Hillsdale, Michigan where they remained for two years. They relocated to Atlanta, Georgia by 1908 and they are listed at three different addresses during their stay in Atlanta,301 Capitol Avenue −1908,41 Linden Avenue –1909,240 N. Jackson Street –1910. They then lived briefly — probably less than a year — in Warren, Pennsylvania, at age 15 she was taking her first step in Hollywood. Her uncle arranged a screen test with director D. W. Griffith and she wanted to be a second Lillian Gish but instead she found herself playing heroines in Westerns with stars such as Tom Mix. Two of Moores great passions were dolls and movies, each would play a role in her later life. She and her brother began their own company, reputedly performing on a stage created from a piano packing crate. Her aunts, who doted on her, indulged her other passion and often bought her miniature furniture on their many trips. Moores family summered in Chicago, where Moore enjoyed baseball and the company of her Aunt Lib, Essanay Studios was within walking distance of the Northwestern L, which ran right past the Howey residence. In interviews later in her silent film career, Moore claimed she had appeared in the background of several Essanay films, usually as a face in a crowd. Film producer D. W. Griffith was in debt to Howey, I was being sent to Hollywood - not because anybody out there thought I was any good, but simply to pay off a favor. The contract to Griffiths Triangle-Fine Arts was conditional on passing a film test to ensure that her heterochromia would not be a distraction in close-up shots and her eyes passed the test, so she left for Hollywood with her grandmother and her mother as chaperones
2.
First National Pictures
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First National Pictures is a defunct American motion picture production and distribution company. It was founded in 1917 as First National Exhibitors Circuit, Inc. an association of independent theater owners in the United States, and became the countrys largest theater chain. Expanding from exhibiting movies to distributing them, the company reincorporated in 1919 as Associated First National Theatres, Inc. and Associated First National Pictures, Inc. In 1924 it expanded to become a motion picture production company as First National Pictures, Inc. in September 1928, control of First National passed to Warner Bros. into which it was completely absorbed on November 4,1929. A number of Warner Bros. films were thereafter branded First National Pictures until 1936, the First National Exhibitors Circuit was founded in 1917 by the merger of 26 of the biggest first-run cinema chains in the United States. It eventually controlled over 600 cinemas, more than 200 of them first-run houses, First National was the brainchild of Thomas L. Tally, who was reacting to the overwhelming influence of Paramount Pictures, which dominated the market. In 1912, he thought that a conglomerate of theaters throughout the nation could buy or produce, in 1917 Tally and J. D. Williams formed First National Exhibitors Circuit. The first film released through First National was the 1916 British film, between 1917 and 1918, the company made contracts with Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin, the first million-dollar deals in the history of film. Chaplins contract allowed him to produce his films without a set release schedule, however, the production of the feature film The Kid ran so long that the company started to complain. That patience was rewarded when The Kid became a major critical. First Nationals distribution of films by independent producers is credited with launching careers including that of Louis B, adolph Zukor of Paramount Pictures was threatened by First Nationals financial power and its control over the lucrative first-run theaters, and decided to enter the cinema business as well. With a $10 million investment, Paramount built its own chain of movie theaters after a secret plan to merge with First National failed. In the early 1920s, Paramount attempted a takeover, buying several of First Nationals member firms. Associated First National Pictures expanded from only distributing films to producing them in 1924 and changed its name to First National Pictures. It built its 62-acre studio lot in Burbank in 1926, the financial success of The Jazz Singer and The Singing Fool enabled Warner Bros. to purchase a majority interest in First National in September 1928. Warner Bros. held 42,000 shares of common stock out of 72,000 outstanding shares while Fox Pictures held 21,000 shares,12,000 shares were publicly held. Warner Bros. acquired access to First Nationals affiliated chain of theaters, Warner Bros. and First National continued to operate as separate entities. On November 4,1929, Fox sold its interest in First National to Warner Bros. for $10 million, the First National studio in Burbank became the official home of Warner Bros. –First National Pictures
3.
Warner Bros.
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Entertainment Inc. – colloquially known as Warner Bros. or Warner Bros. It is one of the Big Six major American film studios, Warner Bros. is a member of the Motion Picture Association of America. The companys name originated from the four founding Warner brothers, Harry, Albert, Sam, Jack, the youngest, was born in London, Ontario. The three elder brothers began in the theater business, having acquired a movie projector with which they showed films in the mining towns of Pennsylvania. In the beginning, Sam and Albert Warner invested $150 to present Life of an American Fireman and they opened their first theater, the Cascade, in New Castle, Pennsylvania, in 1903. When the original building was in danger of being demolished, the modern Warner Bros. called the current building owners, the owners noted people across the country had asked them to protect it for its historical significance. In 1904, the Warners founded the Pittsburgh-based Duquesne Amusement & Supply Company, in 1912, Harry Warner hired an auditor named Paul Ashley Chase. By the time of World War I they had begun producing films, in 1918 they opened the first Warner Bros. studio on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Sam and Jack produced the pictures, while Harry and Albert, along with their auditor and now controller Chase, handled finance and distribution in New York City. During World War I their first nationally syndicated film, My Four Years in Germany, on April 4,1923, with help from money loaned to Harry by his banker Motley Flint, they formally incorporated as Warner Brothers Pictures, Incorporated. The first important deal was the acquisition of the rights to Avery Hopwoods 1919 Broadway play, The Gold Diggers, however, Rin Tin Tin, a dog brought from France after World War I by an American soldier, established their reputation. Rin Tin Tin debuted in the feature Where the North Begins, the movie was so successful that Jack signed the dog to star in more films for $1,000 per week. Rin Tin Tin became the top star. Jack nicknamed him The Mortgage Lifter and the success boosted Darryl F. Zanucks career, Zanuck eventually became a top producer and between 1928 and 1933 served as Jacks right-hand man and executive producer, with responsibilities including day-to-day film production. More success came after Ernst Lubitsch was hired as head director, lubitschs film The Marriage Circle was the studios most successful film of 1924, and was on The New York Times best list for that year. Despite the success of Rin Tin Tin and Lubitsch, Warners remained a lesser studio, Sam and Jack decided to offer Broadway actor John Barrymore the lead role in Beau Brummel. The film was so successful that Harry signed Barrymore to a contract, like The Marriage Circle. By the end of 1924, Warner Bros. was arguably Hollywoods most successful independent studio, as the studio prospered, it gained backing from Wall Street, and in 1924 Goldman Sachs arranged a major loan
4.
Silent film
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A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. The silent film era lasted from 1895 to 1936, in silent films for entertainment, the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, mime and title cards which contain a written indication of the plot or key dialogue. During silent films, a pianist, theatre organist, or, in large cities, pianists and organists would either play from sheet music or improvise, an orchestra would play from sheet music. The term silent film is therefore a retronym—that is, a term created to distinguish something retroactively, the early films with sound, starting with The Jazz Singer in 1927, were referred to as talkies, sound films, or talking pictures. A September 2013 report by the United States Library of Congress announced that a total of 70% of American silent feature films are believed to be completely lost, the earliest precursors of film began with image projection through the use of a device known as the magic lantern. This utilized a glass lens, a shutter and a persistent light source, such as a powerful lantern and these slides were originally hand-painted, but still photographs were used later on after the technological advent of photography in the nineteenth century. The invention of a practical photography apparatus preceded cinema by only fifty years, the next significant step towards film creation was the development of an understanding of image movement. Simulations of movement date as far back as to 1828 and only four years after Paul Roget discovered the phenomenon he called Persistence of Vision. This experience was further demonstrated through Rogets introduction of the thaumatrope, the first projected primary proto-movie was made by Eadweard Muybridge between 1877 and 1880. Muybridge set up a row of cameras along a racetrack and timed image exposures to capture the many stages of a horses gallop, the oldest surviving film was created by Louis Le Prince in 1888. It was a film of people walking in Oakwood streets garden. Edison also made a business of selling Kinetograph and Kinetoscope equipment, due to Edisons lack of securing an international patent on his film inventions, similar devices were invented around the world. The Lumière brothers, for example, created the Cinématographe in France, the Cinématographe proved to be a more portable and practical device than both of Edisons as it combined a camera, film processor and projector in one unit. In contrast to Edisons peepshow-style kinetoscope, which one person could watch through a viewer. Their first film, Sortie de lusine Lumière de Lyon, shot in 1894, is considered the first true motion picture, the invention of celluloid film, which was strong and flexible, greatly facilitated the making of motion pictures. This film was 35 mm wide and pulled using four sprocket holes and this doomed the cinematograph, which could only use film with just one sprocket hole. From the very beginnings of film production, the art of motion pictures grew into maturity in the silent era. Silent filmmakers pioneered the art form to the extent that virtually every style, the silent era was also pioneering era from a technical point of view
5.
Neil Hamilton (actor)
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James Neil Hamilton was an American actor probably best known for his role as Commissioner Gordon on the Batman TV series of the 1960s. An only child, Hamilton was born in Lynn, Massachusetts and his show business career began when he secured a job as a shirt model in magazine ads, similar to fellow silent film performer Reed Howes, who was known in advertisements as The Arrow Collar Man. After this, he interested in acting and joined several stock companies. This allowed him to secure his first film role in 1918 in Vitagraphs The Beloved Impostor, in 1924, he traveled to Germany with Griffith and made a film about the incredibly harsh living conditions in post-World War I Germany, Isnt Life Wonderful. While filming America in 1924, an arm was blown off. As fellow actor Charles Emmett Mack recalls, Neil Hamilton and I went to neighboring towns and raised a fund for him—I doing a song and dance, Hamilton was signed by Paramount Pictures in the mid-1920s and became one of their leading men. He often appeared opposite star Bebe Daniels, in 1926, he played one of Ronald Colmans brothers in Paramounts original silent version of Beau Geste. In 1926, Hamilton played Nick Carraway in the first production of The Great Gatsby and he was steadily employed in supporting roles, and worked for just about every studio in Hollywood. He made the transition to sound pictures at the end of the 1920s, in 1930, he appeared in the original production of The Dawn Patrol, playing the squadron commander, a role played by Basil Rathbone in the 1938 remake. Hamilton was billed above newcomer Clark Gable in the 1931 Joan Crawford vehicle Laughing Sinners and he originated the role of milksop Harry Holt, Janes fiance, in the 1932 film Tarzan the Ape Man, and he actually received top billing in the film. Hamilton reprised the role in the 1934 pre-Code sequel, Tarzan and His Mate and he made 268 films, both silents and talkies. A-level work in Hollywood dried up for Hamilton by the 1940s, and he was reduced to working in serials, B films and he starred as the villain in King of the Texas Rangers, one of the most successful movie serials on all time for Republic Pictures in 1941. In Since You Went Away, a 1944 epic about life on the front in World War II. His familys travails during his absence are the center of the movie, Hamilton reportedly shot scenes for the movie before filmmakers decided to keep his character off screen. He appeared in the 1944 film noir classic When Strangers Marry with Robert Mitchum, in a 1970s book interview for Whatever Happened To. Hamilton said he had banned from A level work for insulting a studio executive. A Roman Catholic, Hamilton said that his faith got him through the period of late 1942 to early 1944, when he could not obtain film employment. During the late 1940s and early 1950s Hamilton performed on Broadway in such shows as Many Happy Returns, The Men We Marry, To Be Continued, and Late Love
6.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
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The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits, LACMA is the largest art museum in the western United States. It attracts nearly a million visitors annually and it holds more than 150,000 works spanning the history of art from ancient times to the present. In addition to art exhibits, the museum features film and concert series, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art was established as a museum in 1961. Prior to this, LACMA was part of the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art, howard F. Ahmanson, Sr. Anna Bing Arnold and Bart Lytton were the first principal patrons of the museum. Ahmanson made the donation of $2 million, convincing the museum board that sufficient funds could be raised to establish the new museum. In 1965 the museum moved to a new Wilshire Boulevard complex as an independent, art-focused institution, the largest new museum to be built in the United States after the National Gallery of Art. The museum, built in a similar to Lincoln Center. The board selected LA architect William Pereira over the recommendation of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe for the buildings. According to a 1965 Los Angeles Times story, the total cost of the three buildings was $11.5 million, at the time, the Los Angeles Music Center and LACMA were concurrent large civic projects which vied for attention and donors in Los Angeles. When the museum opened, the buildings were surrounded by reflecting pools, in the far-reaching expansion, museum-goers henceforth entered through the new partially roofed central court, nearly an acre of space bounded by the museums four buildings. The museums Pavilion for Japanese Art, designed by maverick architect Bruce Goff, opened in 1988, gerald Cantor Sculpture Garden of Rodin bronzes. In 1999, the Hancock Park Improvement Project was complete, kohlhaas edged out French architect Jean Nouvel, who would have added a major building while renovating the older facilities. The list of candidates had narrowed to five in May 2001, Koolhaas, Nouvel, Steven Holl, Daniel Libeskind. However, the project stalled after the museum failed to secure funding. In 2004 LACMAs Board of Trustees unanimously approved plans to transform the museum, the planned transformation consisted of three phases. Phase I started in 2004 and was completed in February 2008, the renovations required demolishing the parking structure on Ogden Avenue and with it LACMA-commissioned graffiti art by street artists Margaret Kilgallen and Barry McGee. The entry pavilion is a key point in architect Renzo Pianos plan to unify LACMAs sprawling, the BP Grand Entrance and the adjacent Broad Contemporary Art Museum comprise the $191 million first phase of the three-part expansion and renovation campaign
7.
Internet Archive
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The Internet Archive is a San Francisco–based nonprofit digital library with the stated mission of universal access to all knowledge. As of October 2016, its collection topped 15 petabytes, in addition to its archiving function, the Archive is an activist organization, advocating for a free and open Internet. Its web archive, the Wayback Machine, contains over 150 billion web captures, the Archive also oversees one of the worlds largest book digitization projects. Founded by Brewster Kahle in May 1996, the Archive is a 501 nonprofit operating in the United States. It has a budget of $10 million, derived from a variety of sources, revenue from its Web crawling services, various partnerships, grants, donations. Its headquarters are in San Francisco, California, where about 30 of its 200 employees work, Most of its staff work in its book-scanning centers. The Archive has data centers in three Californian cities, San Francisco, Redwood City, and Richmond, the Archive is a member of the International Internet Preservation Consortium and was officially designated as a library by the State of California in 2007. Brewster Kahle founded the Archive in 1996 at around the time that he began the for-profit web crawling company Alexa Internet. In October 1996, the Internet Archive had begun to archive and preserve the World Wide Web in large quantities, the archived content wasnt available to the general public until 2001, when it developed the Wayback Machine. In late 1999, the Archive expanded its collections beyond the Web archive, Now the Internet Archive includes texts, audio, moving images, and software. It hosts a number of projects, the NASA Images Archive, the contract crawling service Archive-It. According to its web site, Most societies place importance on preserving artifacts of their culture, without such artifacts, civilization has no memory and no mechanism to learn from its successes and failures. Our culture now produces more and more artifacts in digital form, the Archives mission is to help preserve those artifacts and create an Internet library for researchers, historians, and scholars. In August 2012, the Archive announced that it has added BitTorrent to its file download options for over 1.3 million existing files, on November 6,2013, the Internet Archives headquarters in San Franciscos Richmond District caught fire, destroying equipment and damaging some nearby apartments. The nonprofit Archive sought donations to cover the estimated $600,000 in damage, in November 2016, Kahle announced that the Internet Archive was building the Internet Archive of Canada, a copy of the archive to be based somewhere in the country of Canada. The announcement received widespread coverage due to the implication that the decision to build an archive in a foreign country was because of the upcoming presidency of Donald Trump. Kahle was quoted as saying that on November 9th in America and it was a firm reminder that institutions like ours, built for the long-term, need to design for change. For us, it means keeping our cultural materials safe, private and it means preparing for a Web that may face greater restrictions
8.
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
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The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a professional honorary organization with the stated goal of advancing the arts and sciences of motion pictures. The Academys corporate management and general policies are overseen by a Board of Governors, the roster of the Academys approximately 6,000 motion picture professionals is a closely guarded secret. While the great majority of its members are based in the United States, the Academy is known around the world for its annual Academy Awards, now officially known as The Oscars. The Academy plans to open the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles in 2017, the notion of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences began with Louis B. He said he wanted to create an organization that would mediate labor disputes without unions and he met with actor Conrad Nagel, director Fred Niblo, and the head of the Association of Motion Picture Producers, Fred Beetsonto to discuss these matters. The idea of this elite club having a banquet was discussed. They also established that membership into the organization would only be open to people involved in one of the five branches of the industry, actors, directors, writers, technicians, and producers. That evening Mayer presented to those guests what he called the International Academy of Motion Picture Arts, everyone in the room that evening became a founder of the Academy. Several organizational meetings were held prior to the first official meeting held on May 6,1927 and their first organizational meeting was held on May 11. At that meeting Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. was elected as the first president of the Academy, while Fred Niblo was the first vice-president and that night, the Academy also bestowed its first honorary membership, to Thomas Edison. Initially, the Academy was broken down into five groups, or branches. The original five were, Producers, Actors, Directors, Writers, the initial concerns of the group had to do with labor. However, as went on, the organization moved further away from involvement in labor-management arbitrations and negotiations. By July 1928 the board of directors had approved a list of 12 awards to be presented, during July the voting system for the Awards was established, and the nomination and selection process began. This award of merit for distinctive achievement is what we know now as the Academy Award, the initial location of the organization was 6912 Hollywood Boulevard. In May 1928, the Academy authorized the construction of a state of the art screening room, the screening room was not completed until April 1929. With the publication of Report on Incandescent Illumination in 1928, the Academy began a history of publishing books to assist its members. Another early initiative concerned training Army Signal Corps officers, in 1929 Academy members in a joint venture with the University of Southern California created Americas first film school to further the art and science of moving pictures
9.
Sound effect
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In motion picture and television production, a sound effect is a sound recorded and presented to make a specific storytelling or creative point without the use of dialogue or music. The term often refers to a process applied to a recording, in professional motion picture and television production, dialogue, music, and sound effects recordings are treated as separate elements. Dialogue and music recordings are never referred to as sound effects, even though the processes applied to such as reverberation or flanging effects, the term sound effect ranges back to the early days of radio. In its Year Book 1931 the BBC published an article about The Use of Sound Effects. It considers sounds effect deeply linked with broadcasting and states, It would be a mistake to think of them as anologous to punctuation marks. They should never be inserted into an already existing. The author of a broadcast play or broadcast construction ought to have used Sound Effects as bricks with which to build, treating them as of value with speech. If it fails to do so its presence could not be justified, the sound of people talking in the background is also considered a BG, but only if the speaker is unintelligible and the language is unrecognizable. These background noises are also called ambience or atmos, Foley sound effects are sounds that synchronize on screen, and require the expertise of a foley artist to record properly. Footsteps, the movement of hand props, and the rustling of cloth are common foley units, design sound effects are sounds that do not normally occur in nature, or are impossible to record in nature. These sounds are used to suggest futuristic technology in a fiction film. Each of these sound effect categories is specialized, with sound editors known as specialists in an area of sound effects, Foley is another method of adding sound effects. With this technique the action onscreen is essentially recreated to try to match it as closely as possible, if done correctly it is very hard for audiences to tell what sounds were added and what sounds were originally recorded. In the early days of film and radio, foley artists would add sounds in realtime or pre-recorded sound effects would be played back from analogue discs in realtime. Today, with effects held in digital format, it is easy to any required sequence to be played in any desired timeline. In the days of silent film, sound effects were added by the operator of an organ or photoplayer. Theater organ sound effects are usually electric or electro-pneumatic, and activated by a button pressed with the hand or foot, photoplayer operators activate sound effects either by flipping switches on the machine or pulling cow-tail pull-strings, which hang above. Sounds like bells and drums are made mechanically, sirens and horns electronically, due to its smaller size, a photoplayer usually has less special effects than a theater organ, or less complex ones
10.
Turner Classic Movies
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Turner Classic Movies is an American movie-oriented basic cable and satellite television network owned by the Turner Broadcasting System subsidiary of Time Warner. TCM is headquartered at the Techwood Campus in Atlanta, Georgias Midtown business district, historically, the channels programming consisted mainly of featured classic theatrically released feature films from the Turner Entertainment film library – which comprises films from Warner Bros. However, TCM now has licensing deals with other Hollywood film studios as well as its Time Warner sister company, Warner Bros. and occasionally shows more recent films. The channel is available in United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, Latin America, France, Spain, Nordic countries, Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific. In 1986, eight years before the launch of Turner Classic Movies, concerns over Turner Entertainments corporate debt load resulted in Turner selling the studio that October back to Kirk Kerkorian, from whom Turner had purchased the studio less than a year before. As part of the deal, Turner Entertainment retained ownership of MGMs library of films released up to May 9,1986, Turner Broadcasting System was split into two companies, Turner Broadcasting System and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and reincorporated as MGM/UA Communications Co. The film library of Turner Entertainment would serve as the form of programming for TCM upon the networks launch. After the library was acquired, MGM/UA signed a deal with Turner to continue distributing the pre-May 1986 MGM and to begin distributing the pre-1950 Warner Bros. film libraries for video release. Turner Classic Movies debuted on April 14,1994, at 6,00 p. m. Eastern Time, the date and time were chosen for their historical significance as the exact centennial anniversary of the first public movie showing in New York City. The first movie broadcast on TCM was the 1939 film Gone with the Wind, at the time of its launch, TCM was available to approximately one million cable television subscribers. AMC had broadened its content to feature colorized and more recent films by 2002. In the early 90s AMC abandoned its format, leaving TCM as the only movie-oriented cable channel to devote its programming entirely to classic films without commercial interruption. In 1996, Turner Broadcasting System merged with Time Warner, which besides placing Turner Classic Movies, in March 1999, MGM paid Warner Bros. and gave up the home video rights to the MGM/UA films owned by Turner to Warner Home Video. In 2008, TCM won a Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting, in April 2010, Turner Classic Movies held the first TCM Classic Film Festival, an event – now held annually – at the Graumans Chinese Theater and the Graumans Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. In 2007, some of the films featured on TCM were made available for streaming on TCMs website. The networks programming season runs from February until the following March of each year when a retrospective of Oscar-winning and Oscar-nominated movies is shown, called 31 Days of Oscar. Turner Classic Movies presents many of its features in their original aspect ratio whenever possible – widescreen films broadcast on TCM are letterboxed on the standard definition feed. TCM also regularly presents widescreen presentations of films not available in the format on any video release
11.
Vitaphone
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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 was the last major analog sound-on-disc system and the one which was widely used. The soundtrack was not printed on the film itself, but issued separately on phonograph records, the discs, recorded at 33 1⁄3 rpm and typically 16 inches in diameter, would be played on a turntable physically coupled to the projector motor while the film was being projected. Many early talkies, such as The Jazz Singer, 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 subjects that had optical soundtracks. Wente had created in 1916 and greatly improved in 1922, the business was established at Western Electrics Bell Laboratories in New York City and acquired by Warner Bros. in April 1925. Warner Bros. introduced Vitaphone on August 6,1926 with the release of their silent feature Don Juan, the feature was preceded by a program of short subjects with live-recorded sound, nearly all featuring classical instrumentalists and opera stars. 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. Harry eventually agreed to accept Sams demands, 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 featured the Henry Halstead Orchestra and a cast of hundreds of costumed dancers in a Carnival atmosphere, from the perspective of the cast and crew on the sound stage, there was little difference between filming with Vitaphone and a sound-on-film system. In the early years of sound, the cameras and their operators were enclosed in soundproofed booths with small windows made of thick glass. Cables suspended the microphones in fixed positions just above camera range, the recording machines were usually located in a separate building to completely isolate them from sound stage floor vibrations and other undesirable influences. The audio signal was sent from a monitoring and control booth to the recording room over a heavy shielded cable. Synchronization was maintained by driving all the cameras and recorders with synchronous electric motors powered from a common source, except for the unusual disc size and speed, the physical record-making process was the same one employed by contemporary record companies to make smaller discs for home use. The recording lathe cut an audio-signal-modulated spiral groove into the surface of a thick round slab of wax-like material rotating on a turntable. If problems were found, the scene could then be re-shot while everything was still in place, a Vitaphone-equipped theater had normal projectors which had been furnished with special phonograph turntables and pickups, a fader, an amplifier, and a loudspeaker system. The projectors operated just as motorized silent projectors did, but at a speed of 24 frames per second. When the projector was started, it rotated the linked turntable, the Vitaphone process made several improvements over previous systems, Amplification – The Vitaphone system used electronic amplification based on Lee De Forests Audion tube
