Introducing 

Prezi AI.

Your new presentation assistant.

Refine, enhance, and tailor your content, source relevant images, and edit visuals quicker than ever before.

Loading content…
Loading…
Transcript

The Gaumont Chronophone

Learning here!

Fantastique!

Léon Gaumont created the chronograph in 1902

Creation!

Creation!

In 1902 Léon Ernest Gaumont created the chronophone, as well as several other pieces of cinematographic equipment with the help of his business partners: an inventor, Georges Demenÿ, and an engineer, L-R. Decaux.

What is a chronophone?

It is made up of two records that are synced to a moving picture.

The process is called "sound-on-disc".

There was an interlocking arm that used electricity to keep the discs attached to the moving film. It needed a trained person to go from one disc to the second so that the sound was seamless.

Compressed-air amplifiers amplified the sound so that it was able to be heard by 4000-strong audiences.

What it meant!

What it meant!

One of the most important developments in the invention of this technology is that in a way it preceded Automatic Dialog Replacement, though in reverse. By recording the vocals and then having the actors mime along to themselves singing or talking while being filmed the viewer in a theatre gets a similar effect to modern ADR.

The fact the chronophone used air pressure to deliver sound and could apparently do so to audiences in the low thousands is pretty amazing to look at in retrospect.

This invention had a major effect on Gaumont's competition, Edison and Messter, even though it ended up being written out of Anglo-American history for a short period of time.

In “A Short History of Film” it is noted that it can be said that this style of filming talent accompanying their prerecorded music is a precursor to the modern music video and thus the beginning of MTV.

A female director!

A female director!

Alice Guy Blaché started as a secretary in 1894 for Gaumont's team of inventors and was handed the responsibilities for their photoscenes.

She is now considered the first female director. She started in 1897 by managing the music for the Chronophone delivery.

It isn't clear when she started directing her own projects but in 1902 there is a clear line where that became her main job.

Out of the six hundred short and long films she made, she "directed and produced or supervised one hundred and fifty synchronized sound films for the Gaumont Chronophone."

Examples!

Examples!

1905 --->

<--- 1905 (Alice Guy Blaché)

<--- 1908

References

Arnoldy, E., LeGac, F., & Schubring, W. (2001). The Event and the Series: The Decline of Cafés-Concerts, the Failure of Gaumont's Chronophone, and the Birth of Cinema as an Art. In R. Abel, R. Altman (Eds.), The Sounds of Early Cinema (pp. 57-65). Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP.

Barnier, M., & Brewster, B. (1999). The Controversy over the 'Invention of the Talking Picture'. Film History, 11(4), 477-484. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.proxy.library.ohio.edu/stable/3815248.

Christie, I. (2015). Performers – Now Synchronised on Screen. In Askari K., Curtis S., Gray F., Pelletier L., Williams T., & Yumibe J. (Eds.), Performing New Media, 1890-1915 (pp. 76-84). Indiana University Press. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.proxy.library.ohio.edu/stable/j.ctt16gzdkg.11

Chronophone. Retrieved 2018 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronophone

Mannoni, L. Retrieved 2018 from http://victorian-cinema.net/gaumont

McBane, B. (2006). Imagining Sound in the Solax Films of Alice Guy Blaché: "Canned Harmony" (1912) and "Burstop Holmes' Murder Case" (1913). Film History, 18(2), 185-195. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.proxy.library.ohio.edu/stable/3815635

McKernan, L. (1996, revised 2015). Retrieved 2018 from http://victorian-cinema.net/guy

Learn more about creating dynamic, engaging presentations with Prezi