Sound has been a standard in film for about a century now. It is a standard and makes me realise how young we are in the actual history of film.

The first film to be shot fully with sound was the 1927 film, The Jazz Singer. A ground-breaking film for the time.

For those who don’t know, before that, films were silent. The dialogue spoken by a character appeared on the screen. There wasn’t even any music, only a piano player for each cinema who would provide a backing track.

It worked out easier for actors back then who didn’t need to learn lines but only focus on the movements and facial expressions; it also made the director’s job much easier to record the scenes.

When sound started becoming the norm for Hollywood, filmmakers and actors had to change up and re-learn how to make films. The previous, set-up, shoots-that’s-it model couldn’t be done anymore. Care had to be taken when shooting the scenes for the dialogue and needed to make sure no other sounds were recorded when characters were speaking.

This proved difficult when first started as most actors couldn’t pick up the dialogue and line learning required for the new system, and certain directors struggled to adapt to the new way to film sound.

Clara Bow, a flapper 1920s silent film actor, struggled with the recording of her voice as she strained her voice to speak because of her heavy Boston accent.

Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton struggled with the invention of sound as a lot of their films relied on physical comedy, which didn’t transition well.

The biggest case of a failed star was Karl Dane, who was a major comedic actor in silent films, but his natural high-pitched Scandinavian accent restricted him in speaking roles.

There were a lot of famous directors who were forced to quit as they struggled to adapt to this.

D.W. Griffith was a ground breaking director of his time who had trouble adapting to dialogue films and when he tried to they were clumsy attempts. Sadly, this led to him being forced out of Hollywood which ended his career.

Fred Niblo was known for directing the first edition of Ben-Hur in 1925. When he turned his talents to sound he couldn’t get a grasp of it either and struggled to film with the hidden mics and movement. He had vanished from directing in 1930 after his two sound films failed to impress studio execs.

Those who adapted, like Alfred Hitchcock, went on to have very successful careers.

One big reason why some failed was how the microphone was hidden. Unlike today when we have lapel mics and boom mics, they didn’t have that feature back then. Mics had to be hidden in objects like plants so it meant getting actors to stand by them and make it look natural which a lot couldn’t plan it out.

Another thing was the camera, gone were the stationary, theatric camera style and in was the camera shots we see today. For the theatre actors turned directors, this meant everything they knew was thrown out of the window.

A lot of the pre-code talkies that were made back then can look unusual but they are charming in their own style