Page 16 - CinemaRecord Cover Section # 45

No other Australian newsreel with the locally made Australtone talkie
location (optical) sound facilities projector.
existed until the advent of the A surviving 78 rpm Vocalion private
Melbourne Herald Newsreel on 21 recording of Fred Bluett dated 11 July
September 1931, and the Cinesound 1929 and singing I Know Where The
Newsreel on 7 November 1931. Flies Go in the Winter Time bears a
The last Melbourne Herald synchronising arrow pointing to its lead-
Newsreel was issued on 2 September in groove. This is probably a sound
1932, after which it was absorbed by track from one of these Australtone
Cinesound. The Australian Cinesound shorts, but with the exception of the title
and Movietone reels continued until the footage for Fred Bluett's I'm A Daddy,
1970s, and the collections are now the films have all been lost.
administered by Filmworld (a division Like Allsop’s talkies, these
of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Films) in Australtone 78 rpm tracks could only
Sydney, in association with have been shown on their own special
ScreenSound Australia, which holds projector, as they weren't compatible
many of their nitrate originals. with the 33 rpm sound disc system used
The sound-on-disc alternative: by most Vitaphone cinema projectors.
a system phased out by 1932. The first 33 rpm synchronised disc
Sound-on-disc was an established recording system imported to Australia
and proven method of high-quality was a British Marconi Company outfit
music recording by the mid-1920s. The installed at the Vocalion studio in
transporting and synchronising discs in
adoption of a talkie system by the Melbourne, according to a report in
the theatres led to the system's
Warner Brothers using synchronous Film Weekly on 10 October 1929. It
obsolescence.
Vitaphone discs in 1926 marked the was immediately used by a new
Some early optical sound films were
first commercially successful incursion company, Australian Talkies [Victoria]
released with supplementary discs
of recorded sound accompaniments into Pty. Ltd, (no relation to the Sydney firm
dubbed from the film for use in theatres
mainstream cinema. The audio of the same name who made Showgirl’s
without optical replay facilities.
distortion was much lower than that of Luck), formed by the director of Robyns
Columbia Records in Sydney dubbed
contemporary optical sound on film, Filmads, Penrhyn H. Robyns.
and pressed 16 inch synchronised sound
and on pristine discs the hiss level
discs from the optical tracks of Pathé,
could also be creditably low.
Columbia and RKO films for this
purpose, commencing in March 1930.
Naturally, many of the earliest
attempts to make talkies in Australia
were also reliant upon film projected
with synchronous disc records. Radio
2BL’s engineer Ray Allsop filmed
talkie shorts at Sydney's Columbia
Record factory in Homebush between
November 1928 and January 1929,
The voice of the ‘Vitaphone’: a 16 inch featuring Charlie Lawrence (later the
disc being lined up with its synch mark. Cinesound newsreel's narrator), Cec.
Morrison's Dance Orchestra, Jack
The talkie revolution followed, and
Cannot and Alfred Cunningham.
some companies like Warners and First
Made purely for experimental
National clung to the Vitaphone sound
purposes with discs recorded at 78 rpm,
on disc system into the early 1930s.
these films could only be shown on
MGM had a brief flirtation with discs
Allsop's own specially designed
before switching exclusively to sound-
projection equipment, and they were Raymond Cottam Allsop, Director and
on-film late in 1929. Studios like Fox,
never publicly exhibited. These tests led Chief Engineer, Raycophone Ltd. Allsop
Paramount, United Artists, Pathé and
Allsop to establish his own Australian began experimenting with radio in 1911
Radio Pictures (later RKO) opted for
talkie projector manufacturing company, and served in Naval Transport Service
the soon-to-be-standard sound on film
the famous Raycophone of Annandale, as a radio operator during the Great
system right from the start.
in June 1929. War. He was one of the first two people
For several years prior to 1932,
Synchronous 78 rpm records cut by to transmit short wave radiophone to
sound on disc and sound on film co-
the Vocalion Records' studio in England and America and was
existed as parallel technologies.
Melbourne were also used for short responsible for the construction and
Eventually, the immovable nature of
talkie films shot by Arthur Higgins and early operation of radio station 2BL.
disc recording gear and the problems of
W J Tighe in July 1929. About sixteen Allsop commenced experiments with
films were made, mainly to demonstrate sound for motion pictures in 1920 and
in 1929 founded Raycophone.
16 2004 CINEMARECORD