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- American Film Industry
- American Film Industry: Class 4, Coming of Sound
- Major Studios in 1920
- Big Three
- Paramount
- Loew’s
- First National
- Little Five
- Film Booking Office
- Producers Distribution Corporation
- Universal
- Warner Brothers
- Fox
- Challenges for Film Sound
- Amplification
- Synchronization
- Little Interest among Major Studios
- Roaring 1920s
- Stock Market–Credit Bubble
- Advent of Radio
- DeForest’s Audion
- vacuum tube (1906)
- based on Edison’s light bulb
- amplified sound for telephone calls (AT&T)
- Theodore Case
- partnered with Lee de Forest, 1921–24
- Thallofide vacuum tube
- developed jointly with Earl Sponable
- “light” recording method for sound
- Phonofilm
- sound-on-film
- solved synchronization problem
- experimental shorts using celebrities
- program of debuted at Rivoli Theater, NYC, April 15, 1923
- William Fox & Movietone
- strategy to gain market share
- partnered with Case
- bought US rights to German Tri-Ergon process
- branded Phonofilm as Movietone
- Western Electric
- condenser microphone
- public address system
- sound-on-disk system
- amplification and fidelity
- distribution, synchronization, editing
- Warner Brothers & Vitaphone
- acquired by Warner Brothers, 1925
- acquired Vitagraph Brooklyn studios
- began producing shorts
- Don Juan with John Barrymore August 1926
- feature film with synchronized soundtrack
- program of eight shorts
- The Jazz Singer (1927)
- based on Samson Raphaelson play
- Al Jolson, A Plantation Act
- feature-length, talking picture
- premiered October 1927, Warners Theater
- launched talkie revolution
- RCA
- patent pool for radio monopoly
- Westinghouse and American Marconi
- AT&T and General Electric
- acquired sound-film patents, 1925
- sound-on-disk (Western Electric, AT&T)
- sound-on-film (GE)
- became standard for sound film
- RCA Photophone
- Western Electric Westrex
- Major Studios in 1930
- Big Five
- Paramount
- Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
- 20th Century-Fox
- Warner Brothers
- Radio-Keith-Orpheum
- Little Three
- Columbia
- Universal
- United Artists