SNAPSHOTS OF SOUND

Radio Record, 1 April 1938, Page 8

SNAPSHOTS OF SOUND

in The States The News-teel Men Photogtaphed Sound for Radio

"Record" Interview by

JACK

DAW

HE modern Bagdad, the City of the Caliphs, as O. Henry called New York, has always more ideas than it knows what to do with. It loves new things for themselves. The mere fact that something is new is in itself a big factor in its favour. The old doesn’t belong much to America. In London, it is just the other way about. There, the great factor in anything’s favour is that it is old. The new is looked upon with suspicion and reserve; the old with a trusting affection. One can find stationmasters with beards in England. ZI should think there would be few such in America. This is why I looked forward to asking Mr. S. B. Dobbs, managing-director for Australia of the great American advertising firm of J. Walter Thompson, Ltd., something about radio in the United States, on his visit last week to New Zealand. Radio seemed, somehow, just invented for America. It was the newest thing under the sun. I was quite sure that the Americans would have found a lot of new ideas in the happy hunting-ground of the great new territory of radioland. Nor was I disappointed. "Well," said Mri Dobbs, who, though young, was quiet and restful and by no means the "go-getter" that one might have feared, "we did try taking radio news-reels, "Yes. Just like the news-reels in the films. We-had our own cameramen who had to ‘photograph’ sound. They were Pathe News reel-men, specially trained. Their cameras had only the sound-tracks on their films."

His firm began, said Mr. Dobbs, by eutting the sound-tracks from the ordinary news-reels. They worked in vith the Pathe News people, got hold of their films. "We could build a radiv programme so that one could hear the actual things happening," said Mr. Dobbs. They took the ordinary news-reel films first and auditioned them. Tren, starting at 8 a.m. on Sunday, they began work on cutting and sub-editing the ree] for a solid twenty-four hours. They were able to take a speech by Mussolini to his Italian people from the news-reels and edit the sound and. record it and give listeners the voice of Mussolini on the air. The best of working from the film itself was that one could cut and edit the radio version. A speech of 25 minutes could be neatly cut down ta tive minutes. The narrator's part could be superimposed and a_ good, lively feature of 15 minutes--with the

advertisements ircorporated-could be turned out. "When we got through at about seven on Monday morning," said Mr. Dobbs, "we would have our complete sound film made up out of hundreds of newsreels. We rushed this to the laboratory. where they made half a dozen copies, which were rushed again to the various stations." The Memorial Day speed race at Indianapolis, of 500 miles, would last five or six hours. The great American radio network service of the NBC would put the race on the air at odd times during those five or six hours, "We sent our sound crew to the course," said Mr. Dobbs, "and they took bits and pieces of the race. They got a film recording of a crash and film recordings of talks with drivers. "Afterwards all the film was brought into the office and cut and edited. The highlights of the five-hour race were condeused into a six-minutes’ sound story, and the feature Was put on the air that evening, when people were at home to hear it." The system was valuable in other

ways too, because of the libraries of past talking films that could be used. When Jane Addams, noted American woman social worker, died, they got the film recordings of her last speech from Pathe News and put it over the air in a tribute to her. It made a deep impression on people to hear her voice soon after she was dead. Sometimes the system had its lively moments. When President Roosevelt made a speech in 1935 in Washington for the Pathe News on soldiers’ bonsuses, it was brought into the firm, recorded, and heard by the staff. One of the staff present remembered that the President had made a speech on the same subject at Des Moines in 1982, in which he expressed exactly the opposite view. They got hold of the Des Moines speech from the film library. The feature gave the recording of the President’s Washington speech. The narrator said: "The President’s (Continued on page 38). speech ig. particularly interesting bes

Snapshots of Sound

PICTURES BY RADIO (Continued from page 8). eause of what he said in 1932." The feature then gave the recording of the President’s Des Moines speech. There was only one drawback to the scheme. The NBC, the great radio network of the United States, would not take the features because it had & rigid rule that no stations linked up with it must use recorded work. The reason for this rule was not given by Mr. Dobbs, but it was not difficult to deduce it. The NBC would have millions of dollars sunk in landlines and huge central studios. The. value of this investment would be; much depreciated if events could be | recorded on the spot and mailed out to the stations, so that the actual re- . laying of events by the NBC would be almost worthless. Ultimately a special sound crew of Pathe News men were engaged for recording these features. They soundrecorded dives in submarine: the orders, the slamming of hatches, the sound of the air going out, the men singing out the depths as the submarine went down, They sound-recorded conversations between a government meteorological plane 15,000 feet up and the weather men on the ground; the sound story of forest fire-fighters; the arrest of a rum-running ship by coastguard cutters. Sometimes the sound-recordings gave unusual effects. Once they recorded bombing squadron manoeuvres at Port Levenworth. One heard the plane coming down to drop the bomb and the actual explosion, which sounded like nothing so much as the crushing of a strawberry box. The commandant at the field called them up afterwards to congratulate them. It was the only time, he said, that the sound of bombs exploding had been truly recorded just as it sounded. Yet that recording was not a success. It was not a success because it didn’t sound like bomb explosions to the people who heard it. They knew that bombs went off with a bang. To-day, says Mr. Dobbs, there is a strong trend for radio to go to Hollywood. Three or four years ago hardly any programmes originated in Hollywood. Now the Bing Crosby and Bob Burns concern, the Kraft Music Hall, Chase and Sandborne Hour, the Shell Chateau and others have gone there. All the leading talent is in Hollywood to-day, because the radio people have gone into the movies. And the radio companies have had to bring their microphones there too.