Understanding: The Introduction of Sound

Sound can be considered what 'makes' a film, not just an animated film but films in general. If you mute a film when you're watching it, you either become disinterested or completely confused. Storylines have become to such complexity that sometimes sound can help foreshadow a key moment in the film, or help aid the audience. Sounds are not just ambiences, they are voices of the characters, diegetic sounds, music, sound effects, it is such a broad topic and is this way because of how much there is to consider.

There seems to be this jump from the silent era to the golden age but this is not the case. The silent era was not so silent, as usually inter titles were accompanied by some sort of music, whether it be instrumental or what, it was often there, take Charlie Chaplin's movies for example. And before there was the complexity of sound in films today, there were 'talkies'. This was where producers recorded people talking, but struggled with matching the voices to the images on screen. It is not like today where you can go into an editing software and match each audio clip to a time frame, as there was no such thing as this technology back then. 

Steamboat Willie (1928, Walt Disney), was the first animated piece to have actual sound, not just accompanying music. This involves more diegetic sound than voices, such as Minnie's heels, the sound of the steamboat, etc. There are also lots of sound effects that aren't realistic but for it's time this was a major stepping stone! Especially for the animation world. The sound and the image were played together, not on separate devices, which was a first.

'Peludopolis' (1931, Quirino Cristiani) was the first animated feature length film to use synchronised sound. This was a few years on from Steamboat Willie and is actually a Spanish film. This goes to show that Western animation was not that far ahead from the rest of the world, and in fact animation was popular everywhere. Unfortunately this film is lost and can no longer be seen, but it's acknowledgements and documentation allow academics to see how sound in animation progressed.

After these sound became more and more common and many companies started to involve it in their animations. It progressed and progressed until today where surround sound is an ultimate demand and there isn't really a future for animation without it. I personally think sound makes a film, and it sub-consciously forces you to align with certain characters and connect with them, and I think it such an important element to the success of a film.