The Dickson Experimental Sound Film

The Dickson Experimental Sound Film is a film made by William Dickson in late 1894 or early 1895. It is the first known film with liverecorded sound and appears to be the first motion picture made for the Kinetophone, the protosoundfilm system developed by Dickson and Thomas Edison. The Kinetophone, consisting of a Kinetoscope accompanied by a cylinderplaying phonograph, was not a true soundfilm system, for there was no attempt to synchronize picture and sound throughout playback. The film was produced at the Black Maria, Edisons New Jersey film studio. There is no evidence that it was ever exhibited in its original format. Newly digitized and restored, it is the only surviving Kinetophone film with liverecorded sound.

A soundless 35mm nitrate print of the movie, described as precisely forty feet long, was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art and transferred to safety film in 1942. Thomas A. Edison, Incorporated donated the Edison Laboratory to the U.S. National Park Service in 1956. The soundtrack was inventoried at the Edison National Historic Site in the early 1960s, when a wax cylinder in a metal canister labeled DicksonViolin by W.K.L. Dixon with Kineto was found in the music room of the Edison laboratory. In 1964, researchers opened the canister only to find that the cylinder was broken in two that year, as well, all nitrate film materials remaining at the facility were removed to the Library of Congress for conservation. Among the filmstrips was a print that the Library of Congress catalogued as Dickson Violin. According to Patrick Loughney, the librarys film and TV curator, this print is thirtynine feet and fourteen frames two frames short offeet.The connection between film and cylinder was not made until 1998, when Loughney and Edison NHS sound recordings curator Jerry Fabris arranged for the cylinder to be repaired and its contents recovered at the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archive of Recorded Sound in New York. A new reeltoreel master was created, allowing for fidelity reproduction onto digital audio tape. As the library was not equipped to synchronize the recovered soundtrack with the film element, producer and restoration specialist Rick Schmidlin suggested that awardwinning film editor Walter Murch be enlisted on the project the two had worked together on the 1998 restoration of Orson Welless Touch of Evil. Murch was given the short piece of film and the two minutes of sound recovered from the cylinder to work with. By digitally converting the film and editing the media together on an Avid system, Murch synchronized the visual and audio elements. ........

Source: Wikipedia