How Has Silent Films Changed Hollywood

The introduction of sound drastically changed Hollywood. Silent movies dominated early Hollywood, but sound quickly took the throne when people discovered how to make “talkies” during the late 1920s. Not only did the introduction of sound films lead to the demise of silent films, it also impacted the industry film style in Hollywood. As Hollywood studios experimented with the incorporation of sound into their films, it brought about significant changes, such as subtler acting, the beginnings of Foley, and longer shot lengths, which all led to a desire for realism in movies, ultimately developing into Classic Hollywood’s Invisible Style. Sound found its way into film when the four brothers of Warner Bros. Studios signed with AT&T and Western
Sound effects had always been on filmmakers’ minds since the time of silent films. Back then, sound effects were created by a live orchestra mimicking certain sounds with their instruments (Ament 9). However, once synchronized sound was introduced, filmmakers were able to record more convincing and realistic sounds than those capable by musical instruments, and added them to their films, thus marking the beginning of Foley. It would not be called Foley at the time, but people started experimenting with it, the first of these being Jack Foley, who the craft will later be named after (Ament 9). Instead of “Foley artists,” Jack Foley and others in this field were called “soundmen,” (Ament 10). A significant realization these soundmen had was that they could record sound on multiple tracks instead of a single one. In the early days of talking pictures, filmmakers recorded all sound – dialogue, effects, and music – on a single track, which had to be recorded during the shooting phase. When people realized that they could record the dialogue, music, and sound effects all on different tracks, not everything had to be recorded at the same time while shooting, which allowed for better manipulation of individual sound effects (Bordwell and Thompson, “Technological Change” 124). Eventually, this practice led to the creation of a sound stage specifically for Jack Foley and other soundmen to record these sound effects, which people called “Foley’s room” or “Foley’s stage” (Ament 11). All this experimentation with sound effects and early Foley was done in order to enhance the reality of the world inhabited in the film. They wanted to make it seem like the sounds the audience was hearing is actually