In 1877 Thomas Edison created the phonograph, society was finally able to capture audio and play it back. Edison also developed the camera. His idea to combine audio and video was dropped due to synching issues. It was impossible. They both played back at different speeds and he was unable at the time to get them to relative timing to synch up.
In the early days of films they had orchestras that would travel around and play with the film. Similar with sound effects, they would play them live with instruments and other creations alongside the film. For example in Wings released 1927 they used drums for plane engines as there was no way to combine audio.
Don Juan 1926 was the first movie to use the Vitaphone a machine that played records in synch to the movie. The phonograph would play at 33 1/3 rpm synched up mechanically with the film reel being played. Synched up sound effects and and music score were played in synch but not dialogue. As when filming the picture the microphones did not have enough clarity to capture audio without being close to the actors. The technology had not yet been created. It was so popular that it became Warners best selling movie at the time with people fighting over tickets.
I can understand how amazed people would of been to not hear or see an orchestra at the front of the stage. Synching would of been a breakthrough for the art form and really set up the future sound/film relationship that we have today.
The Jazz Singer 1927 is marked as the end of the silent film era. Being the first motion picture that had synched sound effects, score and singing ; speech.
It was the first film that recorded audio on set. It became a hit and the world saw it as a sensation. The word for this type of movie became talkies, coming from the synched speech that wowed people. The commercial success that talkies brought, inspired the whole industry to change the whole thought behind how they operated. The sentence quiet on the set came from the movie, As microphones had a very small range so the actors couldn’t move when performing. This made the technique very limiting in terms of freedom of movement with the actors and creativity with the script designers but still the audiences loved the speech synched that they knew they were on to something great. This movie was also where sound effects began, as because mics couldn’t record everything a sound editor was created or more so went outside of his job to do it. As at the time the music department handled everything and they weren’t really sure what the music department were doing to get the end goal.
King Kong 1933 was the most influential sound design movie since the dawn of movies. It was what pioneered sound design. Artist Murray Spivack created the screams of King Kong by collection sounds of tiger and lion roars and reversing and slowing down. Then combined and played together created the well known noises. This was a huge step forward as most studios used their own stock sounds that everyone else would use. Every movie would have the same noises and be familiar. But Murray Spivack decided to record his own and through doing that created and established a new art form.