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Browsing Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Media by Subject "1920s"
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Item Open Access Almost, If Not Quite, As Good as the W.E.: On Sound Apparatus, 1929-1930(2017-04-07) Sibanda, Nyasha1929 and 1930 were years of concentrated change within the British film exhibition industry. Sound cinema had quickly established itself as the essential attraction of the time, and cinemas throughout the country swiftly mobilised to equip for sound, lest they fall behind the tide. During these years, numerous companies – both domestic and international – vied for control of the nation’s sound apparatus market, with the large resources behind companies such as Western Electric and R.C.A competing with smaller British concerns, as well as established domestic manufacturers such as British Thomson-Houston and British Talking Pictures. Taking the apparatus choices of Birmingham as an example, this paper looks at the various methods by which different manufacturers attempted to distinguish themselves on the sound equipment market, including pricing and advertising strategies. Beyond these aspects, this paper will discuss the potential effects of national and local pride in the choices made by both exhibitors and apparatus vendors, including various “Buy British” or “Buy Local” strategies employed; it also discusses the efforts made by the market leader Western Electric to justify their high prices through the attempted creation of community amongst its customers. Through these lenses, this paper hopes to shed some light on how and why exhibitors installed the apparatus they did, and some oft-overlooked the idiosyncrasies of the British transition to sound.Item Open Access The Conversion to Sound of the Kingsway and the Ideal Cinemas in King's Heath, 1929-1932(2016-05-24) Sibanda, NyashaBusiness records constitute a fundamental source of primary empirical evidence, which illuminate the granular details that collectively form wider regional and national trends. Their rarity has meant that each discovery offers unique perspectives on different cinemagoing communities and time periods. These records have generally been deployed to determine community preferences and attitudes, as they compare with assumptions regarding national tastes (see Poole 1987, Harper 2004 and 2006, Jeacle 2009, James 2013). The Kingsway Cinema was a super cinema constructed in the Birmingham suburb of King’s Heath to serve its local community. A minute book for the Directors’ Meetings of the cinema has survived, and contains records dating from the cinema’s opening in March 1925 through to May 1938. The record contains weekly profit statements for the Kingsway, which can serve as a substitute for admissions figures as a metric for gauging the relative popularity of films shown (when combined with programming advertising from local press), illuminating the taste community of King’s Heath. Yet the minutes also provide a rare insight into the considerations and rationale behind the business decisions made by the cinema’s directors and management. This paper aims to discuss the potential avenues of inquiry that such a record makes available, focusing on the period around the cinema’s conversion to sound, and the unique challenges this turbulent transition presented to the directors of a suburban cinema.Item Open Access Directing The Kingsway Cinema, 1927(2016-04-29) Sibanda, NyashaThe Kingsway Cinema in King’s Heath, Birmingham, opened in 1925 as a super cinema to serve a localised, habitually attending audience. It showed second-run screenings at low prices, and handily out-performed its only local competitor the Ideal. The minute book of the Directors of the Kingsway Theatre Company reveal a striking and unique picture of what the running of such an establishment entailed, and the considerations made by its Board of Directors. Previous business records for cinemas have been instrumental in the furthering of study into cinemagoing and programming practices (see Poole 1987, Harper 2004 and 2006, Jeacle 2009, James 2013), and their rarity highlights the clear value they hold for researchers in the present. The particular characteristics of the records from the Kingsway, namely their detailed minutes of monthly board meetings, allow for yet another perspective on the operation and function of local cinemas. This paper aims to examine a single year in granular detail. 1927 was a year where the cinema seemed to defy the grim forecasts of the depressed economy, where cinema musicians variously rebel and excel, and where the expansionist ambitions of its Directors were tested amidst the threat of competition. I intend to largely let the records speak for themselves, whilst situating them within the context of the pre-Quota British film exhibition industry. By exploring the richness of this dataset, a more specific and particular picture of the life of late-silent period exhibition might be illuminated.Item Open Access The Evaluation of Audio in Britain in Early Sound Cinema(2017-06-30) Sibanda, NyashaThe coming of sound was a swift and decisive moment in cinema history. In the space of half a decade, the paradigms for film production and exhibition underwent a sea change largely unparalleled elsewhere in the medium’s history. In Britain, this change was primarily concentrated in the years between 1929 and 1931, when cinemas around the country rapidly transitioned to the new standard. With this new technology serving almost to effectively create a new medium, there grew a need to define it and to understand the effects and meanings of sound in both popular and industrial discourse. This paper intends to discuss the ways in which sound was mediated to the public and the trade in the earliest years of mainstream sound cinema, drawing from local news sources, trade publications and film magazines. During these formative years, sound was discussed both stylistically – such as with early critiques of the musical, vocal acting styles and dialogue – and as a physical phenomenon. Physical qualities discussed were diverse, including the apparatus used for sound recording and theatrical reproduction, the quality of performers’ voices and accents, accommodations made for the deaf and blind, and the ways in which apparatus manufacturers and cinemas advertised the acoustic benefits of their wares. Exploring the priorities of early sound cinema practitioners and critics lends some insight into how sound was understood during these early days of the talkies, and may provide an early touchstone from which later thinking on sound outside of academic discourse might better be understood.Item Open Access Invasion: Legitimate Language and the Coming of Sound in the Nottingham Evening Post, 1928-1930(2015-04-24) Sibanda, NyashaHistorians tend to place the arrival of sound cinema within the public experience in 1927, with the American premiere of The Jazz Singer. Yet British audiences did not hear the talkies until the film’s London premiere in 1928, and sound did not reach Nottingham until a year after that. For most British audiences, particularly those outside of London, the coming of sound was almost entirely witnessed through the reportage of the press. In this presentation, I explore the ways in which provincial newspapers discussed the coming of the talkies, focusing in particular on stories from the Nottingham Evening Post between 1928 and 1930. Sound cinema in the early years was almost entirely an American phenomenon, and worries brewed about the damaging effects of American English. The influx of talkies from Hollywood served as a concentrated and unprecedented challenge to linguistic hegemony. This presentation argues that a nationalist narrative directly informed the reporting of sound cinema during the late 1920s. I will explore this idea in two ways. Firstly, with an exploration of the rhetoric and identity politics of the mainstream press, discussing these characteristics as they appear in reporting on the talkies in the Nottingham Evening Post. Secondly, with a focus on the question of language specifically, using a Bourdieusian framework of linguistic economics as a mode of understanding, and touching upon issues of class and social power.Item Open Access "The “Missing Muscle”: Attitudes to Women Working in Cinema and Music 1910 to 1930(Routledge, 2017-07-25) Porter, LaraineIn the 1900s as Edwardian women musicians moved from music teaching into public performance, cinemas offered a safe place: out of the spotlight and in the relative anonymity of the darkened auditorium. The rapid growth in cinemas from the 1910s also meant that women were needed to fill the demand for ensembles, pianists and vocalists; a demand that greatly increased during WWI. However, women faced successive waves of backlashes and debates about their abilities played out in the music and popular press, in trade and fan magazines and in the Musician’s Union. Evidence of women’s experience can also be gleaned from personal testimony, diaries and autobiography, but this is piecemeal and represents only a fraction of what was a considerable occupation for women. Focusing on cinema musicianship, this article examines the battles for women entering the profession between 1900 and 1930.Item Open Access Okay for Sound? The reception of the early Talkies in Britain(2016-05-24) Porter, LaraineA review of the various ways in which early sound films were received in Britain from the popular press, to fan magazines, literary critics, public intellectuals and modernist writers like Dorothy Richardson. The reception of early talkies was largely unfavourable amongst 'intellectuals', whilst they received a more positive popular reception. This presentation examined some of the reasons for this.Item Open Access The problem of the female voice: Women working in the transition between silent and sound film in Britain(2016-05-18) Porter, LaraineThis presentation will look at the ways in which women in the British film industry contributed to the transition between silent and sound cinema. It will look at issues that affected their roles both in front of, and behind the camera as new sound technology took priority in production, post-production, exhibition and reception. However, it was largely male technicians, many trained by the BBC, who moved to the newly-equipped British cinema sound studios to develop their craft in what remains an overwhelmingly male-dominated area to this day. This paper will examine the conditions that led to this situation as silent cinema became voco-centric and the ‘men in brown coats’ arrived on the film set imparting the science and methods of sound recording.Item Open Access Silent Cinema Music and the Transition to Sound(2017-02-28) Porter, LaraineThe development of silent film music between the 1900s and 1920s up until the coming of sound cinema, largely reflected popular tastes and musical styles of the period. But many performances were improvised and not documented and there are very few extant examples of full music scores composed specifically for silent film. The majority of film music was compiled by music directors from library music, however this presentation will use a key examples of original music scores such as that for The Battle of the Somme, and compare these to recent scores for silent films by contemporary composers, including Laura Rossi's new score for the Battle of the Somme, which sheds light on changing musical tastes and attitudes towards the visual material which the music accompaniedItem Embargo "Temporary American Citizens": British Cinema in the 1920s(Routledge, 2017-01) Porter, LaraineA review of the British cinema industry in the 1920s before the arrival of sound which examines the reasons behind the industry's downturn and near-bankruptcy in 1926, including economics, lack of modernisation and capital investment, small-scale producers and production companies, industrial relations,, Government intervention and the flooding of British markets by American products. The chapter also considers the impact of WWI on the British industry at the start of the 1920s and the impact of the Cinematograph Act of 1927.