The Work of Sound Engineers in France (1930s to 1950s) - Text 2
The head sound recordist, a career which appeared around 1930, most often learned “on the job.” Through contact with other sound technicians (in film studios, in radio and in the record industry), young graduates in electricity and other fields for becoming sound engineers learned the specifics of microphones, recorders, mixers (the earliest mixing consoles), etc. Robert Ivonnet, for example, who supervised the sound on more than thirty feature films from 1930 (Deux fois vingt ans, Charles-Félix Tavano; Mon ami Victor, André Berthomieu; The End of the World, Abel Gance) to 1945, learned his trade with the crew of sound engineers who had worked with Léon Gaumont on his sound equipment. The group had improved the Chronophone (a sound on disc system) from 1903 to 1920 and then developed the Gaumont-Petersen-Poulsen system (a sound on film system) from 1925 to 1929. After working on the sets of Gaumont/Franco-Film-Aubert (GFFA) until 1934, Ivonnet became head of sound at the Éclair studios (The Lower Depths, Jean Renoir, 1936; Douce, Claude Autant-Lara, 1943; Goupi mains rouges, Jacques Becker, 1943).[1]
Other sound engineers trained assistants from abroad who would be future head sound recordists. Hermann Storr was one of the German specialists who came to work in the Tobis studios set up in Paris in late 1929. Storr supervised the sound on René Clair’s earliest talking films (Under the Roofs of Paris in 1930, Le million in 1931, À nous la liberté in 1931). He continued working in France and Germany into the 1960s, training numerous sound engineers in both countries. In the 1930s, he took advantage of the fashion for “multiple versions.” These Franco-German films (but which also involved other countries, such as Great Britain, Italy and Romania) involved having actors speak different languages in turn on the same set to make the same film for several language markets.[2] This system, used profusely before dubbing became widespread, led the American company Paramount to equip studios in Saint-Maurice next to Paris. In France, the company produced dozens of multiple versions (from two to ten versions of the same film) between early 1930 and late 1931. Jacques Lebreton (who worked on more than eighty films from 1930 to 1973) learned the trade as an assistant to an American sound engineer at Paramount. In addition to film sets and laboratories, sound engineers also worked in dubbing auditoria. This practice for French versions was widespread between 1931 and 1934.[3]
The working conditions of sound engineers evolved with technological change. Optical sound required the technician in charge of the recording to remain at a distance from the set in a sound-insulated booth with no vibration nearby. This sound booth was often placed in a basement. The head sound recordist remained locked up in this booth from the early 1930s to the early 1950s. He would appear on set only to protest against stray sounds, and appears to have been viewed rather poorly by his technician colleagues. Able to interrupt a take by pressing a buzzer and asking that the work be redone “for the sound,” he was often seen as a nuisance. The head sound recordist in his booth was at the top of the hierarchy of sound engineers at the time. These engineers, seconded on set by assistants handling the booms and different kinds of microphones, had to await the sound recordist’s verdict to know whether the take was good.
The gradual introduction of magnetic sound brought the sound recordist onto the set after 1930 (although the assistant handling the boom with the microphone remained closest to the actors). The appearance of the VU meter (a dial with a needle to indicate sound volume), which became increasingly precise, freed technicians up from simply checking the sound with headphones.[4] Beginning in 1928, on certain out-of-doors shoots taking advantage of the latest technological advances, the studio basement booth was replaced by the “sound truck.” This truck was occupied by the sound recordist, checking the quality of the recording. In the late 1940s a “sound suitcase” for monitoring the recording, complete with headphones and a VU meter, freed technicians from the sound booth or sound truck. After that date, the sound recordist could remain on set, alongside the rest of the crew and with the assistant sound recordist.
