Hollywood Sound Design and Moviesound Newsletter

Appendix 2Extended Note: A Case of Blackmail

Blackmail and Showboat both solved some of the problems inherent in rebuilding a silent film for sound, but each had innovated in a different way. In the U.K., retrofitting Blackmail for a sound version would require a radical approach to dialogue (which anticipated, but did not resemble, modern ADR.) Meanwhile in the U.S., Universal’s recording of music and sound would focus not on dialogue, but on the movements of actors and props.

Exploring the possibilities for spoken dialogue, Hitchcock seems to have more or less invented the idea of Group Walla for Blackmail’s crowd scenes, and was able to add some non-synch, “throwaway” dialogue in post-production where actors’ mouths were off-camera. Whether ...