Silent to Sound

1927, Sound hits the big screen for the first time in The Jazz Singer, Alan Crosland directs Al Jolson pursuing his dream of becoming a Jazz Singer.
Of course the Sound isn't of the standard we are used to today, it was still a massive break through in cinema history that would change the way films were made forever.
The Silent era would eventually come to an end, people like Chaplin and Keaton had to change their styles.
Thats not to say Chaplin wasn't successful after the progression of sound, but there were many more silent directors/actors who were not cut out for sound.
Sound came with other problems, directors now had to incorporate microphones into their movies, how would they be put out of shot, how would the actors move around the set. They had to use actors with accents that could be easily understood by an audience and actually make sure the dialogue fitted the movement.
Hitchcock's Blackmail 1929 dubs its actress and dubbing was a big way of getting around most of sounds problems.  Blackmail was only two years after the Jazz singer and yet the progression is great, we go from songs to straight dialogue, but it would be a long time until sound became as natural as it is today.
A great example we were shown in class of the difficulties sound posed is Singin' in the Rain which directly humours the problems. We have the actors becoming frustrated with the microphones and the director becoming frustrated with them, the loop goes on and then we are shown the finished product, which ends up disastrous because of sound.
In class we have had our own difficulties with sound, positioning the actors so that they share a mic or picking up unwanted sound, if we film indoors we can get an echo, but there are ways to over come these problems, just as they were overcome when sound was first introduced.