The times-news. [volume] (Hendersonville, N.C.) 1927-current, 1938-10-12
Cinema S Sound
Engineers Bluff
TheirOwn Bosses
Chatter Of Scientific Terms
F., Casts Spell About the
:. Profession. J
By FREDERICK c. OTHMAN
II. p. HOLLYWOOD Correspondent

HOLLYWOOD, Oct. IL. CUP.
The Mumbo-Junfbo boys in Holly
wood are the sound engineers,
whose equipment is colossal, ex-
pensive, and complicated, and
whose scientific chatter seems to
have awed, their bosses.
A movie sound expert, in any
event, gets what he wants around
a studio. He tells the director, he
tells the actor, and he gets away
with it. If he says he needs a
couple of hundred thousand dol
lars worth of machinery he usual
ly gets that, too.
These lads made large salaries,
mostly they have impressive-look-
ing degrees behind their names,
and by all odds they are the tech
nical overlords. of the town.
They really do their stuff when
they have a big musical film to
record. Then they have micro
phones planted all over the stage,
and in the potted palms. They run
in sound channel after sound
channel, mix the result IN a room
which looks not unlike the Bould-
en- Dam power house, and thereby
add tremendously. to the cost of
the production. ..,.- .......
All this, they claim, is necessary.
"But | do not think it is" Fred
tcrick Feher reported today. He is
the Viennese orchestra conductor
and movie producer who current
ly is leading the worlds largest
symphony orchestra and confound-
ing all the experts by recording
the music made by 1872 men, with
i single, solitary microphone.
This gadget hangs by rope
from the ceiling Of the sound
stage, and though the master
minds of the rival sound depart
ments insist it Won't work, it does.
As consequence Feher is MAX
ing series of six two-reel SYM
bhonic films for. paramount re-
lease for what Hollywood calls
peanuts. Their cost, including
ulllOll MdScS, lOl al Vic IlpSlSlftllS.
runs only to, S6250 each.
Mnstead of running dozens of
undergraduates and sound chan
ncls," Feher said, Il simply rear
range my orchestra so that all the
sounds can be recorded by the one
microphone. /, The results are bet
ter, artistically, than by the multi
channel method, and far cheaper"
We don't want to get into an
argument with the sound men.
who have been arguing with
Feher these many weeks, but must
admit that his one-microphone re-
cording sounded fine to us.
:. Feher, incidentally, is the man
who produced that famods silent
film of two decades ago, "The
cabinet of Dir. Caligari." He made
it in Europe and when it reached
America, all the movie moguls
were excited by the strange. and
seerie. effects of light and Shadow
it contained. America had never
seen anything like it before. g.
y, There was; HQ trick to it."
rcHeT CHllShleu,-, ~ simply dldn't
have the powerful lights Ameri-
i.can picture makers use, and ] had
to do the best l. could with the
lights / bad" -,
For 20 wears the prints of 'sTbe
Cabinet, :. were unreeled and un-
feeled again, in the theaters of the
qt"aAhd suddenly they all became
worn out" he said. "There is
only one print left and it's in the
museum of motion. picture art in
New York. If it were to run
through a protector lust once
more: 1t also wonld crumble into
dust"
Feher made $50 pictures abroad,
mostly in his native Vienna.
And then MI. Hitler walked in
and 1 figured I'd better walk out"
he sand. $50 | came over here
and ] like it fine = if 'onIy the
sound engineers would quit telling
me my pne-mi crophpne recording