Finding His Voice

Animated demonstration showing how the Western Electric motion picture sound system works, produced by a company that was an innovator in the field.

The film opens with a strip of film winding together to form the head of a character called Talkie. Talkie does a song and dance onscreen, also playing a xylophone, to demonstrate the extent of sound as exemplified by voice and instrument. He is joined onscreen by a character called Mutie (as shown by a gag around his mouth), showing that he is unable to talk. He addresses Talkie by means of on-screen titles, and Talkie responds by taking him to a lab directed by a sound engineer "Dr. Western," who proceeds to show them how the process works. The engineer takes Talkie and Mutie out to a set, and he asks Talkie to start performing by singing into an overhead microphone. He shows Mutie a recorder, indicating that sound is being recorded on film which is going through the device at the same speed as film is being exposed in a camera. A close-up of the mike is shown, with sound waves entering it. We then see how light, entering through a filter, is modified as it impinges upon a strip of negative film. We see a close-up of a film strip of negative which has both sound and picture on it. This is followed by a composite film strip which has the positive image imprinted on it.

We are then taken to the auditorium where we see the giant speakers which are hidden behind the screen, upon which we see Talkie doing the scene which had been filmed on the set.

Mutie, now freed from the gag which had been silencing him, joins Talkie on screen, where they conclude the film doing a duet.

Talkie, Mutie, Dr. Western

Max Fleischer was commissioned by the Western Electric Company (Westrex) to produce a film explaining, in laymen's terms, how the mechanics and science of putting soundtracks on films worked. This film was the result.

The facial structures and expressions of Talkie and Mutie caricatured those of the voice actors portraying them.

Carlyle Ellis, the early industrial and educational filmmaker, contributed the voice for "Dr. Western."

"W.E. Erpi" was a pseudonym for Western Electric, Electrical Research Products Inc.