These unusual airplane noises and the perfectly synchronized machine gun fire emanate from a new system of film sound invention similar to those that have gone before, but made along different lines by the General Electric Company at their Schenectady plant. The sounds come from another film which runs parallel to the one showing the picture.
While most films have one or two operators at the most, in the booth while the images are being thrown upon the screen, there are four experts in the booth at the Criterion when the airplanes are soaring in Wings, and with them at all times is an electrical engineer from the General Electric plant whose job is to supervise the sound effects. If anything went wrong with the intricate machine, he alone could repair it.
In addition to the staff required in the projection booth, it is claimed that there are a dozen men employed backstage at the Criterion to manipulate certain other effects, such as heavy bomb or shell explosions; for operating four thunder drums used in battle scenes and for machines that make noises as of crashing wood. It is contended, however, that it would be impossible for a man to fire the machine gun sounds and keep pace with the fast-moving film scenes, hence the necessity for the synchronization by the General Electric Company device.
On April 9th, Wings will be on view concurrently in eight different cities, New York, Philadelphia, where it has played eighteen weeks, Los Angeles, where it has been on for ten weeks, San Francisco, Cleveland, Detroit, Pittsburgh and Atlantic City.
"Sound Device in Wings," Motion Picture News, March 31, 1928, page 1029.
© 1999, David Pierce, on editing and revisions (if any)
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