ABSTRACT
In the silent film era, practitioners developed a similar philosophy of sound, or sense of sound, that later informed the sound era and also played a major role in defining post-production audio. Even as the tools of film creation and exhibition changed, this philosophy of audio that began in the silent era remained relatively constant. In all eras of film, practitioners have possessed an aggregate of technological tools to use, and they often freely substitute one for another. Historian William Johnson succinctly writes of silent-era exhibition: “As many writers have recognized, the historical fallacy ignores the prevalence of sound during the so-called silent era. Conceptually, for practitioners, the transition of post-production from the silent era to the sound era involved substituting some creative filmmaking tools for others as they sought to create audio, regardless of limitations in practice or exhibition.
