It’s fascinating how often the specific historical context is key to a piece of media/art becoming iconic. It now makes much more sense that Steamboat Willie was a catalyst for Disney’s success.
Right? The Mona Lisa is as famous as it is because it got stolen in 1911 and there was a ton of publicity for years about about it and it just entered the cultural memory as "the most famous painting".
Another fun fact about Steamboat Willy: if you’re watching a version provided by Disney, chances are you’re watching a censored version. Apparently having your brand mascot play music through animal abuse is “inappropriate”. So, a good deal of that usually gets chopped out.
Plane Crazy is also basically Mickey sexually assaulting Minnie in a DIY airplane, might be part of the reason it hasn't stuck around like Steamboat Willie lol
I worked on the companion app for Despicable Me called "Minionator" which provided subtitles for the Minion characters. Since we didn't have long to build it we watched the movie's audio on an FFT and looked for patterns of simple tones we could detect and derive time information from. Whistles, and a section of Pharrell Williams autotuned voice were two I remember we picked. We also got them to redo the buttons sounds when the Minions are interacting with equipment in the movie to make them clearer for our software. So we were using the descendant of this audio sync trick to sync a third stream of information to the movie. This kind of not world leading but very well executed marketing of which we were a small part is what made Minions a thing.
Well this explains a lot, I always found odd that the short was just mickey using different objects and animals as musical instruments, turns out the whole film was a technological stun. This also explains why other cartoons started to rely so much on music, steam boat willie basically was the starting point of a trend.
I've known about all this tech forever since my dad worked in TV for decades, but I had no idea about *why* Steamboat Willie seemed to break things wide open. I had watched the cartoon as a kid and it was pretty good, but it didn't hit me why it was such a smash. Your explanation is great, by the way. Analog sound recording is basically magic, and analog video recording for television and magnetic tape is *also* basically magic in how complex and multifaceted it is. I think you nailed it pretty good.
@@sion8I would personally say magic involves the use of forces and realms we can’t directly access but must instead carefully influence; while alchemy is careful direct manipulation and study of the real physical world. To put it more simply by analogy: magic is summoning a demon wholesale, alchemy is painstakingly building a homunculus. Conversion to and from digital is the demon saying “trust me”, we must simply trust that the conversion is accurate and the bitstream arrives correctly. But with analogue audio we can intuitively understand that a wave is a wave is a wave, merely being transformed by various apparatuses. It never leaves the “physical”, is never quantised, and can be traced down the path step-by-step with no “dude, trust me” stage. Though I would say the alchemical analogy is the most obviously visible when it comes to analogue photography. Given the various chemicals, and the numerous stages of photo-sensitive papers and gels bouncing negative and positive images back and forth. It’s tedious, but it’s all still clearly “real”.
Very silly conversation :-) I've watched digital from its birth and used analogue magnetic professionally, I saw magnetic first, it's understandable magic. Digital is also understandable, but only to initiates. Basically Arthur C Clark is still right :-) It depends on your depth of understanding. @@RolandHutchinson
Media history is insane. You'd have to be some kinda mad genius to have "light" be the solution to a sound problem. This is sorta the first steps towards laser-based storage, when you think about it!
About that, light is always the final solution, it has microscopical precision and its easy to handle, the hard part is to adapt whatever you want to make to use light.
@@geckoo9190 Not final solution, quantum entanglement and such will make ftl (faster than light) transfers and interations a thing in the near future
What I wonder is why did this tech not end up with other applications. Why weren't the State of the Union or the King's Speech recorded this way? Why was wire recording a thing when this already existed?
Because the projector lens and the audio equipment are usually a little far away, the physical distance needs to be compensated by printing the sound about 22 frames ahead of the picture, so you can't perceive the delay. That's why if you watch a RAW scan of the film, the soundwaves on the screen won't match the audio you're hearing but matches the image somehow.
Alec from Technology Collections made a video about sound on film before. A caveat for you when recreating it is that the sound part of the film always lag ahead of or behind (I can't recall) the frame it represents because the part of the projector that reads the waveforms are ahead of/behind (again, can't recall) the part that projects the frames, because the part that reads the waveforms feed the film at a steady rate but the part that projects the frame does a advance-stop-hold motion on the physical film 24 times a second, and so in between the two parts the film needs some slack.
When I was a young lad... I saw a film (actually was film back then) by Norman McLaren, where he painted rando shapes in the soundtrack area and also in the projected area. The sounds were random and amazing. Inspired me to pursue a life in the film business. Now I'm a RUclipsr - so.
A lot of Mickey trivia tends to be a bit "Mario 2 was Doki Doki Panic" obvious (or more recently, just reciting the legal limitations to him being public domain) so it's pretty cool to see some stuff I actually never knew before
Yeah, they are basically recycling and regurgitating the same content Disney has been putting out themselves for years, just with more buffoonish mispronunciations.
yeah it's nice my local college library had a pretty good animation section - really was necessary to go into non-digitized stuff to get some answers. i think you wouldn't necessarily even know that mickey was variable density if you didn't get into books! i also chatted with an animation historian ray pointer a little bit, and he was helpful to get me in the right direction - i didn't bring him up here because i wanted to make sure any errors were mine alone.
Fantastic video, Phil! I realized now that you've already answered the question with this video, that I always wondered what made Mickey stand out and what made him the ginormous phenomenon he became. This isn't the first time you've answered questions I didn't know I had, and I thank you dearly for that! You are awesome. Have a great week! :)
And for putting Cab Calloway as the singing voice of Koko in Betty Boop. Best version of "St James Infirmary Blues" is in Fleischer's Betty Boop version of Snow White.
The "Powers CinePhone" system used by Disney for his early sound cartoons, is an almost direct copy of the DeForest system that was left after DeForest and Case parted ways (Because DeForest treated Case like crap) Case took his inventions that made the DeForest system better over to Fox to create the "Fox Movietone" sound film system. If you listen to other film sound systems of the time such as Vitaphone sound on Disc, Western Electric sound on film, Fox Movietone, or RCA Photophone sound on film, they all sound better than Powers CinePhone. But because Pat Powers really did not have to invest a lot into getting the system up and running it was a lot cheaper than using other systems. Disney would switch to the RCA Phonofilm sound system in November 1932, in 1935 Disney would move over to RCA co-owned RKO for distribution until 1956. Disney would continue to use RCA Photophone until RCA got out of the film sound business in the early 80's.
As per usual, Phil comes in with an amazing video answering a question I didn’t know I had through a super cool story angle. Forever in awe with your storytelling abilities, Phil. Every video you make is so uniquely yours, it’s inspiring. Also…thank you for giving us more content to nerd out about in patreon! 💫
This makes a ton more sense. I never got why Mickey Mouse was (initially) such a big deal, and this explains it succinctly by someone who had the same question I did. This also explains, to me, why cartoons hadn't been full-length movies before Disney started doing it this way, either - it simply wouldn't have been feasible!
i am actually glad and hoped you did the recreation for the sound tapes, i think it's best for people to see the real-time sinchronisation to internalise how transforming signals feels great and very wonderful video, especially considering the short length!!!
I wish that I would have had this video during my Film as History class in college. Trying to understand the technology for color and sound in film nearly broke my brain. Great video! I had always wondered what it was about Steemboat Willie that made Mickey Mouse so iconic.
I'd say Super Mario Bros. was much more than just innovative for side scrollers. It was one of the earliest games where the focus wasn't arcade style short challenges that drove you to keep playing for a high score, but instead drove you to keep playing through a (relatively) long set of new levels with a set ending. So, a video game about simply experiencing the game, like most single player games today, instead of comparing scores with friends. And just like Mickey, Mario was not the first to do this but the first to be broadly received and acclaimed.
What's also wild is that very similar tech was used by journalists to transmit images across the continent over phone lines for print in newspapers. Basically converting light and dark portions into voltages that were then converted from voltages back to light/dark print. Truly INCREDIBLE tech. This is why I adore vintage tech. Apple Vision Pro? Neat! 1940s cell phone!? AMAZING!
Exactly. Some people claim that the invention of the transistor in 1947 enabled modern electronic inventions but the real game changer was the earlier invention of the vacuum tube.
Thank you for actually making an original and interesting video about Steamboat Willie, rather than just putting the film on RUclips and hoping to get clicks. I agree with you that I never 'got' Mickey Mouse - of the Disney characters, I much prefered the flawed Donald Duck and found him to be far funnier.
Great video! It’s really interesting how most people KNOW Steamboat Willie is iconic, but not WHY. Mickey is cute and all, but watching Steamboat without the historical context just makes it seem like a quaint little cartoon, especially when you compare it to the sound versions of Plane Crazy/Galloping Gaucho and the later early Mickey cartoons. It’s kinda like how nowadays people recognize Super Mario Bros. as iconic but don’t realize how revolutionary it was.
8:50 - This is your edge right here. You giving credit to creators, and showing the community of talent you're working with. It will return to you in spades.
Great take, I think you are right that that innovation made a huge impact and was essential for the success. But to be fair the character was also different and maybe more relatable then the other typical characters at the time... He is a little more naive, more compassionate to other characters while still maintaining smart attitude... I think that made him more relatable then the other popular characters stereotypes of the time.
Idk if people care or not. This one other youtuber called Technology Connections did a great video on sound quality throughout the late 50s to now. Might be worth a watch if you're more interested in sound technology and how far we came from physical to digital sound.
Phil, keep up the good work. Its been great to watch your subs grow. I congratulate you on your bravery on leaving Vox, finding your own voice, and shooting it on your own. You are an inspiration.
So, the reason that the optical sound that you found "didn't fit" is because the film had to be stationary while the soundtrack had to be moving continuously. Which meant that the audio data had to be in a different type of mechanism and so physically separate visual frames it played along with. So the proper audio was probably on the film, just at a different point, and the audio you saw was proper audio, just for a different frame
At the Disney Museum in San Francisco, there's an exhibit about Steamboat Willy, and how innovative its synchronized sound was. They quoted the famous orchestral conductor Arturo Toscanini calling it "a musical miracle."
I thought your Steve Jobs analogy was going to be how Xerox Parc and a few others used mice, mouse pointers, and graphical user interfaces long before Apple "invented" that whole concept for the Macintosh.
Apologies for taking a little while to get to this one, but I already knew a fair bit about sound on film. However, I love your sociological comparison to the buzz generated around Toy Story. I knew Mickey wasn’t the first sound on film, but had no idea why it had such buzz. And that comparison was so apt, it all clicked.
This is how Leon Theremin's Great Seal Bug worked, too: sound vibrations caused two membranes to get closer and far apart, and an external radio source (which is still a form of light!) would be aimed at it through the walls of the US Embassy in Moscow. The membranes were hidden in a decoration hung on the wall, and when the radio waves had bounced back they'd be changed by the vibrations -- just like the play back of the audio on the film. The difference between what was sent and received back represented the sound. I had a feeling you were going to do something unique and interesting about Steamboat Willy. Which means you made me feel smarter since I was right. And for that, I'm even more grateful.
@@PhilEdwardsInc it's fascinating. he returned to the USSR in the late 30's (conflicting conclusions as to why), was thrown in a gulag with a secret lab and developed the underlying ideas. he's like the Nikola Tesla of electricity [ducks] heh, but really neat story, his whole life is ridiculous.
That Technology connections video he referenced is quite informative regarding this topic. From the video, the sound corresponding to a frame isn’t actually on that frame but offset some frames below since the photocell reading the sound is after the projector. this is why the first few frames on a film are for reference and a beep tells the projector tech if the film and sound is in-sync.
Having a sort of "credits" at the end of the video instead of just saying "check the link in the description" in the middle is one of my favorite ways I've ever seen this done
I got to see an original print and record of Al Jolson's 'The Jazz Singer' (1927). By the end of the film? It was almost 2 minutes out of sync. When Mickey Mouse's 'Steam Boat Willy' (1928) came out, MM was still ill known, Felix the Cat (1925-), KoKo the Clown was created by Max Fleischer and his brothers (look at Merry Melodies and Warner Bros. Cartoons), and Betty Boop was years away in the 1930s, The early days of Animation is really amazing.
I’m not sure about cinematic film, but the films that were shown in schools had the sound strip displaced from the image by about eight frames. The consequence was that if the film broke, the brake in the sound occurred at a different time than the break in the image.
10 месяцев назад
You should check the work of an amazing animator/filmmaker called Norman McLaren. He was part of The National Film Board of Canada, and he developed a method of creating music and sound effects by painting them in the optical track of the film. Watch "Neighbours", a 1952 Oscar winning short film where he not only animated the people in it, but also created the soundtrack optically.
Just like how Dolby & Spatial Sound is changing things except from my understanding Dolby is mixing it with there video which is like 4 & 8 K with 240 FPS.
Quite a few years ago I experimented with sonic bitmapping. Turning an analogue signal into a many-colours bitmap such as a GIF, and playing it back, using an application I wrote in Visual Basic and C++. It worked pretty well, I was almost to the point of embedding the bitmaps into random images, then using value subtraction to extract the sonic bitmap using un-doctored copies of the original image and playing it back. Didn't quite get that far and the code is lost to an EMP. I never bothered to revive the project. There is a HAM project around that uses AD conversion to transmit still images over an analogue radio carrier and convert them back to images using an Android app, which is a fun thing to try.
Thanks for making a good video. Also, that little clip where I guy is stealing and eating bones out of a picnic basket. Imagine the actual sound for that.
As a former projectionist for both 35mm film and IMAX film, I gotta say Dolby Digital kinda sucks. I mean it’s good in the digital age but it had a huge problem on film. You see where it’s printed? In between the sprocket holes. That’s the only section of film where the emulsion side touches every single part of the projector. The sprockets that pull the film through the projector are slightly raised right where the teeth are so that the film doesn’t touch them where the picture or the soundtrack are. So, the Dolby Digital code was always getting scratched or warped, and then it would glitch out during the show.
Yeah, I’ve been splicing different wav formats for some of my videos and various projects I’ve done over 40 years. I have about three videos that I made back in the day. The matrix and resident evil are two of my best projects I’ve done.
An interesting trait of variable density recording is that it is almost impossible to reproduce accurately via photographic means. When making a print of a film, it would be necessary for the printing equipment to add the sound to the film using aparatus such as shown. This makes it more expensive to produce prints of a film, but also makes it much more difficult for anyone to use those prints to produce unauthorized reproductions.
it's amazing how good those vintage videos are. it was rather laborious for me to create animations that are inferior, yet i had the benefit of 2024 technology! geniuses.
@@PhilEdwardsInc I love watching those old military/vehicle manufacturer videos from channels like @USAutoIndustry and Periscope film, there's just a beauty in the accent of the voiceover and the method of presentation, the soft fade transitions.. its a whole vibe.
Hi Phil! Thank you for that wonderfull excurse in history. I'm a subscriber and had to manually check your page, because it was not on my main. Do you need to pay for this? As allways, beautifull story beautifully told. Thank you.
The internet blowing up after a Mickey Mouse entered a public domain really shows how much is Disney tied to the American culture, it's quite crazy actually. I'm from central Europe and while we had access to American cartoons after the revolution, the relationship to it is much different and there was a lot of other competition, so it's strange to watch how a lot of creators are making videos about Mickey. I'm happy to see that you took it from a different perspective and I learned something about America, Disney and got reminded of interesting evolution in technology.
The obvious question is how does the sound track move smoothly when the picture is jumping frame by frame. And the answer's obvious if you know - the sound is offset by about a second from the image it syncs with, so the sound "reader" is away from the projector mechanism.
Great video! New subscriber. Did you ever check out Evgeny Sholpo´s "Variophone" and the history of optical sound synthesis in the early USSR? Coming from the field of avantgarde art, they worked at around the same time on problems (and solutions) there that were in part stunningly similar to those addressed in the fascinating piece of history you tell here, but with a markedly different edge - a definitely too little-known media history rabbit hole absolutely worth the jump into it.
That reminds me of a TED talk about something similar. Basically, binary code is emitted from a light bulb via very very fact oscillations. It's not noticeable for the human eye but it's enough for anything that can interpret the data. Imagine having free Wi-Fi everywhere there's light.
You left important stuff out! Like the fact that the Vitaphone System’s record was played on a turntable mounted on the film projector, and was turned IN SYNC with picture by the equivalent of an analog speedometer cable for cars. If there were no frames missing, IT STAYED IN SYNC TO THE END OF THE REEL. Also, in the war between Variable Density and Variable area sound, among the plethora of companies trying each, Western Electric won the Variable Density war, and RCA won the Variable Area war. Incidentally, Variable Area sound tends to sound MUCH better than Variable Density sound. That’s because RCA was able to make their equipment record 5,000Hz higher than Western Electric could. I can tell you how, but we’d be here a while. - From A Lifetime Member of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers.
Came hear to say this. There were indeed sync problems when frames were lost in the print and or the disc wasn't cued properly, but screenings of The Jazz Singer with a proper projector would not have gone out of sync, and the process certainly wasn't starting a record at the same time as the movie, as the video implies. In fact, both sound-on-film and sound-on-disc techniques existed for some time (we're talking 1900), and Vitagraph's disc system was favored because the sound quality was initially better, but sound-on-film's real advantage was limiting the possibility for projectionist error, so when the sound quality got close to that of the disc systems, it was the obvious choice. All this to say that Walt Disney and Steamboat had less to do with the synchronized sound system technique and everything to do with Walt Disney's attention to detail in capturing a quality sound recording with synchronized music and sound. In other words, craft.
The interesting thing is that digital video works similarly. The video and audio are two separate parts of the digital stream and have to be time sync'd. Today's CPUs have no problem with this. You do have some play because audio has a much higher frame rate than video. Being in sync is major especially for video games and streaming. In streaming, too much audio processing on your CPU can add latency. With video games, you have that trade-off with the size of the audio buffer on top of audio processing. Larger buffer = better and more reliable sound quality, but also means latency. Latency = how far off the audio is from the video.
How they created the sounds are so fun to watch…Foli artists never got credit but thankfully that has changed Also Walt lost the rights to Oswald and his animation team to a business deal gone bad…Oswald was only reobtained a few years ago
You are correct. I am trained in telecine which has no problem. I , am an Air Force trained television equipment specialist. Synchronizing is problematic today. Why? Look at many productions converted.
It’s fascinating how often the specific historical context is key to a piece of media/art becoming iconic. It now makes much more sense that Steamboat Willie was a catalyst for Disney’s success.
yes this definitely happens a lot!
Heh- great timing- I just came back from the Walt Disney museum in San Fran. They did cover this at some point in the displays
Right? The Mona Lisa is as famous as it is because it got stolen in 1911 and there was a ton of publicity for years about about it and it just entered the cultural memory as "the most famous painting".
self plug ruclips.net/video/d2wy7Fp2fqw/видео.html@@screetchycello
Another fun fact about Steamboat Willy: if you’re watching a version provided by Disney, chances are you’re watching a censored version. Apparently having your brand mascot play music through animal abuse is “inappropriate”. So, a good deal of that usually gets chopped out.
Disney Plus has the uncensored version
Plane Crazy is also basically Mickey sexually assaulting Minnie in a DIY airplane, might be part of the reason it hasn't stuck around like Steamboat Willie lol
@@jonathanree4524well in steamboat Willie, her skirt gets lifted and she’s lifted up by her underwear.
@@ALegitPooperVideosAin't that a surprise
That was true until they restored the uncut version sometime in the 90s.
I worked on the companion app for Despicable Me called "Minionator" which provided subtitles for the Minion characters. Since we didn't have long to build it we watched the movie's audio on an FFT and looked for patterns of simple tones we could detect and derive time information from. Whistles, and a section of Pharrell Williams autotuned voice were two I remember we picked. We also got them to redo the buttons sounds when the Minions are interacting with equipment in the movie to make them clearer for our software. So we were using the descendant of this audio sync trick to sync a third stream of information to the movie. This kind of not world leading but very well executed marketing of which we were a small part is what made Minions a thing.
wow! that's crazy. very cool. i need to find the minionator now
Interesting that you manage to get them to change the sound design!
Is this an app that was supposed to go with the cinima release, or home viewing?
Most impressive . Sadly no longer available - unless you know better :-)
YOU WORKED ON THAT!? NEAT!
Well this explains a lot, I always found odd that the short was just mickey using different objects and animals as musical instruments, turns out the whole film was a technological stun. This also explains why other cartoons started to rely so much on music, steam boat willie basically was the starting point of a trend.
I've known about all this tech forever since my dad worked in TV for decades, but I had no idea about *why* Steamboat Willie seemed to break things wide open. I had watched the cartoon as a kid and it was pretty good, but it didn't hit me why it was such a smash.
Your explanation is great, by the way. Analog sound recording is basically magic, and analog video recording for television and magnetic tape is *also* basically magic in how complex and multifaceted it is. I think you nailed it pretty good.
Respectfully disagree. Digital audio recording is magic. Analog audio recording (especially on film) is alchemy.
@@RolandHutchinson
Forgive me, but how are you rank alchemy vs magic?
@@sion8 To answer that would be to divulge secret knowledge that is only available to initiates.
@@sion8I would personally say magic involves the use of forces and realms we can’t directly access but must instead carefully influence; while alchemy is careful direct manipulation and study of the real physical world.
To put it more simply by analogy: magic is summoning a demon wholesale, alchemy is painstakingly building a homunculus.
Conversion to and from digital is the demon saying “trust me”, we must simply trust that the conversion is accurate and the bitstream arrives correctly. But with analogue audio we can intuitively understand that a wave is a wave is a wave, merely being transformed by various apparatuses. It never leaves the “physical”, is never quantised, and can be traced down the path step-by-step with no “dude, trust me” stage.
Though I would say the alchemical analogy is the most obviously visible when it comes to analogue photography. Given the various chemicals, and the numerous stages of photo-sensitive papers and gels bouncing negative and positive images back and forth. It’s tedious, but it’s all still clearly “real”.
Very silly conversation :-) I've watched digital from its birth and used analogue magnetic professionally, I saw magnetic first, it's understandable magic. Digital is also understandable, but only to initiates. Basically Arthur C Clark is still right :-) It depends on your depth of understanding. @@RolandHutchinson
Media history is insane. You'd have to be some kinda mad genius to have "light" be the solution to a sound problem. This is sorta the first steps towards laser-based storage, when you think about it!
totally! makes sense yet blows my mind still
About that, light is always the final solution, it has microscopical precision and its easy to handle, the hard part is to adapt whatever you want to make to use light.
@@geckoo9190 Not final solution, quantum entanglement and such will make ftl (faster than light) transfers and interations a thing in the near future
What I wonder is why did this tech not end up with other applications. Why weren't the State of the Union or the King's Speech recorded this way? Why was wire recording a thing when this already existed?
It's also crazy how Dolby Digital/DTS was encoded on the sides of the film in a similar way decades later.
Because the projector lens and the audio equipment are usually a little far away, the physical distance needs to be compensated by printing the sound about 22 frames ahead of the picture, so you can't perceive the delay. That's why if you watch a RAW scan of the film, the soundwaves on the screen won't match the audio you're hearing but matches the image somehow.
Alec from Technology Collections made a video about sound on film before.
A caveat for you when recreating it is that the sound part of the film always lag ahead of or behind (I can't recall) the frame it represents because the part of the projector that reads the waveforms are ahead of/behind (again, can't recall) the part that projects the frames, because the part that reads the waveforms feed the film at a steady rate but the part that projects the frame does a advance-stop-hold motion on the physical film 24 times a second, and so in between the two parts the film needs some slack.
First time here - really appreciate you referencing your sources of other clips. Many 'creators' fail to do this. Thanks :) And great video!
When I was a young lad... I saw a film (actually was film back then) by Norman McLaren, where he painted rando shapes in the soundtrack area and also in the projected area. The sounds were random and amazing. Inspired me to pursue a life in the film business.
Now I'm a RUclipsr - so.
madness! if anyone else is curious, i'd never seen! ruclips.net/video/TxZe4hL73m8/видео.html
NFB gave us so many great films. Also gave me lifelong Log Driver nightmares.
It's over on Robotussin Vintage Synths (youtube) and having seen it again I am sure I have seen it long ago.
i studied this and the impact that sound had on the popularity of animation for my dissertation!! amazing rabbit hole of a subject
that's awesome. sorry if it seems like I gave the Fleischers short shrift. They have my heart.
A lot of Mickey trivia tends to be a bit "Mario 2 was Doki Doki Panic" obvious (or more recently, just reciting the legal limitations to him being public domain) so it's pretty cool to see some stuff I actually never knew before
Yeah, they are basically recycling and regurgitating the same content Disney has been putting out themselves for years, just with more buffoonish mispronunciations.
yeah it's nice my local college library had a pretty good animation section - really was necessary to go into non-digitized stuff to get some answers. i think you wouldn't necessarily even know that mickey was variable density if you didn't get into books! i also chatted with an animation historian ray pointer a little bit, and he was helpful to get me in the right direction - i didn't bring him up here because i wanted to make sure any errors were mine alone.
Haha Doki Doki Panic is something I come across all the time nice to see it in this different context
It also blew my mind when I found out how sound was embedded in the film. Thank you Phil
Fantastic video, Phil! I realized now that you've already answered the question with this video, that I always wondered what made Mickey stand out and what made him the ginormous phenomenon he became. This isn't the first time you've answered questions I didn't know I had, and I thank you dearly for that! You are awesome. Have a great week! :)
It must feel so good that new copyright works are in the public domain! I can’t wait to see more stuff become free to use now!
Big thanks to Max Fleischer and Lee De Forest for bringing sound to animated cartoons!
And for putting Cab Calloway as the singing voice of Koko in Betty Boop. Best version of "St James Infirmary Blues" is in Fleischer's Betty Boop version of Snow White.
The "Powers CinePhone" system used by Disney for his early sound cartoons, is an almost direct copy of the DeForest system that was left after DeForest and Case parted ways (Because DeForest treated Case like crap) Case took his inventions that made the DeForest system better over to Fox to create the "Fox Movietone" sound film system. If you listen to other film sound systems of the time such as Vitaphone sound on Disc, Western Electric sound on film, Fox Movietone, or RCA Photophone sound on film, they all sound better than Powers CinePhone. But because Pat Powers really did not have to invest a lot into getting the system up and running it was a lot cheaper than using other systems.
Disney would switch to the RCA Phonofilm sound system in November 1932, in 1935 Disney would move over to RCA co-owned RKO for distribution until 1956. Disney would continue to use RCA Photophone until RCA got out of the film sound business in the early 80's.
Hippedity Hoppity, Mickey Mouse is now my property
_Our_ property
@@sergiorestrepo6657 СОЮЮЮЮЗ НЕЕЕРУШИИИМЫЙ
@@sergiorestrepo6657🫡
🤓
Umm Public Domain- Homer Simpson
As per usual, Phil comes in with an amazing video answering a question I didn’t know I had through a super cool story angle.
Forever in awe with your storytelling abilities, Phil. Every video you make is so uniquely yours, it’s inspiring.
Also…thank you for giving us more content to nerd out about in patreon! 💫
This makes a ton more sense. I never got why Mickey Mouse was (initially) such a big deal, and this explains it succinctly by someone who had the same question I did. This also explains, to me, why cartoons hadn't been full-length movies before Disney started doing it this way, either - it simply wouldn't have been feasible!
Alec at Technology Connections has a very good video about film projectors and sound. It's more in depth about some things left out here.
yes, linked in description! i think it's a good companion!
i am actually glad and hoped you did the recreation for the sound tapes, i think it's best for people to see the real-time sinchronisation to internalise how transforming signals feels
great and very wonderful video, especially considering the short length!!!
I wish that I would have had this video during my Film as History class in college. Trying to understand the technology for color and sound in film nearly broke my brain.
Great video! I had always wondered what it was about Steemboat Willie that made Mickey Mouse so iconic.
you might like those old informational films i linked in the description - they did a pretty amazingly good job
Awesome video, my son loves watching Steamboat Willie and it’s grown on me since I have watched it so many times.
is your son me?, cause i love steamboat willie
The quality of this video is incredible! Congratulations Phil 🎉
I'd say Super Mario Bros. was much more than just innovative for side scrollers. It was one of the earliest games where the focus wasn't arcade style short challenges that drove you to keep playing for a high score, but instead drove you to keep playing through a (relatively) long set of new levels with a set ending. So, a video game about simply experiencing the game, like most single player games today, instead of comparing scores with friends. And just like Mickey, Mario was not the first to do this but the first to be broadly received and acclaimed.
true!
What's also wild is that very similar tech was used by journalists to transmit images across the continent over phone lines for print in newspapers.
Basically converting light and dark portions into voltages that were then converted from voltages back to light/dark print.
Truly INCREDIBLE tech. This is why I adore vintage tech.
Apple Vision Pro? Neat!
1940s cell phone!? AMAZING!
Exactly. Some people claim that the invention of the transistor in 1947 enabled modern electronic inventions but the real game changer was the earlier invention of the vacuum tube.
Thank you for actually making an original and interesting video about Steamboat Willie, rather than just putting the film on RUclips and hoping to get clicks.
I agree with you that I never 'got' Mickey Mouse - of the Disney characters, I much prefered the flawed Donald Duck and found him to be far funnier.
+1! self-promoting: ruclips.net/video/uYY7eY8TZvI/видео.html
Great video! It’s really interesting how most people KNOW Steamboat Willie is iconic, but not WHY. Mickey is cute and all, but watching Steamboat without the historical context just makes it seem like a quaint little cartoon, especially when you compare it to the sound versions of Plane Crazy/Galloping Gaucho and the later early Mickey cartoons. It’s kinda like how nowadays people recognize Super Mario Bros. as iconic but don’t realize how revolutionary it was.
8:50 - This is your edge right here. You giving credit to creators, and showing the community of talent you're working with. It will return to you in spades.
excited so many creative people are out there!
This is rad - did not make the connection that it was the synced sound that made Mickey blow up!
Also love the content plaque 🤠
Great take, I think you are right that that innovation made a huge impact and was essential for the success. But to be fair the character was also different and maybe more relatable then the other typical characters at the time... He is a little more naive, more compassionate to other characters while still maintaining smart attitude... I think that made him more relatable then the other popular characters stereotypes of the time.
fair!
Steamboat Mickey is compassionate? Yeah, right... 😂
That, i didn't know! Thanks for publishing that thought you had, sometimes people need to stop, asking obvious questions and learn something.
THIS video is a great example of how to use the version of Micky that just entered the PD.
Sound or no sound, I’m just happy that the first three Mickey Mouse cartoons are Public Domain.
Idk if people care or not. This one other youtuber called Technology Connections did a great video on sound quality throughout the late 50s to now. Might be worth a watch if you're more interested in sound technology and how far we came from physical to digital sound.
yes! linked in description!
That's crazy stuff!! Totally blew my mind as well... Great video!
Oh my gosh!! Thank you so much for this! This has been my forever question too! It’s so good to finally have an answer 😌
Phil, keep up the good work. Its been great to watch your subs grow. I congratulate you on your bravery on leaving Vox, finding your own voice, and shooting it on your own. You are an inspiration.
So, the reason that the optical sound that you found "didn't fit" is because the film had to be stationary while the soundtrack had to be moving continuously. Which meant that the audio data had to be in a different type of mechanism and so physically separate visual frames it played along with. So the proper audio was probably on the film, just at a different point, and the audio you saw was proper audio, just for a different frame
Actually was a french video of Lincoln with sound similar the reels were horizontal!
I never understood the success & fascination with Mickey. This helped. Thanks. 🎬
The technology connections video about sound on film goes into more detail about how it works
yes! linked in description! though they are more waveform than density
@@PhilEdwardsInc Nice, I missed that
At the Disney Museum in San Francisco, there's an exhibit about Steamboat Willy, and how innovative its synchronized sound was. They quoted the famous orchestral conductor Arturo Toscanini calling it "a musical miracle."
I thought your Steve Jobs analogy was going to be how Xerox Parc and a few others used mice, mouse pointers, and graphical user interfaces long before Apple "invented" that whole concept for the Macintosh.
Apologies for taking a little while to get to this one, but I already knew a fair bit about sound on film. However, I love your sociological comparison to the buzz generated around Toy Story. I knew Mickey wasn’t the first sound on film, but had no idea why it had such buzz. And that comparison was so apt, it all clicked.
This is how Leon Theremin's Great Seal Bug worked, too: sound vibrations caused two membranes to get closer and far apart, and an external radio source (which is still a form of light!) would be aimed at it through the walls of the US Embassy in Moscow. The membranes were hidden in a decoration hung on the wall, and when the radio waves had bounced back they'd be changed by the vibrations -- just like the play back of the audio on the film. The difference between what was sent and received back represented the sound.
I had a feeling you were going to do something unique and interesting about Steamboat Willy. Which means you made me feel smarter since I was right. And for that, I'm even more grateful.
wow! never heard that theremin story!
@@PhilEdwardsInc it's fascinating. he returned to the USSR in the late 30's (conflicting conclusions as to why), was thrown in a gulag with a secret lab and developed the underlying ideas. he's like the Nikola Tesla of electricity [ducks] heh, but really neat story, his whole life is ridiculous.
Phil you keep blowing my mind with every video.
Getting hats to fit is getting more and more difficult with every time!
ha apologies to your haberdasher
Wow, thx for the illustration! 🎉
That Technology connections video he referenced is quite informative regarding this topic. From the video, the sound corresponding to a frame isn’t actually on that frame but offset some frames below since the photocell reading the sound is after the projector. this is why the first few frames on a film are for reference and a beep tells the projector tech if the film and sound is in-sync.
Thank you! I always wondered why Mickey was a big hit - this is great! 🙏🏼
Good work, Phil. And you're right, it doesn't seem to be a question that anyone else is asking. Happy New Year! 😎
Having a sort of "credits" at the end of the video instead of just saying "check the link in the description" in the middle is one of my favorite ways I've ever seen this done
yeah my inner nerd wanted to blurt out everything in the video, but i didn't wanna slow the story.
Never gave it any thought before. Great explanation and cool tech!
this does seem up your alley!
I got to see an original print and record of Al Jolson's 'The Jazz Singer' (1927). By the end of the film? It was almost 2 minutes out of sync. When Mickey Mouse's 'Steam Boat Willy' (1928) came out, MM was still ill known, Felix the Cat (1925-), KoKo the Clown was created by Max Fleischer and his brothers (look at Merry Melodies and Warner Bros. Cartoons), and Betty Boop was years away in the 1930s, The early days of Animation is really amazing.
I’m not sure about cinematic film, but the films that were shown in schools had the sound strip displaced from the image by about eight frames. The consequence was that if the film broke, the brake in the sound occurred at a different time than the break in the image.
You should check the work of an amazing animator/filmmaker called Norman McLaren. He was part of The National Film Board of Canada, and he developed a method of creating music and sound effects by painting them in the optical track of the film. Watch "Neighbours", a 1952 Oscar winning short film where he not only animated the people in it, but also created the soundtrack optically.
A wizardry investigation [ thourough and easy to digest as usual mate 🙌🏽 ] regards...
Just like how Dolby & Spatial Sound is changing things except from my understanding Dolby is mixing it with there video which is like 4 & 8 K with 240 FPS.
Another great video, thank you.
So cool! Love you went the nerdy extra miles.
I love this look inside the Mouse House. IMO, sound is at least 50% of the audiovisual experience.
If you showed me a frame from 4:33 I would have thought it was a Casio ad. handsome! and damn, that golden backlight
casio ad is all i aspire to.
I love that you kept your name plate :')
I only watched to the end for the mustache.. very nice. Authoritative.
Quite a few years ago I experimented with sonic bitmapping. Turning an analogue signal into a many-colours bitmap such as a GIF, and playing it back, using an application I wrote in Visual Basic and C++. It worked pretty well, I was almost to the point of embedding the bitmaps into random images, then using value subtraction to extract the sonic bitmap using un-doctored copies of the original image and playing it back. Didn't quite get that far and the code is lost to an EMP. I never bothered to revive the project. There is a HAM project around that uses AD conversion to transmit still images over an analogue radio carrier and convert them back to images using an Android app, which is a fun thing to try.
Thanks for making a good video. Also, that little clip where I guy is stealing and eating bones out of a picnic basket. Imagine the actual sound for that.
As a former projectionist for both 35mm film and IMAX film, I gotta say Dolby Digital kinda sucks. I mean it’s good in the digital age but it had a huge problem on film. You see where it’s printed? In between the sprocket holes. That’s the only section of film where the emulsion side touches every single part of the projector. The sprockets that pull the film through the projector are slightly raised right where the teeth are so that the film doesn’t touch them where the picture or the soundtrack are.
So, the Dolby Digital code was always getting scratched or warped, and then it would glitch out during the show.
Yeah, I’ve been splicing different wav formats for some of my videos and various projects I’ve done over 40 years. I have about three videos that I made back in the day. The matrix and resident evil are two of my best projects I’ve done.
There’s a small television screen at the Smithsonian Aerospace Museum that plays a digital copy of _Plane Crazy_ on a loop. I’ve seen it myself.
i'm gonna look for this next time i'm there!
An interesting trait of variable density recording is that it is almost impossible to reproduce accurately via photographic means. When making a print of a film, it would be necessary for the printing equipment to add the sound to the film using aparatus such as shown. This makes it more expensive to produce prints of a film, but also makes it much more difficult for anyone to use those prints to produce unauthorized reproductions.
Great! Love your work
I watched that sound on film video already but great summary and animations!
it's amazing how good those vintage videos are. it was rather laborious for me to create animations that are inferior, yet i had the benefit of 2024 technology! geniuses.
@@PhilEdwardsInc I love watching those old military/vehicle manufacturer videos from channels like @USAutoIndustry and Periscope film, there's just a beauty in the accent of the voiceover and the method of presentation, the soft fade transitions.. its a whole vibe.
I love having my right ear blasted out by music only coming from there
sorry
If anyone is interested more about Ub Iwerks, I have a video about him and his history with Disney on my channel!
awesome location shoot too!
Amazing story 😮
I hope your thumb heals up okay. Great video Phil!
haha ty
Entire video’s explanation in one word: innovation. 👍
@1:27 - and, THAT recognition got you a subscription! lol
Pushing the EDGE of cineacoustics seems like a SOUND idea.
Was not expecting a Beat Saber call out in a video about Mickey Mouse.
A great companion to your rotoscoping vid on Vox
Thank you! Now I just need to do a multiplane video to make it a trilogy!
Of course you were going to make a Steamboat Willie video :D
i felt called
Hi Phil! Thank you for that wonderfull excurse in history. I'm a subscriber and had to manually check your page, because it was not on my main. Do you need to pay for this? As allways, beautifull story beautifully told. Thank you.
Loved it. Subscribed.
Literally bout to leave for IKEA to buy that table lamp on the right hand side of the frame 8:11, when I spotted it in the frame. Man’s got good taste
haha it is ok! needs its own tiny light bulbs though.
The internet blowing up after a Mickey Mouse entered a public domain really shows how much is Disney tied to the American culture, it's quite crazy actually. I'm from central Europe and while we had access to American cartoons after the revolution, the relationship to it is much different and there was a lot of other competition, so it's strange to watch how a lot of creators are making videos about Mickey. I'm happy to see that you took it from a different perspective and I learned something about America, Disney and got reminded of interesting evolution in technology.
Excellent.
Thanks for adding actual captions for the Deaf
The obvious question is how does the sound track move smoothly when the picture is jumping frame by frame. And the answer's obvious if you know - the sound is offset by about a second from the image it syncs with, so the sound "reader" is away from the projector mechanism.
Happy new year
🎉
Great video! New subscriber.
Did you ever check out Evgeny Sholpo´s "Variophone" and the history of optical sound synthesis in the early USSR? Coming from the field of avantgarde art, they worked at around the same time on problems (and solutions) there that were in part stunningly similar to those addressed in the fascinating piece of history you tell here, but with a markedly different edge - a definitely too little-known media history rabbit hole absolutely worth the jump into it.
i'll check it out! i would love to learn about the soviet parallel development world
That reminds me of a TED talk about something similar. Basically, binary code is emitted from a light bulb via very very fact oscillations.
It's not noticeable for the human eye but it's enough for anything that can interpret the data. Imagine having free Wi-Fi everywhere there's light.
You left important stuff out! Like the fact that the Vitaphone System’s record was played on a turntable mounted on the film projector, and was turned IN SYNC with picture by the equivalent of an analog speedometer cable for cars. If there were no frames missing, IT STAYED IN SYNC TO THE END OF THE REEL.
Also, in the war between Variable Density and Variable area sound, among the plethora of companies trying each, Western Electric won the Variable Density war, and RCA won the Variable Area war. Incidentally, Variable Area sound tends to sound MUCH better than Variable Density sound. That’s because RCA was able to make their equipment record 5,000Hz higher than Western Electric could. I can tell you how, but we’d be here a while.
- From A Lifetime Member of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers.
Came hear to say this. There were indeed sync problems when frames were lost in the print and or the disc wasn't cued properly, but screenings of The Jazz Singer with a proper projector would not have gone out of sync, and the process certainly wasn't starting a record at the same time as the movie, as the video implies. In fact, both sound-on-film and sound-on-disc techniques existed for some time (we're talking 1900), and Vitagraph's disc system was favored because the sound quality was initially better, but sound-on-film's real advantage was limiting the possibility for projectionist error, so when the sound quality got close to that of the disc systems, it was the obvious choice.
All this to say that Walt Disney and Steamboat had less to do with the synchronized sound system technique and everything to do with Walt Disney's attention to detail in capturing a quality sound recording with synchronized music and sound. In other words, craft.
The interesting thing is that digital video works similarly. The video and audio are two separate parts of the digital stream and have to be time sync'd. Today's CPUs have no problem with this. You do have some play because audio has a much higher frame rate than video.
Being in sync is major especially for video games and streaming. In streaming, too much audio processing on your CPU can add latency. With video games, you have that trade-off with the size of the audio buffer on top of audio processing. Larger buffer = better and more reliable sound quality, but also means latency. Latency = how far off the audio is from the video.
Same method is used for transmitting your internet signal, except that the light is modulated purely electronically, and not with a ribbon light gate.
Awesome! Thanks!
How they created the sounds are so fun to watch…Foli artists never got credit but thankfully that has changed
Also Walt lost the rights to Oswald and his animation team to a business deal gone bad…Oswald was only reobtained a few years ago
You are correct. I am trained in telecine which has no problem. I , am an Air Force trained television equipment specialist. Synchronizing is problematic today. Why? Look at many productions converted.
i’m glad this is now legal to show
Going from wheelie, to Willie?!
I see what you did there.
😆
don't spoil my next video all about Wall-E.
@@PhilEdwardsInc I though it's gonna be on the wellies. Maybe another time :)