Silent films were made at 16 fps. Sound film standards increased this to 24 fps for better quality optical sound. However, The Jazz Singer (and other early Vitaphone movies) had their soundtracks on discs. I assume the picture footage, therefore, would have retained the 16 fps standard for a time. Is this so?
24 fps had been chosen by Western Electric for its Vitaphone disc system, and optical systems adopted it afterward. (30 fps would have been better for the optical recording, actually.) So, The Jazz Singer and the many talkie "shorts" of the time were shown at 24fps.
The silent portions of Jazz Singer seem faster & 'jerky', so those parts might have been hand-cranked at a lower rate, during filming; I've always wondered what the studios were thinking, when they did this... it was probably because there were so many more hand-cranked cameras than motor-driven that they had no choice, but they COULD have gotten the cameramen to crank faster, you'd think.
24fps is the speed used for the sound recording. But silent films continued to be cranked or motored at various speeds throughout any one film. sometimes 16, sometimes 18, sometimes 24 etc. When a silent is seen with it's original(if survives) or modern prerecorded track the physical film is moving at 24fps. But scenes in the movie could have been filmed at 16 or 18. It's odd to us now but it was second nature to silent directors and cameramen. Byron Haskin, a silent cameraman & later director, said in an interview that he'd undercrank to give a scene a little zip and I would assume he meant a little more movement. Jazz Singer has a number of scenes where there's 'zip' which certainly meant scenes such as the traveling shot over the market were undercranked and most likely filmed with a motored Bell/Howell(standard Hollywood camera) rather than a handcranked camera.
share[deleted]
Yup, it does.
share