Why the original 4:3 aspect ratio was chosen from the very earliest stage of motion picture development remains something of a puzzle. Although the 4:3 ratio had been used often for 19th Century lantern slides and photographs, there was no “standardized” format at that time.
The “Latham Loop” is the small, slack-forming loop that the film’s path takes just before it passes in back of a camera’s, or in front of a projector’s, shutter.
Well, actually you’ve asked a surprisingly complicated question. Sound didn’t just suddenly appear with the production of one film, and the line between the “silent–era” and the “sound–era” is blurry at best. As Donald Crafton points out in his book, “The Talkies”, sound did not arrive in Hollywood all at once like an express train. … Read more