Photokinema

Photo-Kinema (some sources say Phono-Kinema) was a sound-on-disc system for motion pictures invented by Orlando Kellum.

The system was first used for a small number of short films, mostly made in 1921. These films presented subjects such as actor Frederick Warde reading an original poem "A Sunset Reverie", labor leader Samuel Gompers speaking on labor issues, Judge Ben Lindsey on the need for a separate juvenile court system, Irvin S. Cobb reading from his works, and a lecture by James J. Davis, Secretary of Labor in the Harding administration.

Kellum also filmed musical numbers, including a performance of the song "De Ducks" by African American musicians F. E. Miller and Aubrey Lyles who wrote the book for the musical Shuffle Along (1921), and The Famous Van Eps Trio in a Bit of Jazz (1921), featuring Fred Van Eps, father of musician George Van Eps.

A filmed performance by Sir Harry Lauder made in Phono-Kinema is preserved at the UCLA Film and Television Archive but the disc with the sound is lost.

The process was most famously used by D. W. Griffith to record singing and sound effects sequences for his movie Dream Street (1921). Employing the Phonokinema system, Griffith turned what was originally a silent film into a sound film. Earlier crude sound-on-disc and sound-on-cylinder systems had been invented 1894-1914 by Thomas Edison (Kinetophone, Kinetophonograph), Cameraphone in the US, Gaumont (Chronomegaphone) and Pathé in France, and others, but they were only used for short films. Dream Street was the first feature-length film in which a frame-synchronous human voice was heard from a sound recording of any kind.

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