Richard M Roberts wrote: Bob, this was exactly my point. In making the composite prints for those early talkies with a variable density track, the density for the soundtrack was more important than the picture, heavier contrasts caused distortion and in many cases the picture quality was sacrificed to get a clearer soundtrack. WELCOME DANGER is a good demonstration. The picture quality of the silent version is far sharper and had much better contrast in the majority of it than the sound version (which again, was indeed taken from a positive print, not neg material) and the sound version looks like a lot of the early grey lower contrast talkie prints.
Sorry we didn't get to duke it out while you were in town, but your example on "Welcome Danger" doesn't hold water. The original negative (or most of it) survived on the silent version of "Welcome Danger." so it was possible to make a new finegrain from that source, which was augmented by footage from the talkie where footage was missing or decomposed in the silent version. The picture sharpness difference has got to be in your imagination vis a vis the manner in which the film was shot--since the silent version is largely made up of alternate takes from the same camera and lighting set ups used in the talkie. The main difference is that the talkie is duped from a 1929 print, and the silent is (largely) duped from a modern day fine grain master positive. The one studio for which a substantial number of original nitrate release prints survives from this era is Paramount, and I've seen any number of them projected in nitrate with both arc lamps and Xenon, and I've also seen many original nitrate prints of silent films--a number of these viewings in back-to-back settings years ago, and I can tell you theat there was not a nickel's worth of difference in the contrast and density of original 1927 Paramount nitrate silents and 1929 Paramount nitrate talkies. There is no comparable record for other studios. Most of the Fox stuff that survives comes from work prints in the silent era, and single system work prints in the early talkie era. There just aren't a lot of release prints to compare. The Warner and First National stuff available today all comes from later dupes, since Vitaphone did not have an optical track, and no one to speak of can play Vitaphone in a theater setting today.
Early nitrate print stocks are rather poor sources for making dupe negatives--and this was especially true when many films were copied in the 1960s and 1970s when duping stocks were not nearly as good as they are today. The reasons, primarily are that early prints tended to be contrasty and grainy, and those factors are exacerbated in the duping process. Contrast adjustments are made in printing the dupes to minimize this effect--and again is was common in the 1970s to overcompensate for contrast to make flatter prints for TV, which was deemed to be the ultimate venue for these films.
Because the sound track neg and the picture neg were printed separately it was not much of a challenge to print these elements so that they would both be fine when developed to the established density standards for each studio. Proper development is desirable in printing variable density tracks, and contrast build-up can lead to distortion--but primarily, when working with original density track negatives printed at a proper light this is not much of an issue. Generally speaking, the darker the positive track the lower the sound output level and the lighter the positive track the higher the sound level.
Sorry Bob, shooting through glass may make for a fuzzier shot, but it's not going to change the contrasts in the shot that radically, nor will incandescent lighting make an entire print, with outdoor scenes as well, far more grey than contrasty throughout an entire print.That's labwork and duping, and you can find many examples of complaints about print quality in the 1929-30 Harrison's Reports, and the reason I gave above being given as one of the main reasons for this problem.
I don't doubt that exhibitors were complaining about picture quality in 1929-'30--but the primary factor that contributed to poor picture quaility in theaters at that time was the mesh screen that became necessary with the introduction of sound and placing speakers behind the screen. Light loss was tremendous, and higher gain screen materials were not available.
In any event, none of these factors should be much of an issue today, because they can all be comnpensated for in the lab, and modern prints (which are most of what we see) should not be affected. The film can de developed for the best picture contrast, and the variable area sound tracks used today (for the most part) can tolerate a wider range of development. What can't be compensated for is the manner in which the pictures were shot. Inky lighting did cut down on contrast on the stage; shooting through glass did diffuse the light reaching the lens to some extent. From a lab point of view the main issue with sound was that it necessitated automated development. In the rack and tank days, footage was processed by hand, and one finds very little timing difference from shot to shot in a silent cut camera negative because the development could be controlled in the lab--with sound processing film was developed at a constant rate and temperature, resulting in more shot to shot variation. True, one can force develop film, but it is impractical to do it on a shot for shot basis like you could in the rack and tank era.