New York Street Scenes and Noises

New York Street Scenes and Noises -- outtakes (Nov. 1929) Fox Movietone News, Camera: U.K. Whipple; sound: Theodore Z. Rickman 35mm, b/w; aspect ratio 1.19:1 Twelve minutes of early synchronous-sound newsreel, raw footage from the Fox Movietone News Collection (U of So. Car. Moving Image Research Collections). Technicians in Times Square, with its giant movie marquees and billboards, measure sound levels for the NYC Noise Abatement Commission. "The noise in Times Square deprives us of 42% of our hearing," one declares. Shot from atop a van moving slowly along "Radio Row" in lower Manhattan. Truck motors and ahooga car horns mix with clopping horse hooves. Someone whistles for a yapping dog as a pile driver whangs amid steam shovels beneath an elevated train. Music wafts from radio shops. Men in topcoats and snap-brim hats stare into the camera as a soprano warbles. A jump cut from "Rigoletto" to a jazz orchestra. A time capsule of modernity.