Synchronizing music to picture during the Golden Age of Hollywood

In the 1930s, one of the main challenges for a film composer was the process of synchronizing music to picture. A film is made of still photos that occur at a steady rate of 24 frames per second (fps), no matter how fast any of the events happen. Since the images per second appeared at a fast pace, it gave the eyes the sensation of images being blended together while watching, hence films were referred to as “moving pictures.”

Before a film composer began working on a film, the film editor created the cue sheet to list the important events (hit points) that would need to be acknowledged by the music. Music is different from film in that it is adaptable and flexible when it comes to timing and tempo, and when music merged with film, the important question was how to find the best, most suitable tempo for the important events so that the music and the picture were effectively synchronized.

The solution...