What is sound? What gives us the ability to listen to our favorite songs in the first place? The low tones that surround our ears and give the songs that sense of emotion, the high tones that seem to pierce our very souls during the most emotional parts of the saddest songs. What is it and how does it play a role in filmmaking? And how did we manage to capture this invisible phenomenon and put it into a film? Sound is created through a series of vibrations of air molecules. We can detect and perceive sound thanks to the tympanic membrane located inside our ears. This tympanic membrane (better known as the eardrum) vibrates when air vibrations hit it, and thanks to a complex series of nerve endings connected to our brain by the tympanic membrane, we are able to represent a wide variety of sounds. During the silent era, a pianist would simply play an upbeat ragtime theme along with the film. While watching the film, it might sometimes be difficult to know whether or not the pianist would play following the mood of the film, or simply play to cover the silent interval. When the sound was finally recorded, it changed the very course of the film since the film existed. It added the legacy of realism to the film, it helped the audience feel the emotion of the film and be more involved in what was happening, as if they themselves were part of the film. So now we know what sound is, and how it is created and represented, but how on earth did we manage to capture and record sound? I mean, sound exists on a continuum, right? You can't pause live audio or hold it still so you can record it. Sound is a physical phenomenon, you can literally feel it if you pay attention. Have you ever dr...... middle of paper ......Plot Summary of a Jazz Singer." IMDb. IMDb.com, nd Web. May 20, 2014."Kinetoscope." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, nd Web. May 20, 2014. "Lee De Forest." PBS, n.d. Web. May 20, 2014. Mack, Stan "What is Analog Audio?" Wikimedia Foundation, December 5 2014. Web, May 20, 2014. "Sound on Film." 2014. Web. May 20, 2014. "Vitaphone." Wikipedia, July 5, 2014. Web. May 20, 2014. "William Kennedy Laurie Dickson."". 2014.