Free for educational use
Newsreels before sound
Year of production - 2005
Duration - 2min 8sec
Tags - audiences, changing communities, culture, identity, media production, media text, newsreels, script writing, see all tags
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The video clip Royal Melbourne Show is an Australasian Gazette newsreel and is from the National Film and Sound Archive collection, a division of the Australian Film Commission. Royal Melbourne Show is on the From Wireless to Web website, produced in 2005.
This interview with Liz Jacka was recorded for the website.
Liz Jacka is an Author and Professor in Communications Studies for the Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences at the University of Technology Sydney. You can view her full biography at From Wireless to Web
The website is a selective history of broadcast media in Australia. Decade by decade, from radio and newsreels to TV and the internet, this history shows how the Australian broadcast media developed and shaped the way Australians see themselves.
From Wireless to Web is a Film Australia production in association with Roar Film.
Before radio and television, people were kept up-to-date on current affairs by reading a newspaper, or by watching the newsreels that screened as a regular part of the cinema programming. Newsreels were screened along with film previews, cartoons and features.
Before the days of 'talking pictures’, Australian newsreel production thrived, with Australasian Gazette, Pathe’s Animated Gazette and Paramount Gazette, plus various local and regional newsreel productions. By 1926 Australasian Gazette had reached Issue No. 820, and Paramount Gazette Issue No. 490. (King)
The advent of films with sound made the production of newsreels more expensive, leading to the demise of Australia’s smaller, independent producers. Examples of these pre-sound newsreels have been preserved at the Australian National Film & Sound Archive (NFSA).
- Getting started
As a class view the archival video clip of the 1926 Royal Melbourne Show, and the interview with Liz Jacka then discuss and write notes on the following:- Describe the types of events that were typically filmed by newsreel camera crews and screened to Australian audiences. (Jacka interview)
- In what ways were newsreel cinemas different from normal cinemas?
- Scripting and presenting a newsreel narration
Time the running length of the 1926 Royal Melbourne Show video clip, then research and draft a script for it, as though it were a voiceover description to be delivered by a narrator. Make sure the narration suits the on-screen images historically, and that its running time is no longer than the length of the video clip. Practise reading it out loud within the time limit, then deliver your narration to your teacher while the newsreel is screening on the computer screen. An alternative may be to record your narration, with a suitable music soundtrack, which can be used during pauses in the commentary, so that it may be played simultaneously on cassette with the video. - Writing for a popular magazine
In pairs research and prepare a two-page illustrated history of the Movietone and Cinesound newsreel production companies for a popular magazine. Use word-processing or desktop publishing software to create your presentation.
Go to From Wireless to Web for more about the history of broadcast media in Australia.
Go to Barrie King. Newsreels, The Moving Image: The History of Film and Television in Western Australia 1895–1985
Go to Cinesound-Movietone Newsreel Collection 1929–1975
Ken G. Hall, Australian Film: The Inside Story, Lansdowne Press, Melbourne, 1977
Phillip Noyce (director), Newsfront, Roadshow Films, 1978