Current Practices in Blooping Sound-Film

A review of dimensional standards fails to indicate any attempt in the past to standardize sound-track bloops. While it is true that there is relatively little difficulty due to bloops at the present time, this condition appears to be due to the fact that each producing organization has more or less independently arrived at some rule-of-thumb solution to its particular problem rather than a result of any directed effort on the part of the industry as a whole. — The criteria are almost entirely empirical; the common tests are (1) peak volume indicator and (2) listening. This has resulted in a wide variety of bloops in use; a reduction in the number of sizes and types seems desirable in the interest of simplification. For single-track negative bloop punches this is especially important. — The lengths of the bloop punches vary from 0.330 to 0.965 inch. A length of 0.500 inch may be considered to represent “average” practice. There is almost complete agreement on the following characteristics of bloop punches; (1) The punch should be sharp. (2) In the case of the triangle or trapezium types, there should be rounded corners at the base of the triangle. — There is no similar agreement in the use of bloops for sound positives; in the case of release prints, this matter is not especially pressing since release negatives are usually re-recorded and have few, if any, splices.

Print ISSN

0097-5834

Published

1940-08

Content type

Original Research

DOI

10.5594/J10058