Where does this come from, and can I check it?

Live orchestras performed behind the camera so actors had a beat to move to. The figure is taken from Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.

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Yes. It sits on the Movies & TV shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.

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The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.

Mondo Knows Facts

Early sound films hired musicians to play on set

Live orchestras performed behind the camera so actors had a beat to move to In the first years of sound, musical numbers were often filmed to live performance, with the orchestra or band playing on the soundstage so the singers and dancers kept time. Playback, where a recording is played during filming and the actors mime to it, replaced the practice because it allowed editing and re-recording of the music. It sits in Mondo's movies & tv collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.

Where this comes from

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.

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Movies & Television trivia Music trivia

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Tags: sound, musicals, 1930s

Early sound films hired musicians to play on set: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?: Live orchestras performed behind the camera so actors had a beat to move to. The figure is taken from Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a movies & tv fact?: Yes. It sits on the Movies & TV shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?: The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.