Sound film
The primary steps in the commercialization of sound cinema were taken in the mid- to late 1920s. At first, the sound films which included synchronized dialogue, known as "talking pictures", or "talkies", were exclusively shorts. The earliest feature-length movies with recorded sound included only music and effects. The first feature film originally presented as a talkie was "The Jazz Singer", released in October 1927. A major hit, it was made with Vitaphone, which was at the time the leading brand of sound-on-disc technology. Sound-on-film, however, would soon become the standard for talking pictures.
Sound design
The terms "sound design" and "sound designer" began to be used in the motion picture industry in 1969. At that time, The title of "Sound Designer" was first granted to Walter Murch by Francis Ford Coppola in recognition for Murch's contributions to the film The Rain People. The original meaning of the title "Sound Designer", as established by Coppola and Murch, was "an individual ultimately responsible for all aspects of a film's audio track, from the dialogue and sound effects recording to the re-recording (mix) of the final track". The term "sound designer" has replaced monikers like "supervising sound editor" or "re-recording mixer" for what was essentially the same position: the head designer of the final sound track. Editors and mixers like Murray Spivack ("King Kong"), George Groves ("The Jazz Singer"), James G. Stewart ("Citizen Kane"), and Carl Faulkner ("Journey to the Center of the Earth") served in this capacity during Hollywood's studio era, and are generally considered to be sound designers by a different name.