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The earliest celluloid film was shot by Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince using the Le Prince single-lens camera made in 1888. It was taken in the garden of the Whitley family house in Oakwood Grange Road, Roundhay, a suburb of Leeds, Yorkshire, Great Britain, possibly on October 14, 1888. It shows Adolphe Le Prince (Le Prince\'s son), Mrs. Sarah Whitley, (Le Prince\'s mother-in-law), Joseph Whitley and Miss Harriet Hartley. The \'actors\' are shown walking around in circles, laughing to themselves and keeping within the area framed by the camera. It lasts for less than 2 seconds and includes 4 frames.

The Dickson Experimental Sound Film is a film made by William Dickson in late 1894 or early 1895. It is the first known film with live-recorded sound and appears to be the first example of a motion picture made for the Kinetophone, the proto-sound-film system developed by Dickson and Thomas Edison. (The Kinetophone—consisting of a Kinetoscope accompanied by a cylinder-playing phonograph—was not a true sound-film system as no attempt was made to synchronize image and audio throughout playback.) The film was produced at the "Black Maria", Edison's New Jersey film studio. There is no evidence that it was ever exhibited in its original format. Newly digitized and restored, it is the only surviving Kinetophone film with live-recorded sound.

The Age of the Silver Screen

Film clips on this site are for educational purposes only.

A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially spoken dialogue.

The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is nearly as old as film itself, but because of the technical challenges involved, most films were silent before the late 1920s.

The silent film era is sometimes referred to as the "Age of the Silver Screen"

A leitmotif (also leitmotiv; lit. "leading motif") is a recurring musical theme, associated with a particular person, place, or idea. The word has also been used by extension to mean any sort of recurring theme, whether in music, literature, or the life of a fictional character or a real person.

Although usually a short melody, it can also be a chord progression or even a simple rhythm. Leitmotifs can help to bind a work together into a coherent whole, and also enable the composer to relate a story without the use of words, or to add an extra level to an already present story.

Music in Silent Films

Early films merely relied on classical and popular repertory, mixed usually with improvisation by whatever accompanist was playing (usually a pianist).

Around 1910, folios of Photoplay Music began being published by companies such as Sam Fox Music and Academic Music. These small bits of music were only a minute or so long and usually couldn't sustain an entire feature, but were enough to fill in scenes in which music wasn't popularly written (such as "misteriosos" for scenes of mystery, lurking, creeping, etc.)

Source - Wikipedia

Sometimes called Cue Sheets, Photoplay Music, Motion Picture Moods.

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Example of a "Cue Sheet" 1927

Technology of the Silent Films

The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device. Though not a movie projector—it was designed for films to be viewed individually through the window of a cabinet housing its components—the Kinetoscope introduced the basic approach that would become the standard for all cinematic projection before the advent of video: it creates the illusion of movement by conveying a strip of perforated film bearing sequential images over a light source with a high-speed shutter.

The Great Train Robbery 1903

The film uses simple editing techniques (each scene is a single shot) and the story is mostly linear (with only a few "meanwhile" moments) but it represents a significant step in movie making, being one of the first "narrative" movies

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The Birth of a Nation 1915

A controversial, explicitly racist, but landmark American film masterpiece - these all describe ground-breaking producer/director D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915). . The film was based on former North Carolina Baptist minister Rev. Thomas Dixon Jr.'s anti-black, 1905 bigoted melodramatic staged play, The Clansman, the second volume in a trilogy.

Film scholars agree that it is the single most important and key film of all time in American movie history - it contains many new cinematic innovations and refinements, technical effects and artistic advancements, including a color sequence at the end. It had a formative influence on future films and has had a recognized impact on film history and the development of film as art. In addition, at almost three hours in length, it was the longest film to date. However, it still provokes conflicting views about its message.

Director Griffith's original budget of $40,000 (expanded to $60,000) quickly ballooned, so Griffith appealed to businessmen and other investors to help finance the film - that eventually cost $110,000! The propagandistic film was one of the biggest box-office money-makers in the history of film, partly due to its exorbitant charge of $2 per ticket - unheard of at the time. This 'first' true blockbuster made $18 million by the start of the talkies. [It was the most profitable film for over two decades, until Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)

In terms of the score The Birth of a Nation had its own original musical score written for a live 45 piece orchestra.

The Jazz Singer is a 1927 American musical film. The first feature-length motion picture with synchronized dialogue sequences, its release heralded the commercial ascendance of the "talkies" and the decline of the silent film era. Produced by Warner Bros. with its Vitaphone sound-on-disc system, the movie stars Al Jolson, who performs six songs. Directed by Alan Crosland, it is based on a play by Samson Raphaelson.

Source: Wikipedia

The Jazz Singer 1927