The sounds of early cinema / edited by Richard Abel and Rick Altman ; contributors, Richard Abel [and twenty seven others].

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Abel, Richard, 1941-

Altman, Rick, 1945-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

History and criticism.

Motion pictures.

Motion pictures and music.

Silent films.

Silent films--History and criticism--Congresses.

Sound effects.

Motion pictures--Sound effects--Congresses.

Motion pictures and music--Congresses.

Local Subjects:

History and criticism.

Motion pictures.

Motion pictures and music.

Silent films.

Silent films--History and criticism--Congresses.

Sound effects.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (344 p.)

Place of Publication:

Bloomington, IN : Indiana University Press, 2001.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The Sounds of Early Cinema is devoted exclusively to a little-known, yet absolutely crucial phenomenon: the ubiquitous presence of sound in early cinema. ""Silent cinema"" may rarely have been silent, but the sheer diversity of sound(s) and sound/image relations characterizing the first 20 years of moving picture exhibition can still astonish us. Whether instrumental, vocal, or mechanical, sound ranged from the improvised to the pre-arranged (as in scripts, scores, and cue sheets). The practice of mixi

Contents:

Contents; Acknowledgments; Introduction; 1 Early Phonograph Culture and Moving Pictures; 2 Doing for the Eye What the Phonograph Does for the Ear; 3 Remarks on Writing and Technologies of Sound in Early Cinema; 4 Next Slide PleaseŽ : The Lantern Lecture in Britain, 1890 ...1910; 5 The Voices of Silence; 6 The Event and the Series: The Decline of Cafés-Concerts, the Failure of Gaumont's Chronophone, and the Birth of Cinema as A; 7 Dialogues in Early Silent Sound Screenplays: What Actors Really Said; 8 The First Transi-Sounds of Parallel Editing

9 Sound, the Jump Cut, and TrickalityŽ in Early Danish Comedies10 Setting the Pace of a Heartbeat: The Use of Sound Elements in European Melodramas before 1915; 11 Talking Movie or Silent Theater? Creative Experiments by Vasily Goncharov; 12 Sleighbells and Moving Pictures: On the Trail of D.W.Robertson; 13 The Story of Percy Peashaker: Debates about Sound Effects in the Early Cinema; 14 That Most American of Attractions, the Illustrated Song; 15 The Sensational Acme of Realism"": TalkerŽ Pictures as Early Cinema Sound Practice

16 Bells and WhistlesŽ: The Sound of Meaning in Train Travel Film Rides17 The Noises of Spectators, or the Spectator as Additive to the Spectacle; 18 Early Cinematographic Spectacles: The Role of Sound Accompaniment in the Reception of Moving Images; 19 Sounding Canadian: Early Sound Practices and Nationalism in Toronto-Based Exhibition; 20 The Double Silence of the War to End All WarsŽ; 21 Domitor Witnesses the First Complete Public Presentation of the [Dickson Experimental Sound Film] in the Twentieth Century

22 A Secondar ActionŽ or Musical Highlight? Melodic Interludes in Early Film Melodrama Reconsidered23 The Living Nickelodeon; 24 Music for Kalem Films: The Special Scores, with Notes on Walter C.Simon; 25 The Orchestration of Affect: The Motif of Barbarism in Breil's The Birth of a Nation Score; Appendixes: Original French Texts; Appendix A: Les Voies du silence; Appendix B: L'Événement et la série: le déclin du café-concert, l'échec du Chronophone Gaumont et la naissance de l'art cin; Appendix C: Les transi-sons du cinéma des premiers temps

Appendix D: Les bruits des spectateurs ou: le spectateur comme adjuvant du spectacleAppendix E: Le spectacle cinématographique des premiers temps: fonctions des accompagnements sonores dans la réception des im; Appendix F: Le double silence de la dernièreŽ guerre; Contributors; Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

ISBN:

0-253-10870-5

OCLC:

658058322