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Photoplay Music
Photoplay music is incidental music, soundtrack music, and themes written specifically for the accompaniment of silent films. Early years Early films (c. 1890–1910) 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 were only a minute or so long and could not sustain an entire feature, but were used to fill in scenes where music was not popularly written (such as "misteriosos" for scenes of mystery, etc.). One example of such a piece is ''Mysterioso Pizzicato'', which appeared in a 1914 photoplay music collection compiled by J. Bodewalt Lampe and whose main motif has endured as a cliche for stealth and villainy in a wide selection of music and films thereafter. A version of this theme is contrasted with a hero's theme ().Braun, Wilbur (1989). ''Foiled Again: Two Musi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Incidental Music
Incidental music is music in a play, television program, radio program, video game, or some other presentation form that is not primarily musical. The term is less frequently applied to film music, with such music being referred to instead as the film score or soundtrack. Incidental music is often background music, and is intended to add atmosphere to the action. It may take the form of something as simple as a low, ominous tone suggesting an impending startling event or to enhance the depiction of a story-advancing sequence. It may also include pieces such as overtures, music played during scene changes, or at the end of an act, immediately preceding an interlude, as was customary with several nineteenth-century plays. It may also be required in plays that have musicians performing on-stage. History The phrase "incidental music" is from the German ''Inzidenzmusik'', which is defined in the ''Methuen Drama Dictionary of the Theatre'' as "music that is specifically written fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edison Film Company
Edison Studios was an American film production organization, owned by companies controlled by inventor and entrepreneur, Thomas Edison. The studio made close to 1,200 films, as part of the Edison Manufacturing Company (1894–1911) and then Thomas A. Edison, Inc. (1911–1918), until the studio's closing in 1918. Of that number, 54 were feature length, and the remainder were shorts. All of the company's films have fallen into the public domain because they were released before 1928. History The first production facility was Edison's Black Maria studio, in West Orange, New Jersey, built in the winter of 1892–93. The second facility, a glass-enclosed rooftop studio built at 41 East 21st Street in Manhattan's entertainment district, opened in 1901. In 1907, Edison had new facilities built, on Decatur Avenue and Oliver Place, in the Bedford Park neighborhood of the Bronx. Thomas Edison himself played no direct part in the making of his studios' films, beyond being the owner ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Photoplayer
The photoplayer is an automatic mechanical orchestra used by movie theatres to produce photoplay music to accompany silent films. Operation The central instruments in a photo player were a piano and percussion; some machines also added pipe organs and methods for manually creating sound effects. Like a player piano, the photo player played music automatically by reading piano rolls (rolls of paper with perforations), but the photo player could hold two rolls: one that would play while the other was prepared. Common sound effects included gunshots, bells and drums, which were generated by pulling chains called "cow-tails". Some photo players feature electric sound effects, such as sirens, automobile horns, and other oddities. A photo player operator had to load the paper rolls, start the machine and add the manual sound effects and percussion using the cow-tails. History Approximately 8,000 to 10,000 photoplayers were produced during the boom era of silent films, between 1910 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Thief Of Bagdad (1924 Film)
''The Thief of Bagdad'' is a 1924 American silent adventure film directed by Raoul Walsh and starring Douglas Fairbanks, and written by Achmed Abdullah and Lotta Woods. Freely adapted from ''One Thousand and One Nights'', it tells the story of a thief who falls in love with the daughter of the Caliph of Baghdad. In 1996, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Fairbanks considered this to be the favorite of his films, according to his son. The imaginative gymnastics suited the athletic star, whose "catlike, seemingly effortless" movements were as much dance as gymnastics. Along with his earlier ''The Mark of Zorro (1920 film), The Mark of Zorro'' (1920) and ''Robin Hood (1922 film), Robin Hood'' (1922), the film marked Fairbanks's transformation from genial comedy to a career in "swashbuckling" roles. The film, strong on special effects (Magi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Douglas Fairbanks
Douglas Elton Fairbanks Sr. (born Douglas Elton Thomas Ullman; May 23, 1883 – December 12, 1939) was an American actor and filmmaker best known for being the first actor to play the masked Vigilante Zorro and other swashbuckler film, swashbuckling roles in silent films. One of the biggest stars of the silent era, Fairbanks was referred to as "The King of Hollywood". He was also a founding member of United Artists as well as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Motion Picture Academy and hosted the 1st Academy Awards in 1929. Born in Denver, Colorado, Fairbanks started acting from an early age and established himself as an accomplished stage actor on Broadway theatre, Broadway by the late 1900s. He made his film debut in 1915 and quickly became one of the most popular and highest paid actors in Hollywood. In 1919, he co-founded United Artists alongside Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and D. W. Griffith. Fairbanks married Pickford in 1920 and the couple came to be re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mortimer Wilson
Mortimer Wilson (August 6, 1876 – January 27, 1932) was an American composer of classical music. He also scored several musical and dramatic films in the 1920s. Wilson was born in Chariton, Iowa in Lucas County, a rural area in the south-central portion of the state. He studied organ, violin and composition with Frederick Grant Gleason at the Chicago Music College. He then studied in Leipzig, Germany with Max Reger. Upon return to the USA in 1911 he taught composition at the Atlanta Conservatory and conducted the Atlanta Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1916, he moved to Brenau College in Gainesville, Georgia. In 1918, Wilson took a job as consulting editor for the National Academy of Music in New York City, where he remained until his death at the age of 55. As a composer, Mortimer's European influenced late romantic style was similar to his contemporaries Henry Kimball Hadley and Frederick Shepherd Converse. Today his works are mostly in manuscript. They include five symp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metropolis (1927 Film)
''Metropolis'' is a 1927 German expressionist cinema, German expressionist science-fiction film, science-fiction silent film directed by Fritz Lang and written by Thea von Harbou in collaboration with Lang from von Harbou's Metropolis (novel), 1925 novel of the same name (which was intentionally written as a film treatment, treatment). It stars Gustav Fröhlich, Alfred Abel, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, and Brigitte Helm. Erich Pommer produced it in the Babelsberg Studio for UFA GmbH, Universum Film A.G. (UFA). ''Metropolis'' is regarded as a pioneering science-fiction film, being among the first Feature film, feature-length ones of that genre. Filming took place over 17 months in 1925–26 at a cost of more than five million Reichsmarks, or the equivalent of about € million. Made in Germany during the Weimar Republic, Weimar period, ''Metropolis'' is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and follows the attempts of Freder, the wealthy son of the city master, and Maria, a saintly figure to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gottfried Huppertz
Gottfried Huppertz (11 March 1887 – 7 February 1937) was a German composer who is perhaps most known for his scores to German expressionist silent films such as the science fiction epic ''Metropolis'' (1927). He collaborated with director Fritz Lang on multiple occasions. Life Huppertz studied at the Conservatory of Music in Cologne and worked during World War I in Coburg, where he debuted in 1910 as a singer and actor. In 1920 he went to Berlin as an opera singer at the Nollendorfplatz theatre. His first composition, ''"Rankende Rosen"'', was dedicated to the actor Rudolf Klein-Rogge, who introduced him in the early 1920s to director Fritz Lang and to Thea von Harbou (who later married Lang, but was at the time still married to Klein-Rogge). In the film, '' Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler'' (1922), Huppertz worked as an extra in the role of a hotel manager. Huppertz composed his first film score for Lang's film ''Die Nibelungen'' (1924). While working on his 1925 score for the film ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Big Parade
''The Big Parade'' is a 1925 American silent war drama film directed by King Vidor, starring John Gilbert, Renée Adorée, Hobart Bosworth, Tom O'Brien, and Karl Dane. Written by World War I veteran Laurence Stallings, the film is about an idle rich boy who joins the U.S. Army's Rainbow Division, is sent to France to fight in World War I, becomes a friend of two working-class men, experiences the horrors of trench warfare, and finds love with a French girl. A sound version of the film was released in 1930. While the sound version of the film has no audible dialog, it featured a synchronized musical score with sound effects using both the sound-on-disc and sound-on-film process. The film has been praised for its realistic depiction of warfare, and it heavily influenced a great many subsequent war films, especially '' All Quiet on the Western Front'' (1930). ''The Big Parade'' is regarded as one of the greatest films made about World War I, and, in 1992, was selected for pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ben-Hur (1925 Film)
''Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ'' is a 1925 American silent epic adventure-drama film directed by Fred Niblo and written by June Mathis based on the 1880 novel '' Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ'' by General Lew Wallace. Starring Ramon Novarro as the title character, the film is the first feature-length adaptation of the novel and second overall, following the 1907 silent short film. In 1997, ''Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ'' was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." Plot summary At the Joppa Gate in Jerusalem, Mary and Joseph pass through on their way from Nazareth to Bethlehem. They stop at the inn at the entrance to the city, but they have no available room. Mary is pregnant and, as labor begins, they settle in a nearby cave where a baby is born in Bethlehem among the shepherds and visited by the Magi. Judah Ben-Hur, a wealthy Jewish man, retu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Axt
William Axt (April 19, 1888 – February 13, 1959) was an American composer of nearly two hundred film scores. Life and career Born in New York City, Axt graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in The Bronx and studied at the National Conservatory of Music of America. He earned a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Chicago in 1922. He studied in Berlin under Xaver Scharwenka. Axt made his American debut as a conductor on December 28, 1910. He served as an assistant conductor for the Hammerstein Grand Opera Company and was a musical director for the Capitol Theatre in Manhattan before joining the music department at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1929. Axt retired from the film industry to raise cattle and breed horses in Laytonville, California. He died in Ukiah, California, and had at least one son (Edward). Selected filmography * '' Theodora'' (1921; with Erno Rapee) * '' The Prisoner of Zenda'' (1922) * ''Greed'' (1924) * '' The Big Parade'' (1925; with Dav ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Birth Of A Nation
''The Birth of a Nation'' is a 1915 American Silent film, silent Epic film, epic Drama (film and television), drama film directed by D. W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish. The screenplay is adapted from Thomas Dixon Jr.'s 1905 novel and play ''The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan, The Clansman''. Griffith co-wrote the screenplay with Frank E. Woods and produced the film with Harry Aitken. ''The Birth of a Nation'' is a landmark of film history, lauded for its technical virtuosity. It was the first Serial film, non-serial American 12-Film reel, reel film ever made. Its plot, part fiction and part history, chronicles the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth and the relationship of two families in the American Civil War, Civil War and Reconstruction era, Reconstruction eras over the course of several years—the pro-Union (American Civil War), Union (Northern United States, Northern) Stonemans and the pro-Confederate States of America, Con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
