142-586: Roosevelt Organ Works was an American manufacturer of pipe organs . It was founded by Hilborne Roosevelt (1849–1886) and his younger brother, Frank Roosevelt (1862–1895), in 1872. It operated in New York City , with branches in Baltimore and Philadelphia . The brothers built some of the largest organs in the United States during their career, and many today are still prized for their quality and tone. The company
284-419: A fipple , like that of a recorder , whereas reed pipes produce sound via a beating reed , like that of a clarinet or saxophone. Pipes are arranged by timbre and pitch into ranks. A rank is a set of pipes of the same timbre but multiple pitches (one for each note on the keyboard), which is mounted (usually vertically) onto a windchest . The stop mechanism admits air to each rank. For a given pipe to sound,
426-481: A pedal clavier played by the feet; each keyboard controls its own division (group of stops). The keyboard(s), pedalboard, and stops are housed in the organ's console . The organ's continuous supply of wind allows it to sustain notes for as long as the corresponding keys are pressed, unlike the piano and harpsichord whose sound begins to dissipate immediately after a key is depressed. The smallest portable pipe organs may have only one or two dozen pipes and one manual;
568-445: A 16 fps projection of the same reel would take 16 minutes and 40 seconds, or 304 millimetres (12.0 in) per second. In the 1950s, many telecine conversions of silent films at grossly incorrect frame rates for broadcast television may have alienated viewers. Film speed is often a vexed issue among scholars and film buffs in the presentation of silents today, especially when it comes to DVD releases of restored films , such as
710-432: A 4′ Octave. When both of these stops are selected and a key (for example, c′) is pressed, two pipes of the same rank will sound: the pipe normally corresponding to the key played (c′), and the pipe one octave above that (c′′). Because the 8′ rank does not have enough pipes to sound the top octave of the keyboard at 4′ pitch, it is common for an extra octave of pipes used only for the borrowed 4′ stop to be added. In this case,
852-402: A chamber generally called the swell box . At least one side of the box is constructed from horizontal or vertical palettes known as swell shades , which operate in a similar way to Venetian blinds ; their position can be adjusted from the console. When the swell shades are open, more sound is heard than when they are closed. Sometimes the shades are exposed, but they are often concealed behind
994-741: A gift to Pepin the Short , King of the Franks , in 757. Pepin's son Charlemagne requested a similar organ for his chapel in Aachen in 812, beginning the pipe organ's establishment in Western European church music. In England, "The first organ of which any detailed record exists was built in Winchester Cathedral in the 10th century. It was a huge machine with 400 pipes, which needed two men to play it and 70 men to blow it, and its sound could be heard throughout
1136-409: A key is depressed. The stop action causes a rank of pipes to be engaged (i.e. playable by the keys) while a stop is in its "on" position. An action may be mechanical, pneumatic, or electrical (or some combination of these, such as electro-pneumatic). The key action is independent of the stop action, allowing an organ to combine a mechanical key action with an electric stop action. A key action in which
1278-413: A key professional in silent film and was often separate from the scenario writer who created the story. Inter-titles (or titles as they were generally called at the time) "often were graphic elements themselves, featuring illustrations or abstract decorations that commented on the action". Showings of silent films almost always featured live music starting with the first public projection of movies by
1420-417: A large range of timbres, organ stops exist at different pitch levels. A stop that sounds at unison pitch when a key is depressed is called an 8′ (pronounced "eight-foot") pitch. This refers to the speaking length of the lowest-sounding pipe in that rank, which is approximately eight feet (2.4 m). For the same reason, a stop that sounds an octave higher is at 4′ pitch, and one that sounds two octaves higher
1562-473: A lighter touch, and more flexibility in the location of the console, within a roughly 50-foot (15-m) limit. This type of construction was used in the late 19th century and early 20th century, and has had only rare application since the 1920s. A more recent development is the electric action, which uses low voltage DC to control the key and/or stop mechanisms. Electricity may control the action indirectly by activating air pressure valves (pneumatics), in which case
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#17330856883381704-465: A low budget salute to sentimental silent comedies, particularly Charlie Chaplin 's The Kid . The German film Tuvalu (1999) is mostly silent; the small amount of dialog is an odd mix of European languages, increasing the film's universality. Guy Maddin won awards for his homage to Soviet-era silent films with his short The Heart of the World after which he made a feature-length silent, Brand Upon
1846-645: A much longer time for color to be adopted by the industry and an effective process to be developed. Blue represented night scenes, yellow or amber meant day. Red represented fire and green represented a mysterious atmosphere. Similarly, toning of film (such as the common silent film generalization of sepia -toning) with special solutions replaced the silver particles in the film stock with salts or dyes of various colors. A combination of tinting and toning could be used as an effect that could be striking. Some films were hand-tinted, such as Annabelle Serpentine Dance (1894), from Edison Studios . In it, Annabelle Whitford ,
1988-427: A payment in 1332 from the clergy of Notre Dame to an organist to perform on the feasts St. Louis and St. Michael. The Notre Dame School also shows how organs could have been used within the increased use of polyphony, which would have allowed for the use of more instrumental voices within the music. According to documentation from the 9th century by Walafrid Strabo, the organ was also used for music during other parts of
2130-511: A pedalboard with thirty or thirty-two notes (two and a half octaves, from C to f′ or g′). A coupler allows the stops of one division to be played from the keyboard of another division. For example, a coupler labelled "Swell to Great" allows the stops drawn in the Swell division to be played on the Great manual. This coupler is a unison coupler, because it causes the pipes of the Swell division to sound at
2272-498: A race to design, implement, and market several rival sound-on-disc and sound-on-film sound formats, such as Photokinema (1921), Phonofilm (1923), Vitaphone (1926), Fox Movietone (1927) and RCA Photophone (1928). Warner Bros. was the first studio to accept sound as an element in film production and utilize the Vitaphone, a sound-on-disc technology, to do so. The studio then released The Jazz Singer in 1927, which marked
2414-466: A row of facade-pipes or a grill. The most common method of controlling the louvers is the balanced swell pedal . This device is usually placed above the centre of the pedalboard and is configured to rotate away from the organist from a near-vertical position (in which the shades are closed) to a near-horizontal position (in which the shades are open). An organ may also have a similar-looking crescendo pedal , found alongside any expression pedals. Pressing
2556-404: A setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, when necessary, be conveyed by the use of inter- title cards . The term "silent film" is something of a misnomer, as these films were almost always accompanied by live sounds. During the silent era, which existed from the mid-1890s to the late 1920s, a pianist , theater organist —or even, in larger cities, an orchestra —would play music to accompany
2698-492: A special effect in many of his films. His 1915 epic The Birth of a Nation used a number of colors, including amber, blue, lavender, and a striking red tint for scenes such as the "burning of Atlanta" and the ride of the Ku Klux Klan at the climax of the picture. Griffith later invented a color system in which colored lights flashed on areas of the screen to achieve a color. With the development of sound-on-film technology and
2840-419: A stop labelled "Open Diapason 8′ " is a single-rank diapason stop sounding at 8′ pitch. A stop labelled "Mixture V" is a five-rank mixture. Sometimes, a single rank of pipes may be able to be controlled by several stops, allowing the rank to be played at multiple pitches or on multiple manuals. Such a rank is said to be unified or borrowed . For example, an 8′ Diapason rank may also be made available as
2982-408: A wall or screen. After the advent of photography in the 19th century, still photographs were sometimes used. Narration of the showman was important in spectacular entertainment screenings and vital in the lecturing circuit. The principle of stroboscopic animation was well-known since the introduction of the phenakistiscope in 1833, a popular optical toy , but the development of cinematography
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#17330856883383124-508: A warmer, richer sound than was common in the 18th century. Organs began to be built in concert halls (such as the organ at the Palais du Trocadéro in Paris), and composers such as Camille Saint-Saëns and Gustav Mahler used the organ in their orchestral works. The development of pneumatic and electro-pneumatic key actions in the late 19th century made it possible to locate the console independently of
3266-463: A water U-tube manometer , which gives the pressure as the difference in water levels in the two legs of the manometer. The difference in water level is proportional to the difference in pressure between the wind and the atmosphere. The 0.10 psi above would register as 2.75 inches of water (70 mmAq ). An Italian organ from the Renaissance period may be on only 2.2 inches (56 mm), while (in
3408-691: A way that the divisions of the organ were visibly discernible. Twentieth-century musicologists have retroactively labelled this the Werkprinzip . In France, as in Italy, Spain and Portugal, organs were primarily designed to play alternatim verses rather than accompany congregational singing . The French Classical Organ became remarkably consistent throughout France over the course of the Baroque era, more so than any other style of organ building in history, and standardized registrations developed. This type of instrument
3550-494: A young dancer from Broadway, is dressed in white veils that appear to change colors as she dances. This technique was designed to capture the effect of the live performances of Loie Fuller , beginning in 1891, in which stage lights with colored gels turned her white flowing dresses and sleeves into artistic movement. Hand coloring was often used in the early "trick" and fantasy films of Europe, especially those by Georges Méliès . Méliès began hand-tinting his work as early as 1897 and
3692-438: Is at 2′ pitch. Likewise, a stop that sounds an octave lower than unison pitch is at 16′ pitch, and one that sounds two octaves lower is at 32′ pitch. Stops of different pitch levels are designed to be played simultaneously. The label on a stop knob or rocker tab indicates the stop's name and its pitch in feet. Stops that control multiple ranks display a Roman numeral indicating the number of ranks present, instead of pitch. Thus,
3834-459: Is credited with inventing the organ in the 3rd century BC. He devised an instrument called the hydraulis , which delivered a wind supply maintained through water pressure to a set of pipes. The hydraulis was played in the arenas of the Roman Empire . The pumps and water regulators of the hydraulis were replaced by an inflated leather bag in the 2nd century AD, and true bellows began to appear in
3976-652: Is one of the oldest instruments still used in European classical music that has commonly been credited as having derived from Greece. Its earliest predecessors were built in ancient Greece in the 3rd century BC. The word organ is derived from the Ancient Greek ὄργανον ( órganon ), a generic term for an instrument or a tool, via the Latin organum , an instrument similar to a portative organ used in ancient Roman circus games. The Greek engineer Ctesibius of Alexandria
4118-448: Is silent during its middle third, complete with intertitles; Stanley Tucci 's The Impostors has an opening silent sequence in the style of early silent comedies. Brazilian filmmaker Renato Falcão's Margarette's Feast (2003) is silent. Writer/director Michael Pleckaitis puts his own twist on the genre with Silent (2007). While not silent, the Mr. Bean television series and movies have used
4260-494: Is used to connect the console to the windchest, electric actions allow the console to be separated at any practical distance from the rest of the organ, and to be movable. Electric stop actions can be controlled at the console by stop knobs, by pivoted tilting tablets, or rocker tabs. These are simple switches, like wall switches for room lights. Some may include electromagnets for automatic setting or resetting when combinations are selected. Computers have made it possible to connect
4402-599: The urghun (organ) as one of the typical instruments of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire . It was often used in the Hippodrome in the imperial capital of Constantinople . A Syrian visitor describes a pipe organ powered by two servants pumping "bellows like a blacksmith's" played while guests ate at the emperor's Christmas dinner in Constantinople in 911. The first Western European pipe organ with "great leaden pipes"
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4544-535: The benshi , a live narrator who provided commentary and character voices. The benshi became a central element in Japanese film, as well as providing translation for foreign (mostly American) movies. The popularity of the benshi was one reason why silent films persisted well into the 1930s in Japan. Conversely, as benshi -narrated films often lacked intertitles, modern-day audiences may sometimes find it difficult to follow
4686-438: The "talkies", "sound films", or "talking pictures" . The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is older than film (it was suggested almost immediately after Edison introduced the phonograph in 1877), and some early experiments had the projectionist manually adjusting the frame rate to fit the sound, but because of the technical challenges involved, the introduction of synchronized dialogue became practical only in
4828-580: The Organ Reform Movement . In the late 20th century, organ builders began to incorporate digital components into their key, stop, and combination actions. Besides making these mechanisms simpler and more reliable, this also makes it possible to record and play back an organist's performance using the MIDI protocol. In addition, some organ builders have incorporated digital (electronic) stops into their pipe organs. The electronic organ developed throughout
4970-421: The audience could better understand what an actor was feeling and portraying on screen. Much silent film acting is apt to strike modern-day audiences as simplistic or campy . The melodramatic acting style was in some cases a habit actors transferred from their former stage experience. Vaudeville was an especially popular origin for many American silent film actors. The pervading presence of stage actors in film
5112-545: The musical scale . The greater the length of the pipe, the lower its resulting pitch will be. The timbre and volume of the sound produced by a pipe depends on the volume of air delivered to the pipe and the manner in which it is constructed and voiced, the latter adjusted by the builder to produce the desired tone and volume. Hence a pipe's volume cannot be readily changed while playing. Organ pipes are divided into flue pipes and reed pipes according to their design and timbre. Flue pipes produce sound by forcing air through
5254-553: The nitrate filmstock used in that era was extremely unstable and flammable. Additionally, many films were deliberately destroyed, because they had negligible remaining immediate financial value in that era. It has often been claimed that around 75 percent of silent films produced in the US have been lost, though these estimates are inaccurate due to a lack of numerical data. Film projection mostly evolved from magic lantern shows, in which images from handpainted glass slides were projected onto
5396-602: The 12th century there is evidence for permanently installed organs existing in religious settings such as the Abbey of Fécamp and other locations throughout Europe. Several innovations occurred to organs in the Middle Ages, such as the creation of the portative and the positive organ. The portative organs were small and created for secular use and made of light weight delicate materials that would have been easy for one individual to transport and play on their own. The portative organ
5538-587: The 13th century, the portatives represented in the miniatures of illuminated manuscripts appear to have real keyboards with balanced keys, as in the Cantigas de Santa Maria . It is difficult to directly determine when larger organs were first installed in Europe. An early detailed eyewitness account from Wulfstan of Winchester gives an idea of what organs were like prior to the 13th century, after which more records of large church organs exist. In his account, he describes
5680-522: The 1899 Cendrillion (Cinderella) and 1900 Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc) provide early examples of hand-tinted films in which the color was a critical part of the scenography or mise-en-scène ; such precise tinting used the workshop of Elisabeth Thuillier in Paris, with teams of female artists adding layers of color to each frame by hand rather than using a more common (and less expensive) process of stenciling. A newly restored version of Méliès' A Trip to
5822-418: The 20th century. Some pipe organs were replaced by digital organs because of their lower purchase price, smaller physical size, and minimal maintenance requirements. In the early 1970s, Rodgers Instruments pioneered the hybrid organ, an electronic instrument that incorporates real pipes; other builders such as Allen Organs and Johannus Orgelbouw have since built hybrid organs. Allen Organs first introduced
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5964-663: The Blockwerk remained grouped together under a single stop control; these stops developed into mixtures . During the Renaissance and Baroque periods, the organ's tonal colors became more varied. Organ builders fashioned stops that imitated various instruments, such as the krummhorn and the viola da gamba . Builders such as Arp Schnitger , Jasper Johannsen, Zacharias Hildebrandt and Gottfried Silbermann constructed instruments that were in themselves artistic, displaying both exquisite craftsmanship and beautiful sound. These organs featured well-balanced mechanical key actions, giving
6106-510: The Brain! (2006), incorporating live Foley artists , narration and orchestra at select showings. Shadow of the Vampire (2000) is a highly fictionalized depiction of the filming of Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau 's classic silent vampire movie Nosferatu (1922). Werner Herzog honored the same film in his own version, Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979). Some films draw a direct contrast between
6248-642: The Devil (1927). Israel has worked mainly in silent comedy, scoring the films of Harold Lloyd , Buster Keaton , Charley Chase , and others. Timothy Brock has restored many of Charlie Chaplin 's scores, in addition to composing new scores. Contemporary music ensembles are helping to introduce classic silent films to a wider audience through a broad range of musical styles and approaches. Some performers create new compositions using traditional musical instruments, while others add electronic sounds, modern harmonies, rhythms, improvisation, and sound design elements to enhance
6390-605: The Eastern Roman Empire in the 6th or 7th century AD. Some 400 pieces of a hydraulis from the year 228 AD were revealed during the 1931 archaeological excavations in the former Roman town Aquincum , province of Pannonia (present day Budapest ), which was used as a music instrument by the Aquincum fire dormitory; a modern replica produces an enjoyable sound. The 9th century Persian geographer Ibn Khurradadhbih (d. 913), in his lexicographical discussion of instruments, cited
6532-553: The French manner with grander reeds and mixtures, though still without pedal keyboards. The Echo division began to be enclosed in the early 18th century, and in 1712, Abraham Jordan claimed his "swelling organ" at St Magnus-the-Martyr to be a new invention. The swell box and the independent pedal division appeared in English organs beginning in the 18th century. During the Romantic period,
6674-623: The Lumière brothers on December 28, 1895, in Paris. This was furthered in 1896 by the first motion-picture exhibition in the United States at Koster and Bial's Music Hall in New York City. At this event, Edison set the precedent that all exhibitions should be accompanied by an orchestra. From the beginning, music was recognized as essential, contributing atmosphere, and giving the audience vital emotional cues. Musicians sometimes played on film sets during shooting for similar reasons. However, depending on
6816-536: The Moon , originally released in 1902, shows an exuberant use of color designed to add texture and interest to the image. Comments by an American distributor in a 1908 film-supply catalog further underscore France's continuing dominance in the field of hand-coloring films during the early silent era. The distributor offers for sale at varying prices "High-Class" motion pictures by Pathé , Urban-Eclipse , Gaumont , Kalem , Itala Film , Ambrosio Film , and Selig . Several of
6958-862: The Principale were 8', the "Vigesimanona" was ½'). The highest ranks "broke back", their smallest pipes replaced by pipes pitched an octave lower to produce a kind of composite treble mixture. In England, many pipe organs were destroyed or removed from churches during the English Reformation of the 16th century and the Commonwealth period. Some were relocated to private homes. At the Restoration , organ builders such as Renatus Harris and "Father" Bernard Smith brought new organ-building ideas from continental Europe. English organs evolved from small one- or two-manual instruments into three or more divisions disposed in
7100-505: The Sahara desert and a British cricket pitch. War scenes were shot on the plains of Grasmere, Staten Island . The Perils of Pauline and its even more popular sequel The Exploits of Elaine were filmed largely on the island. So was the 1906 blockbuster Life of a Cowboy , by Edwin S. Porter Company , and filming moved to the West Coast around 1912. The following are American films from
7242-554: The Swell super octave, which adds the octave above what is played on the Swell to itself), or act as a coupler to another keyboard (for example, the Swell super-octave to Great, which adds to the Great manual the ranks of the Swell division an octave above what is played). In addition, larger organs may use unison off couplers, which prevent the stops pulled in a particular division from sounding at their normal pitch. These can be used in combination with octave couplers to create innovative aural effects, and can also be used to rearrange
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#17330856883387384-451: The United States. In view of the enormous amount of labor involved which calls for individual hand painting of every one of sixteen pictures to the foot or 16,000 separate pictures for each 1,000 feet of film very few American colorists will undertake the work at any price. As film coloring has progressed much more rapidly in France than in any other country, all of our coloring is done for us by
7526-419: The action is electro-pneumatic . In such actions, an electromagnet attracts a small pilot valve which lets wind go to a bellows (the "pneumatic" component) which opens the pallet. When electricity operates the action directly without the assistance of pneumatics, it is commonly referred to as direct electric action . In this type, the electromagnet's armature carries a disc pallet. When electrical wiring alone
7668-547: The action—particularly for comedies and action films. Slow projection of a cellulose nitrate base film carried a risk of fire, as each frame was exposed for a longer time to the intense heat of the projection lamp; but there were other reasons to project a film at a greater pace. Often projectionists received general instructions from the distributors on the musical director's cue sheet as to how fast particular reels or scenes should be projected. In rare instances, usually for larger productions, cue sheets produced specifically for
7810-674: The actual song being performed. Films in this category include Griffith's Lady of the Pavements with Lupe Vélez , Edwin Carewe 's Evangeline with Dolores del Río , and Rupert Julian 's The Phantom of the Opera with Mary Philbin and Virginia Pearson . The Silent Film Sound and Music Archive digitizes music and cue sheets written for silent films and makes them available for use by performers, scholars, and enthusiasts. Silent-film actors emphasized body language and facial expression so that
7952-412: The adoption of sound-on-film technology. Traditional film colorization, all of which involved the use of dyes in some form, interfered with the high resolution required for built-in recorded sound, and were therefore abandoned. The innovative three-strip technicolor process introduced in the mid-1930s was costly and fraught with limitations, and color would not have the same prevalence in film as it did in
8094-562: The beginning of film and 1928. The following list includes only films produced in the sound era with the specific artistic intention of being silent. Several filmmakers have paid homage to the comedies of the silent era, including Charlie Chaplin , with Modern Times (1936), Orson Welles with Too Much Johnson (1938), Jacques Tati with Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953), Pierre Etaix with The Suitor (1962), and Mel Brooks with Silent Movie (1976). Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien 's acclaimed drama Three Times (2005)
8236-458: The best coloring establishment in Paris and we have found that we obtain better quality, cheaper prices and quicker deliveries, even in coloring American made films, than if the work were done elsewhere. By the beginning of the 1910s, with the onset of feature-length films, tinting was used as another mood setter, just as commonplace as music. The director D. W. Griffith displayed a constant interest and concern about color, and used tinting as
8378-472: The biggest-budgeted films to arrive at the exhibiting theater with original, specially composed scores. However, the first designated full-blown scores had in fact been composed in 1908, by Camille Saint-Saëns for The Assassination of the Duke of Guise , and by Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov for Stenka Razin . When organists or pianists used sheet music, they still might add improvisational flourishes to heighten
8520-461: The case of the 2002 restoration of Metropolis . With the lack of natural color processing available, films of the silent era were frequently dipped in dyestuffs and dyed various shades and hues to signal a mood or represent a time of day. Hand tinting dates back to 1895 in the United States with Edison's release of selected hand-tinted prints of Butterfly Dance . Additionally, experiments in color film started as early as in 1909, although it took
8662-473: The church service—the prelude and postlude the main examples—and not just for the effect of polyphony with the choir. Other possible instances of this were short interludes played on the organ either in between parts of the church service or during choral songs, but they were not played at the same time as the choir was singing. This shows that by this point in time organs were fully used within church services and not just in secular settings. Organs from earlier in
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#17330856883388804-564: The city." Beginning in the 12th century, the organ began to evolve into a complex instrument capable of producing different timbres . By the 17th century, most of the sounds available on the modern classical organ had been developed. At that time, the pipe organ was the most complex human-made device —a distinction it retained until it was displaced by the telephone exchange in the late 19th century. Pipe organs are installed in churches, synagogues, concert halls, schools, mansions, other public buildings and in private properties. They are used in
8946-485: The console and windchests using narrow data cables instead of the much larger bundles of simple electric cables. Embedded computers in the console and near the windchests communicate with each other via various complex multiplexing syntaxes, comparable to MIDI. The wind system consists of the parts that produce, store, and deliver wind to the pipes. Pipe organ wind pressures are on the order of 0.10 psi (0.69 kPa). Organ builders traditionally measure organ wind using
9088-399: The crescendo pedal forward cumulatively activates the stops of the organ, starting with the softest and ending with the loudest; pressing it backward reverses this process. Silent film A silent film is a film without synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue ). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as
9230-498: The crucial differences between stage and screen acting. Directors such as Albert Capellani and Maurice Tourneur began to insist on naturalism in their films. By the mid-1920s many American silent films had adopted a more naturalistic acting style, though not all actors and directors accepted naturalistic, low-key acting straight away; as late as 1927, films featuring expressionistic acting styles, such as Metropolis , were still being released. Greta Garbo , whose first American film
9372-459: The development of motion picture cameras, projectors and transparent celluloid film. Although Thomas Edison was keen to develop a film system that would be synchronised with his phonograph , he eventually introduced the kinetoscope as a silent motion picture viewer in 1893 and later "kinetophone" versions remained unsuccessful. The art of motion pictures grew into full maturity in the "silent era" ( 1894 in film – 1929 in film ). The height of
9514-401: The drama on screen. Even when special effects were not indicated in the score, if an organist was playing a theater organ capable of an unusual sound effect such as "galloping horses", it would be used during scenes of dramatic horseback chases. At the height of the silent era, movies were the single largest source of employment for instrumental musicians, at least in the United States. However,
9656-452: The drum, chimes , celesta , and harp have also been imitated in organ building. The controls available to the organist, including the keyboards , couplers , expression pedals , stops, and registration aids are accessed from the console. The console is either built into the organ case or detached from it. Keyboards played by the hands are known as manuals (from the Latin mănus , meaning "hand"). The keyboard played by
9798-497: The electronic organ in 1937 and in 1971 created the first digital organ using CMOS technology borrowed from NASA which created the digital pipe organ using sound recorded from actual speaking pipes and incorporating the sounds electronically within the memory of the digital organ thus having real pipe organ sound without the actual organ pipes. A pipe organ contains one or more sets of pipes, a wind system, and one or more keyboards. The pipes produce sound when pressurized air produced by
9940-421: The extreme) solo stops in some large 20th-century organs may require up to 50 inches (1,300 mm). In isolated, extreme cases, some stops have been voiced on 100 inches (2,500 mm). With the exception of water organs , playing the organ before the invention of motors required at least one person to operate the bellows . When signaled by the organist, a calcant would operate a set of bellows, supplying
10082-555: The famous " Mighty Wurlitzer " could simulate some orchestral sounds along with a number of percussion effects such as bass drums and cymbals, and sound effects ranging from "train and boat whistles [to] car horns and bird whistles; ... some could even simulate pistol shots, ringing phones, the sound of surf, horses' hooves, smashing pottery, [and] thunder and rain". Musical scores for early silent films were either improvised or compiled of classical or theatrical repertory music. Once full features became commonplace, however, music
10224-506: The feet is a pedalboard (from the Latin pēs , pĕdis , meaning "foot"). Every organ has at least one manual (most have two or more), and most have a pedalboard. Each keyboard is named for a particular division of the organ (a group of ranks) and generally controls only the stops from that division. The range of the keyboards has varied widely across time and between countries. Most current specifications call for two or more manuals with sixty-one notes (five octaves, from C to c″″) and
10366-407: The films. Pianists and organists would play either from sheet music , or improvisation . Sometimes a person would even narrate the inter-title cards for the audience. Though at the time the technology to synchronize sound with the film did not exist, music was seen as an essential part of the viewing experience. "Silent film" is typically used as a historical term to describe an era of cinema prior to
10508-475: The first film serial , The Million Dollar Mystery , released in 1914. The first westerns were filmed at Fred Scott 's Movie Ranch in South Beach, Staten Island. Actors costumed as cowboys and Native Americans galloped across Scott's movie ranch set, which had a frontier main street, a wide selection of stagecoaches and a 56-foot stockade. The island provided a serviceable stand-in for locations as varied as
10650-428: The first 32' contre-bombarde was installed in the great organ of Nancy Cathedral, France. Enclosed divisions became common, and registration aids were developed to make it easier for the organist to manage the great number of stops. The desire for louder, grander organs required that the stops be voiced on a higher wind pressure than before. As a result, a greater force was required to overcome the wind pressure and depress
10792-411: The first commercially successful sound film , but silent films were still the majority of features released in both 1927 and 1928, along with so-called goat-glanded films: silents with a subsection of sound film inserted. Thus the modern sound film era may be regarded as coming to dominance beginning in 1929. For a listing of notable silent era films, see List of years in film for the years between
10934-622: The formation of the Motion Picture Patents Company in an attempt to control the industry and shut out smaller producers. The "Edison Trust", as it was nicknamed, was made up of Edison , Biograph , Essanay Studios , Kalem Company , George Kleine Productions , Lubin Studios , Georges Méliès , Pathé , Selig Studios , and Vitagraph Studios , and dominated distribution through the General Film Company . This company dominated
11076-535: The full rank of pipes (now an extended rank ) is one octave longer than the keyboard. Special unpitched stops also appear in some organs. Among these are the Zimbelstern (a wheel of rotating bells), the nightingale (a pipe submerged in a small pool of water, creating the sound of a bird warbling when wind is admitted), and the effet d'orage ("thunder effect", a device that sounds the lowest bass pipes simultaneously). Standard orchestral percussion instruments such as
11218-459: The image to flicker , and images with low rates of flicker are very unpleasant to watch. Early studies by Thomas Edison for his Kinetoscope machine determined that any rate below 46 images per second "will strain the eye". and this holds true for projected images under normal cinema conditions also. The solution adopted for the Kinetoscope was to run the film at over 40 frames/sec, but this
11360-691: The industry as both a vertical and horizontal monopoly and is a contributing factor in studios' migration to the West Coast. The Motion Picture Patents Co. and the General Film Co. were found guilty of antitrust violation in October 1915, and were dissolved. The Thanhouser film studio was founded in New Rochelle, New York , in 1909 by American theatrical impresario Edwin Thanhouser . The company produced and released 1,086 films between 1910 and 1917, including
11502-773: The industry's acceptance of it, tinting was abandoned altogether, because the dyes used in the tinting process interfered with the soundtracks present on film strips. The early studios were located in the New York City area . Edison Studios were first in West Orange, New Jersey (1892), they were moved to the Bronx, New York (1907). Fox (1909) and Biograph (1906) started in Manhattan , with studios in St George, Staten Island . Other films were shot in Fort Lee, New Jersey . In December 1908, Edison led
11644-532: The introduction of sound with its 24 frame/sec standard speed 2-bladed shutters have become the norm for 35 mm cinema projectors, though three-bladed shutters have remained standard on 16 mm and 8 mm projectors, which are frequently used to project amateur footage shot at 16 or 18 frames/sec. A 35 mm film frame rate of 24 fps translates to a film speed of 456 millimetres (18.0 in) per second. One 1,000-foot (300 m) reel requires 11 minutes and 7 seconds to be projected at 24 fps, while
11786-470: The introduction of talkies, coupled with the roughly simultaneous onset of the Great Depression , was devastating to many musicians. A number of countries devised other ways of bringing sound to silent films. The early cinema of Brazil , for example, featured fitas cantatas (singing films), filmed operettas with singers performing behind the screen. In Japan , films had not only live music but also
11928-421: The invention of synchronized sound, but it also applies to such sound-era films as City Lights , Modern Times and Silent Movie which are accompanied by a music-only soundtrack in place of dialogue. The term silent film is a retronym —a term created to retroactively distinguish something from later developments. Early sound films, starting with The Jazz Singer in 1927, were variously referred to as
12070-460: The keys are connected to the windchests by only rods and levers is a mechanical or tracker action . When the organist depresses a key, the corresponding rod (called a tracker) pulls open its pallet, allowing wind to enter the pipe. In a mechanical stop action, each stop control operates a valve for a whole rank of pipes. When the organist selects a stop, the valve allows wind to reach the selected rank. The first kind of control used for this purpose
12212-434: The keys. To solve this problem, Cavaillé-Coll configured the English " Barker lever " to assist in operating the key action. This is, essentially, a servomechanism that uses wind pressure from the air plenum, to augment the force that is exerted by the player's fingers. Organ builders began to prefer specifications with fewer mixtures and high-pitched stops, more 8′ and 16′ stops and wider pipe scales. These practices created
12354-430: The largest organs may have over 33,000 pipes and as many as seven manuals. A list of some of the most notable and largest pipe organs in the world can be viewed at List of pipe organs . A ranking of the largest organs in the world—based on the criterion constructed by Michał Szostak , i.e. 'the number of ranks and additional equipment managed from a single console'—can be found in the quarterly magazine The Organ and in
12496-559: The late 1920s with the perfection of the Audion amplifier tube and the advent of the Vitaphone system. Within a decade, the widespread production of silent films for popular entertainment had ceased, and the industry had moved fully into the sound era , in which movies were accompanied by synchronized sound recordings of spoken dialogue, music and sound effects . Most early motion pictures are considered lost owing to their physical decay, as
12638-426: The longer, more prestigious films in the catalog are offered in both standard black-and-white "plain stock" as well as in "hand-painted" color. A plain-stock copy, for example, of the 1907 release Ben Hur is offered for $ 120 ($ 4,069 USD today), while a colored version of the same 1000-foot, 15-minute film costs $ 270 ($ 9,156) including the extra $ 150 coloring charge, which amounted to 15 cents more per foot. Although
12780-405: The medieval period are evidenced by surviving keyboards and casings, but no pipes. Until the mid-15th century, organs had no stop controls. Each manual controlled ranks at many pitches, known as the "Blockwerk." Around 1450, controls were designed that allowed the ranks of the Blockwerk to be played individually. These devices were the forerunners of modern stop actions. The higher-pitched ranks of
12922-401: The mid-1910s, as the differences between stage and screen became apparent. Due to the work of directors such as D. W. Griffith , cinematography became less stage-like, and the development of the close up allowed for understated and realistic acting. Lillian Gish has been called film's "first true actress" for her work in the period, as she pioneered new film performing techniques, recognizing
13064-520: The new "talkies" around the mid-1930s. The visual quality of silent movies—especially those produced in the 1920s—was often high, but there remains a widely held misconception that these films were primitive, or are barely watchable by modern standards. This misconception comes from the general public's unfamiliarity with the medium, as well as from carelessness on the part of the industry. Most silent films are poorly preserved, leading to their deterioration, and well-preserved films are often played back at
13206-594: The online journal Vox Humana . The origins of the pipe organ can be traced back to the hydraulis in Ancient Greece , in the 3rd century BC, in which the wind supply was created by the weight of displaced water in an airtight container. By the 6th or 7th century AD, bellows were used to supply Byzantine organs with wind. A pipe organ with "great leaden pipes" was sent to the West by the Byzantine emperor Constantine V as
13348-458: The order of the manuals to make specific pieces easier to play. Enclosure refers to a system that allows for the control of volume without requiring the addition or subtraction of stops. In a two-manual organ with Great and Swell divisions, the Swell will be enclosed. In larger organs, parts or all of the Choir and Solo divisions may also be enclosed. The pipes of an enclosed division are placed in
13490-485: The organ as "the king of instruments", a characterization still frequently applied. The Halberstadt organ was the first instrument to use a chromatic key layout across its three manuals and pedalboard, although the keys were wider than on modern instruments. The width of the keys was slightly over two and a half inches, wide enough to be struck down by the fist, as the early keys are reported to have invariably been manipulated. It had twenty bellows operated by ten men, and
13632-569: The organ became more symphonic, capable of creating a gradual crescendo. This was made possible by voicing stops in such a way that families of tone that historically had only been used separately could now be used together, creating an entirely new way of approaching organ registration. New technologies and the work of organ builders such as Eberhard Friedrich Walcker , Aristide Cavaillé-Coll , and Henry Willis made it possible to build larger organs with more stops, more variation in sound and timbre, and more divisions. For instance, as early as in 1808,
13774-448: The organ with wind. Rather than hire a calcant, an organist might practise on some other instrument such as a clavichord or harpsichord . By the mid-19th-century bellows were also operated by water engines , steam engines or gasoline engines. Starting in the 1860s bellows were gradually replaced by rotating turbines which were later directly connected to electrical motors. This made it possible for organists to practice regularly on
13916-477: The organ. Most organs, both new and historic, have electric blowers , although some can still be operated manually. The wind supplied is stored in one or more regulators to maintain a constant pressure in the windchests until the action allows it to flow into the pipes. Each stop usually controls one rank of pipes, although mixtures and undulating stops (such as the Voix céleste ) control multiple ranks. The name of
14058-603: The organist precise control over the pipe speech. Schnitger's organs featured particularly distinctive reed timbres and large Pedal and Rückpositiv divisions. Different national styles of organ building began to develop, often due to changing political climates. In the Netherlands, the organ became a large instrument with several divisions, doubled ranks, and mounted cornets. The organs of northern Germany also had more divisions, and independent pedal divisions became increasingly common. Organ makers began designing their cases in such
14200-403: The pallet opens, wind pressure augments tension of the pallet spring, but once the pallet opens, only the spring tension is felt at the key. This sudden decrease of key pressure against the finger provides a "breakaway" feel. A later development was the tubular-pneumatic action , which uses changes of pressure within lead tubing to operate pneumatic valves throughout the instrument. This allowed
14342-489: The performance of classical music, sacred music , secular music , and popular music . In the early 20th century, pipe organs were installed in theaters to accompany the screening of films during the silent movie era; in municipal auditoria, where orchestral transcriptions were popular; and in the homes of the wealthy. The beginning of the 21st century has seen a resurgence in installations in concert halls. A substantial organ repertoire spans over 500 years. The organ
14484-402: The pipes are provided in sets called ranks , each of which has a common timbre , volume, and construction throughout the keyboard compass . Most organs have many ranks of pipes of differing pitch, timbre, and volume that the player can employ singly or in combination through the use of controls called stops . A pipe organ has one or more keyboards (called manuals ) played by the hands, and
14626-597: The pipes, greatly expanding the possibilities in organ design. Electric stop actions were also developed, which allowed sophisticated combination actions to be created. Beginning in the early 20th century in Germany and in the mid-20th century in the United States, organ builders began to build historically inspired instruments modeled on Baroque organs. They returned to building mechanical key actions, voicing with lower wind pressures and thinner pipe scales, and designing specifications with more mixture stops. This became known as
14768-450: The plots without specialised subtitling or additional commentary. Few film scores survived intact from the silent period, and musicologists are still confronted by questions when they attempt to precisely reconstruct those that remain. Scores used in current reissues or screenings of silent films may be complete reconstructions of compositions, newly composed for the occasion, assembled from already existing music libraries, or improvised on
14910-455: The portative and positive organs to the installation of larger organs in major churches such as the cathedrals of Winchester and Notre Dame of Paris. In this period, organs began to be used in secular and religious settings. The introduction of organ into religious settings is ambiguous, most likely because the original position of the Church was that instrumental music was not to be allowed. By
15052-438: The projectionist provided a detailed guide to presenting the film. Theaters also—to maximize profit—sometimes varied projection speeds depending on the time of day or popularity of a film, or to fit a film into a prescribed time slot. All motion-picture film projectors require a moving shutter to block the light whilst the film is moving, otherwise the image is smeared in the direction of the movement. However this shutter causes
15194-424: The reasons for the cited extra charge were likely obvious to customers, the distributor explains why his catalog's colored films command such significantly higher prices and require more time for delivery. His explanation also provides insight into the general state of film-coloring services in the United States by 1908: The coloring of moving picture films is a line of work which cannot be satisfactorily performed in
15336-486: The release of D. W. Griffith 's epic The Birth of a Nation (1915). In 1999, the Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki produced Juha in black and white, which captures the style of a silent film, using intertitles in place of spoken dialogue. Special release prints with titles in several different languages were produced for international distribution. In India, the film Pushpak (1988), starring Kamal Haasan ,
15478-401: The same pitch as the keys played on the Great manual. Coupling allows stops from different divisions to be combined to create various tonal effects. It also allows every stop of the organ to be played simultaneously from one manual. Octave couplers , which add the pipes an octave above (super-octave) or below (sub-octave) each note that is played, may operate on one division only (for example,
15620-440: The silent era (from the early 1910s in film to the late 1920s) was a particularly fruitful period, full of artistic innovation. The film movements of Classical Hollywood as well as French Impressionism , German Expressionism , and Soviet Montage began in this period. Silent filmmakers pioneered the art form to the extent that virtually every style and genre of film-making of the 20th and 21st centuries has its artistic roots in
15762-470: The silent era. The silent era was also a pioneering one from a technical point of view. Three-point lighting, the close-up , long shot , panning , and continuity editing all became prevalent long before silent films were replaced by " talking pictures " or "talkies" in the late 1920s. Some scholars claim that the artistic quality of cinema decreased for several years, during the early 1930s, until film directors , actors, and production staff adapted fully to
15904-515: The silent film era and the era of talkies. Sunset Boulevard shows the disconnect between the two eras in the character of Norma Desmond , played by silent film star Gloria Swanson , and Singin' in the Rain deals with Hollywood artists adjusting to the talkies. Peter Bogdanovich 's 1976 film Nickelodeon deals with the turmoil of silent filmmaking in Hollywood during the early 1910s, leading up to
16046-479: The silent film era that had earned the highest gross income as of 1932. The amounts given are gross rentals (the distributor's share of the box-office) as opposed to exhibition gross. Although attempts to create sync-sound motion pictures go back to the Edison lab in 1896, only from the early 1920s were the basic technologies such as vacuum tube amplifiers and high-quality loudspeakers available. The next few years saw
16188-427: The silents for nearly four decades. As motion pictures gradually increased in running time, a replacement was needed for the in-house interpreter who would explain parts of the film to the audience. Because silent films had no synchronized sound for dialogue, onscreen inter-titles were used to narrate story points, present key dialogue and sometimes even comment on the action for the audience. The title writer became
16330-438: The size of the exhibition site, musical accompaniment could drastically change in scale. Small-town and neighborhood movie theatres usually had a pianist . Beginning in the mid-1910s, large city theaters tended to have organists or ensembles of musicians. Massive theatre organs , which were designed to fill a gap between a simple piano soloist and a larger orchestra, had a wide range of special effects. Theatrical organs such as
16472-593: The sound of the organ: "among them bells outstanding in tone and size, and an organ [sounding] through bronze pipes prepared according to the musical proportions." This is one of the earliest accounts of organs in Europe and also indicates that the organ was large and more permanent than other evidence would suggest. The first organ documented to have been permanently installed was one installed in 1361 in Halberstadt , Germany. The first documented permanent organ installation likely prompted Guillaume de Machaut to describe
16614-438: The spot in the manner of the silent-era theater musician. Interest in the scoring of silent films fell somewhat out of fashion during the 1960s and 1970s. There was a belief in many college film programs and repertory cinemas that audiences should experience silent film as a pure visual medium, undistracted by music. This belief may have been encouraged by the poor quality of the music tracks found on many silent film reprints of
16756-462: The standardization of the projection speed of 24 frames per second (fps) for sound films between 1926 and 1930, silent films were shot at variable speeds (or " frame rates ") anywhere from 12 to 40 fps, depending on the year and studio. "Standard silent film speed" is often said to be 16 fps as a result of the Lumière brothers' Cinématographe , but industry practice varied considerably; there
16898-448: The stop governing the pipe's rank must be engaged, and the key corresponding to its pitch must be depressed. Ranks of pipes are organized into groups called divisions. Each division generally is played from its own keyboard and conceptually comprises an individual instrument within the organ. An organ contains two actions, or systems of moving parts: the keys, and the stops. The key action causes wind to be admitted into an organ pipe while
17040-737: The stop reflects not only the stop's timbre and construction, but also the style of the organ in which it resides. For example, the names on an organ built in the north German Baroque style generally will be derived from the German language, while the names of similar stops on an organ in the French Romantic style will usually be French. Most countries tend to use only their own languages for stop nomenclature. English-speaking nations as well as Japan are more receptive to foreign nomenclature. Stop names are not standardized: two otherwise identical stops from different organs may have different names. To facilitate
17182-484: The time. Since around 1980, there has been a revival of interest in presenting silent films with quality musical scores (either reworkings of period scores or cue sheets, or the composition of appropriate original scores). An early effort of this kind was Kevin Brownlow 's 1980 restoration of Abel Gance 's Napoléon (1927), featuring a score by Carl Davis . A slightly re-edited and sped-up version of Brownlow's restoration
17324-547: The title character's non-talkative nature to create a similar style of humor. A lesser-known example is Jérôme Savary 's La fille du garde-barrière (1975), an homage to silent-era films that uses intertitles and blends comedy, drama, and explicit sex scenes (which led to it being refused a cinema certificate by the British Board of Film Classification ). In 1990, Charles Lane directed and starred in Sidewalk Stories ,
17466-629: The traditional approach include organists such as Dennis James and pianists such as Neil Brand , Günter Buchwald, Philip C. Carli, Ben Model , and William P. Perry . Other contemporary pianists, such as Stephen Horne and Gabriel Thibaudeau, have often taken a more modern approach to scoring. Orchestral conductors such as Carl Davis and Robert Israel have written and compiled scores for numerous silent films; many of these have been featured in showings on Turner Classic Movies or have been released on DVD. Davis has composed new scores for classic silent dramas such as The Big Parade (1925) and Flesh and
17608-468: The viewing experience. Among the contemporary ensembles in this category are Un Drame Musical Instantané , Alloy Orchestra , Club Foot Orchestra , Silent Orchestra , Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, Minima and the Caspervek Trio, RPM Orchestra . Donald Sosin and his wife Joanna Seaton specialize in adding vocals to silent films, particularly where there is onscreen singing that benefits from hearing
17750-399: The wind pressure was so high that the player had to use the full strength of their arm to hold down a key. Records of other organs permanently installed and used in worship services in the late 13th and 14th centuries are found in large cathedrals such as Notre Dame , the latter documenting organists hired to by the church and the installation of larger and permanent organs. The earliest is
17892-455: The wind system passes through them. An action connects the keyboards to the pipes. Stops allow the organist to control which ranks of pipes sound at a given time. The organist operates the stops and the keyboards from the console . Organ pipes are made from either wood or metal and produce sound ("speak") when air under pressure ("wind") is directed through them. As one pipe produces a single pitch , multiple pipes are necessary to accommodate
18034-409: The wrong speed or suffer from censorship cuts and missing frames and scenes, giving the appearance of poor editing. Many silent films exist only in second- or third-generation copies, often made from already damaged and neglected film stock. Many early screening were plagued by flicker on the screen, when the stroboscopic interruptions between frames lay below the critical flicker frequency . This
18176-400: Was a "flue-piped keyboard instrument, played with one hand while the other operated the bellows." Its portability made the portative useful for the accompaniment of both sacred and secular music in a variety of settings. The positive organ was larger than the portative organ but was still small enough to be portable and used in a variety of settings like the portative organ. Toward the middle of
18318-680: Was a black comedy entirely devoid of dialog. The Australian film Doctor Plonk (2007), was a silent comedy directed by Rolf de Heer . Stage plays have drawn upon silent film styles and sources. Actor/writers Billy Van Zandt and Jane Milmore staged their Off-Broadway slapstick comedy Silent Laughter as a live action tribute to the silent screen era. Geoff Sobelle and Trey Lyford created and starred in All Wear Bowlers (2004), which started as an homage to Laurel and Hardy then evolved to incorporate life-sized silent film sequences of Sobelle and Lyford who jump back and forth between live action and
18460-433: Was a draw stop knob , which the organist selects by pulling (or drawing) toward himself/herself. Pulling all of the knobs thus activates all available pipes, and is the origin of the idiom " to pull out all the stops ". More modern stop selectors, utilized in electric actions, are ordinary electrical switches and/or magnetic valves operated by a rocker tab. Tracker action has been used from antiquity to modern times. Before
18602-415: Was compiled from photoplay music by the pianist, organist, orchestra conductor or the movie studio itself, which included a cue sheet with the film. These sheets were often lengthy, with detailed notes about effects and moods to watch for. Starting with the mostly original score composed by Joseph Carl Breil for D. W. Griffith 's epic The Birth of a Nation (1915), it became relatively common for
18744-478: Was controversial, the door had been opened for a new approach to the presentation of classic silent films. Today, a large number of soloists, music ensembles, and orchestras perform traditional and contemporary scores for silent films internationally. The legendary theater organist Gaylord Carter continued to perform and record his original silent film scores until shortly before his death in 2000; some of those scores are available on DVD reissues. Other purveyors of
18886-423: Was elaborately described by Dom Bédos de Celles in his treatise L'art du facteur d'orgues ( The Art of Organ Building ). The Italian Baroque organ was often a single-manual instrument, without pedals. It was built on a full diapason chorus of octaves and fifths. The stop-names indicated the pitch relative to the fundamental ("Principale") and typically reached extremely short nominal pipe-lengths (for example, if
19028-451: Was expensive for film. However, by using projectors with dual- and triple-blade shutters the flicker rate is multiplied two or three times higher than the number of film frames — each frame being flashed two or three times on screen. A three-blade shutter projecting a 16 fps film will slightly surpass Edison's figure, giving the audience 48 images per second. During the silent era projectors were commonly fitted with 3-bladed shutters. Since
19170-410: Was hampered by long exposure times for photographic emulsions , until Eadweard Muybridge managed to record a chronophotographic sequence in 1878. After others had animated his pictures in zoetropes , Muybridge started lecturing with his own zoopraxiscope animation projector in 1880. The work of other pioneering chronophotographers, including Étienne-Jules Marey and Ottomar Anschütz , furthered
19312-401: Was in operation until 1893. The Roosevelt brothers were among the first to introduce electricity into organ building. Roosevelt organ installations include the following: Pipe organ The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurised air (called wind ) through the organ pipes selected from a keyboard . Because each pipe produces a single pitch,
19454-403: Was later distributed in the United States by Francis Ford Coppola , with a live orchestral score composed by his father Carmine Coppola . In 1984, an edited restoration of Metropolis (1927) was released with a new rock music score by producer-composer Giorgio Moroder . Although the contemporary score, which included pop songs by Freddie Mercury , Pat Benatar , and Jon Anderson of Yes ,
19596-514: Was no actual standard. William Kennedy Laury Dickson , an Edison employee, settled on the astonishingly fast 40 frames per second. Additionally, cameramen of the era insisted that their cranking technique was exactly 16 fps, but modern examination of the films shows this to be in error, and that they often cranked faster. Unless carefully shown at their intended speeds silent films can appear unnaturally fast or slow. However, some scenes were intentionally undercranked during shooting to accelerate
19738-620: Was released in 1926, would become known for her naturalistic acting. According to Anton Kaes, a silent film scholar from the University of California, Berkeley, American silent cinema began to see a shift in acting techniques between 1913 and 1921, influenced by techniques found in German silent film. This is mainly attributed to the influx of emigrants from the Weimar Republic , "including film directors, producers, cameramen, lighting and stage technicians, as well as actors and actresses". Until
19880-460: Was sent from Constantinople to the West by the Byzantine emperor Constantine V as a gift to Pepin the Short King of the Franks in 757. Pepin's son Charlemagne requested a similar organ for his chapel in Aachen in 812, beginning its establishment in Western European church music. From 800 to the 1400s, the use and construction of organs developed in significant ways, from the invention of
20022-575: Was solved with the introduction of a three-bladed shutter (since 1902), causing two more interruptions per frame. Another widely held misconception is that silent films lacked color. In fact, color was far more prevalent in silent films than in the first few decades of sound films. By the early 1920s, 80 percent of movies could be seen in some sort of color, usually in the form of film tinting or toning or even hand coloring, but also with fairly natural two-color processes such as Kinemacolor and Technicolor . Traditional colorization processes ceased with
20164-454: Was the cause of this outburst from director Marshall Neilan in 1917: "The sooner the stage people who have come into pictures get out, the better for the pictures." In other cases, directors such as John Griffith Wray required their actors to deliver larger-than-life expressions for emphasis. As early as 1914, American viewers had begun to make known their preference for greater naturalness on screen. Silent films became less vaudevillian in
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