Creation of a Short Film : Exploring The Concept of Silent Films...

Lovefilm reported that 'The Artist' sparked a boom in curiosity about early cinema, with a 40% rise in number of people streaming silent films on its site in the week leading up to the Oscars and therefore demonstrating how this old cinema style , and I am too grasping onto this concept of the silent era through the creation of my short film and therefore felt that a little bit of research behind the term 'silm film' is a productive task! A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films the dialogue is transmitted through gestures, mime and titles cards. The first projected primary photo-movie was made by Eadweard Muybridge between 1877 and 1880, the first narrative film was created by Louis Le Prince in 1888 (it was a two second film of people walking in oakwood streets garden), it was in the "silent ear" (1894-1929) that the art of motion pictures grey into full capacity, however in the late 1920s silent films were replaced by "talking pictures". The visual quality of silent films especially those produced within the 1920s were often high however there is a widely held misconception that these films were primitive and barely watchable by modern standards. This misconception comes as a result of silent films being played back at the wrong speed. May silent films exist only in second or third generation copies, and are often copied from already damaged and neglected film stock. Through research the term 'silent film', I cam across the film blog of the guardian and one of the posts consisted of what they thought are the top five silent films ever (http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2012/mar/02/top-five-silent-films) :

UNDERWORLD

Director : Josef Von Sternberg
Release Date : 20th August 1927
Production Company : Paramount Pictures
Film Summary From IMDB : "Boisterous gangster kingpin Bull Weed rehabilitates his former lawyer from his alcoholic haze, but complications arise when he falls for Weed's girlfriend."

SHOW PEOPLE

Director : King Vidor
Release Date : 20th November 1928
Production Company : Cosmopolitan Productions
Film Summary From IMDB : "Colonel Pepper brings his daughter, Peggy, to Hollywood from Georgia to be an actress. There she meets Billy who gets her work at Comet Studio doing comedies with him. But Peggy is discovered by High Art Studio and she leaves Billy and Comet to work there. For her new image, she is now Patricia Pepoire and ignores Billy when he sees her on location. When she is not longer wanted by the little people who do not understand "ART", she plans to marry Andre to get a fake title. Billy will not let her go without a fight."

SHERLOCK JR

Director : Buster Keaton
Release Date : 21st April 1924
Production Company : Buster Keaton Productions
Film Summary From IMDB : "A film projectionist longs to be a detective, and puts his meagre skills to work when he is framed by a rival for stealing his girlfriend's father's pocketwatch."

THE LAST LAUGH

Director : F.W.Murnau
Release Date : 5th January 1925
Production Company : Universum Film
Film Summary From IMDB : "An aging doorman, after being fired from his prestigious job at a luxurious Hotel is forced to face the scorn of his friends, neighbours and society."

THE HEART OF THE WORLD

Director : Guy Maddin
Release Date : 7th September 2000

Film Summary From IMDB : "Nikolai, a mortician, and Osip, an actor playing Christ in a play, are brothers in love with the same woman. Anna, a state scientist and said woman, is in love with both brothers and studies the Earth's core, the very heart of the world. She discovers that the world is dying of heart failure and only has one more day remaining. Meanwhile, Akmatov, a bloated, capitalist bureaucrat lusts after Anna and tries to make her fall into her bed."