silent movies

Frankenstein (1910) with fresh accompaniment

This entry was posted in Movies Personal and tagged music science fiction silent movies on by

This week I added an ART USBMIX mixer to the audio gear I use to accompany silent movies on Twitch. The 1910 Frankenstein from Edison Studios was one of the movies I showed in January; I redid it with the mixer, hoping to improve the sound quality by eliminating the microphone and the keyboard and room noise along with it. I’m happy with the result and plan to use this setup in my February 14 movie. The proof of concept is now up on YouTube.
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Accompanying Son of the Sheik

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The next silent movie which I’ll accompany on Twitch will be the 1926 Son of the Sheik on February 14, “Valentino’s Day,” at 8 PM Eastern US time. Following an old tradition, I’ll precede it with a short, Young Mr. Jazz, starring Harold Lloyd. If all goes well, I’ll have some new equipment to improve the sound.

Son of the Sheik was Rudolf Valentino’s last movie. He died shortly after its first, limited public showings. It was based on a novel that had no connection to his earlier movie, The Sheik, but was retrofitted to be a sequel. Valentino plays two title roles. He’s the Sheik as well as his son Ahmed. They sometimes appear in the same shot thanks to double photography.

Spoilers ahead.

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Accompanying Phantom of the Opera

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Today I accompanied the 1925 Phantom of the Opera at the Plaistow Public Library. It got a good audience for a small-town library, and I got a lot of compliments. I really want to write down some of the musical tricks I used to improvise the music. It may lose everyone reading this; if you’re confused, just skip it and go on to the next post. I’m going to dive into technical musical language, because it’s the only way to explain some of the points.

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Coming January 10: Silent movie night on Zoom — make that Twitch

This entry was posted in Movies and tagged Internet music silent movies on by

On Wednesday, January 10, I’m going to try something new: presenting two short silent movies on Zoom with live keyboard accompaniment. This will be at 8 PM Eastern US time. It’s going to be an experiment; Zoom has all the components necessary, and I’ve tried them out, but performing for a live (well, real-time) audience always brings surprises. I’ll post the link here a couple of days before the event. User capabilities will be locked down so that Zoom bombers shouldn’t be able to do anything more than be annoying in chat, so sharing the link will be OK. (But I’ll still ask not to share it on Facebook or Xitter; no sense pushing my luck.)

For this one I’ll use my free Zoom account, which limits the event to 40 minutes. If it goes well, I may revive my paid account to allow more time. Or maybe I’ll learn how to use Twitch. The movies will start about 5 minutes after the event opens, since the time will be tight.

Update: After some experimenting, I’ve decided Twitch is a better platform for the purpose. The audience can’t do more than type into chat, so I don’t have to worry as much about who shows up. The presentation will be on www.twitch.tv/madfilkentist, and you can follow me on Twitch if you’re so inclined.

The program will be two short movies of the early silent era: Edison Studios’ Frankenstein and George Méliès’s The Impossible Voyage.
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