My wife is a huge silent film fan, but to be honest, I never knew a lot about them until I recently watched this video on how they did the special effects. But first, let’s dive into the history of silent films a bit. A silent film is a movie that doesn’t have synchronized recorded sound, particularly no dialogue between the actors. Instead, the plot was often conveyed by using title cards that showed key dialogue lines and plot indications. In the early days of movies and film, the technical challenges didn’t allow the combination of motion pictures with recorded sound.
However, the term “silent film” can be considered to be a bit of a misnomer because these films usually had live sounds, just not a dialogue between the characters. The sounds came from an in-house pianist or a theater organist. In large cities, there was sometimes even a small orchestra to accompany the movie. How cool would that be? The musicians, whatever they were playing, would play the music that accompanied the films, either from sheet music or with improvisation. In some cases, a person might even narrate the cards for their audience. When movies finally did get actual sound, they were called “Talkies.”
The majority of early silent films were lost because the process and film that was used to make them were flammable and extremely unstable. Also, sometimes films were intentionally destroyed because, at the time, the producers saw no continued value in them. It’s estimated that about 75% of silent films that were produced in the United States were lost. One thing about silent films is that some of the actors seem like they’re over-acting. This is because they had to emphasize facial expressions and body language so the audience could understand what was happening in the scene.
YouTube
But what about special effects in the era before computers? Well, as it turns out, a movie blogger named Pedro Cinemaxunga pulled together a very informative video that shows how they did their early special effects using camera tricks and custom sets. Enjoy this awesome video.
