In addition to creating an overall mood, music can also support a plot by reinforcing its emotional content. Music can also reflect physical movement and recreate natural sounds Examples: Sudden impact: slap in the face, or an object hitting the ground can be accompanied by an accent in the orchestra, this is referred to as a STINGER A person or object rises, the music ascends A person or object descends, the music descends: Name some examples in Gone With the Wind?

 Music can suggest natural sounds:  Splashing water  Thunder  Ticking of a clock  Gunfire  Speeding train  Mimicking of movement and sound is quite common in cartoons. When the music is too obvious-for example, accenting every step of someone walking-it is termed Mickey Mousing

 Helps create variety and gives support to dramatic situations  Leitmotifs can be altered when it recurs during a film to depict the changing mood or state of a character.  Can be done through a change of:  Instrumentation  Tempo  Harmony

 Thomas Edison  Invented the phonograph in 1876  Quote:  “I wanted to do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear.  Met with Eadwaeard Muybridge in 1888 and proposed a cooperative centure that would lead to the coordination of moving pictures and recorded sound

 Eccentric artist  Bornd in England as Edward James Muggeridge  One of the great photographers of the Old West in the United States  One of the 1 st photographers to develop a shutter for the camera, a critical step in capturing motion

 Took a bet by the Governor of california to prove that a horse’s legs do all leave the ground when running.  Took 12 successive photos against a measured backdrop  Animal and human motion became an important subject in the US and France.  Continued to improve his shutter-release mechanism increased the number of cameras used for a scene  established his technique for capturing motion and freezing it on film, he then took the critical next step of showing the images in rapid succession

 Muybridge believed the coordination of pictures and sound was impractical  After 3 years of laboratory work, Edison unveiled the Kinetoscope, a peephole viewer for a single person to observe moving pictures without sound. (pg 53)  Edison was not the principal force behind the development of the Kinetoscope, but his lab assistant W.K.L. Dixon  1894: 1 st Kinetoscope viewing parlor unveiled

 Debuted in 1895 and was equipped with both a viewer and earphones; a phonograph was contained inside the box.  Kinetoscope ParlorKinetophone

 In Europe, projecting films to an audience became popular and Edison saw the financial potential.  Louis Auguste Lumiere created the Cinematographe, a device capable of taking moving pictures, printing film, and projecting images on the screen.  It weighed only 12 lbs. and could be taken out doors.  Live music was incorporated into these showings.

 In 1896 Edison unveiled his Vitoscope, a projector which could display a film on a large screen.  Edison sold his invention to vaudeville theaters, which then started showing films as part of their shows.

 The first moving pictures did not tell stories  They were considered extensions of photography  The only difference between film and photography was that the subjects in films moved.  Both had subjects of people, city life, important events

 The Great Train Robbery  Considered to be the first major American narrative film (1903)  Made films for Edison until 1909

 A Trip to the Moon  Narrative film  Over ten minutes long (substantial for the time)  Elaborate sets and costumes  Fantastic story  In each of its fifteen scenes, the camera is stationary while the actors and scenery move in front of it.

 As we have seen, music accompanied the first films but was used in many different ways.  3 questions:  Who (or what) made the music  When was the music used  What type of music was played

 The size of the venue was a huge factor in what accompaniment could be used  In the first decade of the 20 th century, the principal venue for film presentations shifted from theaters to nickelodeons  Nickelodeons: small shops that showed films exclusively, usually for the price of a nickel  The first nickelodeon was established in 1905 in Pittsburgh and by 1907 there were over 1,000 in the U.S.

 In the confines of a nickelodeon, an orchestra or even a small ensemble of musicians was often impractical.  Silence  Without music, but with added sound effects, narration or lecture by a “professor”  Continuous music from a phonograph or player piano, or even from outside the shop  Single pianist filling various musical needs  Small number of musicians w/a pianist; drummer (provided sound effects) and a singer who entertained between acts

 Some theaters provided music before and after the film or during reel changes. This may have been the only music during the production.  Music may have been added during the film when music is depicted (dance scenes, piano player on screen etc.)  In some theaters, music was played continuously during a film. Music may have reflected the action or mood of the characters.  The quality of these performances were uneven.

 A variety of types of music would have been heard in the early years of film:  Well-known classics  Popular melodies  Improvisations in traditional or popular style  Popular music seemed to have been preferred  Edison chose popular dance music for the Kinetophone  The earliest public showings fo films featured popular music  Vaudeville and Nickelodeons also steered toward the popular

 Narrative films also tended towards popular music.  Sometimes the music was chosen simply because the title reflected an aspect of the story  EX:  A sailor movie using “What Shall We Do with a Drunken Sailor?”  In The Wizard of Oz(1939), Schumann’s “Happy Farmer” introduces life on the Kansas farm, and Dorothy’s longing to return to Kansas is accompanied by the song “There’s no place like home”  The combination of music and film helped to distract the audience from the sound of the projector and promote the feeling that the audience is not in a theater