Motion Pictures with Sound

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Imagine a movie without any music. As Iron Man is about to save the world, all the background music disappears. Are the effects the same? Film composer Bernard Herrmann commented, “I feel that music on the screen can seek out and intensify the inner thoughts of the characters. It can invest a scene with terror, grandeur, gaiety, or misery…propel [a] narrative swiftly forward, or slow it down… [and] is the communicating link between the screen and the audience, reaching out and enveloping all into one single experience” (qtd. in Fischoff). A movie is created from the sounds that are used. At the beginning of the creation of film, there was no sound. Music and sound’s role in movies changes dramatically and transforms film entirely. One can understand the impact of sound in movies through music and film history, how music influences emotion and how silence can affect the film. The history of sound in movies is very peculiar. It is hard to say when the first movie was made because of arguments to determine which was made first. Films were created between the late 1870s and the 1890s. Drawing the line to determine the definition of a film can be difficult. To define a film as a set of moving pictures, then the first movie would be Eadweard Muybridge’s The Horse in Motion in 1878. Yet, there are other ways to determine the first movie such as the first home movie, Roundhay Garden Scene in 1888; the first movie ever shot using an ongoing film strip, Monkeyshines No. 1 in 1889 or 1890; the first movie ever copyrighted, Fred Ott’s Sneeze in 1894; the first movie that was ever projected, Workers Leaving Lumiere Factory in 1895; or even the first movie projected to a public audience, Berlin Wintergarten Novelty Program in 1895 (Wright). D... ... middle of paper ... ...Gale Virtual Library. 14 Oct. 2013. Nappi, Rebecca. “A Place for Music’s Healing Powers.” Student Research Center. EBSCO, 2013. 14 Oct. 2013. Stamets, Bill. “Early Silent Films set off Alfred Hitchcock’s Visuals.” Chicago Sun-Times. Sun-Times Media, 2013. Web. 21 Nov. 2013. “The Power of Music.” Light Bridge Music. Light Bridge Music, n.d. Web. 2 Oct 2013 “The Top 100 Silent Era Films.” Silent Era. Silent Era Company, 1999-2013. Web. 21 Nov. 2013. Weber, Tom. “Local Silent Movies This Weekend in Lansboro.” Student Research Center. EBSCO, 2013. Web. 14 Oct. 2013. Whedon, Joss, dir. The Avengers. Marvel Studios, 2012. Film. 20 Nov. 2013. Winokur, Mark and Holsinger, Bruce. “Movies and Film.” Infoplease. Pearson Education, 2000-2013. Web. 19 Nov. 2013. Wright, Will. “The First Movie Ever Made: A History of Film Firsts.” Yahoo Voices. Yahoo Inc., 2013. Web. 19 Nov. 2013.

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