Tuesday 14/1/20 - Silent Film and foley

"A silent film is a film with no synchronised recorded sound (and in particular, no audible dialogue)" -Wikipedia

Silent films were 'silent' due to the technological limitations of the time. Whilst people had the idea to combine film with sound, it simply wasn't possible. This left films without any heard synchronised dialogue or sound. Typically any showings of these films had a live performance to accompany it. This would including playing music, cue cards for dialogue and someone narrating.

Technology to use synchronised audio became possible in the late 1920s.

Foley is the art of putting sound effects into film after the actual filming of it. Typically these are normal sounds such as footsteps and background noise, this is to help immerse the viewer into the film and add more depth to the realism. They do this because many props do not create the same sound as they normally would. Foley artists have to use specific objects to make different sounds, different shoes can mean different footsteps and different objects can change a sound. They can also use voice and multiple layers of audio mixed together to create a sound. Typically they edit in small intervals of 15 minutes with a list of sounds they need created.

In a small group of 4 we worked together and selected a short clip from an old silent movie. We worked on figuring out the different sound effects for every single part of the film. Our plan was to try and add in sounds for most details in a shorter clip rather than less sounds in a longer clip.

This included the sound of the train, a man climbing up, dodging a shovel, a fight and being dragged across the floor quickly. This was our attempt to add in our own foley sounds: