Before the advent of viable sound technology, silent films were accompanied by live music. In even the humblest American and European movie theaters, there would have been a pianist employed to provide a soundtrack for the films, while the more opulent theaters could afford to house organs or employ full orchestras.
Synchronization License: This is the right to synchronize a song or a piece of music with your visual image. It must be obtained from the copyright owner of the music, which is usually the publisher. ...
Master Use License: This is the right to reproduce a specific recording of a song in your film.
Musical scores for early silent films were either improvised or compiled of classical or theatrical repertory music. Once full features became commonplace, however, music was compiled from photoplay music by the pianist, organist, orchestra conductor or the movie studio itself, which included a cue sheet with the film.
The first known use of music with cinema occurred on Dec. 28, 1895, when the Lumiere family tested the commercial value of their first films. The screening took place in Paris, accompanied by a live piano. In 1908, the French company Le Film d'Art encouraged the idea of providing each film with its own music.
Vintage Film making, SOUND production, recording, editing, 1950's technology for movies, Aaron Stell
How did they put music in film before there was recorded music?
During the silent era, films music is provided by each individual theater, either by phonograph or as performed live by flesh-and-blood musicians. In the later case, either a pianist improvises to the film or a small ensemble of musicians performs a classical piece, in the background, as the film plays.
How did they put music in movies before computers?
The two developed technologies were the magstripe, which was basically the same thing as the tape in a tape recorder, only applied to the film, and the optical stripe; this was encoded much like a vinyl master was cut, so that it was more opaque at quiet parts and more transparent at louder places.
Phonographs and other prototypes of speakers were used to accompany silent films during the late 1920s, yet before this, all films were silent due to the fact that sound recording capabilities within the film itself were not yet developed and wouldn't be until the 1930s.
The technology to capture and record sound on film along with the images was not mastered until the mid-1920s, and it wasn't in common use until later in that decade. That means that for most of the first 35 years of motion pictures, theaters had to provide their own accompaniment with the films.
Why were early movies with sound difficult to make?
In the short term, the introduction of live sound recording caused major difficulties in production. Cameras were noisy, so a soundproofed cabinet was used in many of the earliest talkies to isolate the loud equipment from the actors, at the expense of a drastic reduction in the ability to move the camera.
That varies widely depending on the kind of show or film using your music. Money is earned in two ways: the licensing fee, paid up front to the writer/artist, and the performance royalty, which is distributed to the writer by a performing rights organization ( ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC in the U.S.).
The synchronization fees charged by music publishers for major studio films are usually between $15,000 and $60,000 (with the majority ranging from $20,000 to $45,000) but can be lower if the music budget is small or higher if the song is used several times in the motion picture, if the use is under the opening or ...
In 1908, Camille Saint-Saëns composed the first music specifically for use in a motion picture (L'assasinat du duc de Guise), and releasing recordings of songs used in films became prevalent in the 1930s.
The first known movie made as a test of the Kinetophone was shot at Edison's New Jersey studio in late 1894 or early 1895; now referred to as the Dickson Experimental Sound Film, it is the only surviving movie with live-recorded sound made for the Kinetophone.
In 1927, The Jazz Singer was the first feature length film to include sound. By the early 1930s, the silent film era was over as “talkies” became a theatre sensation.
Representation among actors was not equal even in the heyday of silent films—there were not many Deaf actors—but the celebrated few included Granville Redmond, a painter who appeared in Charlie Chaplin films.
If you're from New England, you've probably heard the accent from older speakers who grew up around this time. As for performers from this era, since this was the prevailing accent of upper-class societies, it was also the one most commonly taught to actors.
But it was only in the mid-1920s that Hollywood began seriously considering utilizing synchronized sound in feature films. It was then that Warner Brothers used a sound-on-disk system called Vitaphone to incorporate a completely synchronized score.
Did you know that A Visit to the Seaside (1908) was the first commercially produced film in natural color? This eight-minute British short film used the Kinemacolor process to capture Brighton Southern England seafront shots.
A popular 1970-80s system for creating these transitions was the U-matic equipment (named for the U-shaped tape path). That system used two tape players and one tape recorder, and edits were done by automatically having the machines back up, then speed up together simultaneously, so that the edit didn't roll or glitch.
Initial edits were done with a positive copy of the film negative by physically cutting and splicing them together. The footage was hand-cut and attached with tape and then later glue. Editors needed to ensure accuracy, as the wrong cut would need a new positive print, which cost money and time to be reprinted.
Editing film used to literally be a cut-and-paste process, involving splicing and glue by hand. Splicing was the way film editors made their edits, working with copies of negatives and creating workprints.
