10 reasons to shoot a silent movie....

[mainstreetprod]

I've gone off the deep end, gone full circle (my first 16mm film in college was a non talkie), and decided to make a modern silent film. After shooting the first few scenes, I'm really liking it and came up with a few reasons I'm glad I went this route:


1) No boom op or mixer needed on the crew, saves a ton of money

2) Not having to wire actors with lavs saves time, A/C's and fridges can keep running

3) Lawn mowers, weedeaters, loud trucks and motorcycles no longer mean anything to me.

4) Director can talk to actors during the scene!

5) No boom pole shadows, no clapper needed

6) When editing dailies, drop the clip in the timeline and delete the audio. Nothing more to do.

7) Uniqueness of silent film gets lots of buzz

8) No post production sound work saves even more money

9) Money saved on boom op and post work will pay best composer money can buy for a great score

10) One less forum category on DVX to keep up with

 

[Barry_Green]

There is nothing that speeds up a production like filming MOS. It just opens everything up. No fighting boom shadows, you can use the noisiest locations, you don't have to treat a room for echoes, you never have to hold a take and sit on your hands waiting for that confounded airplane to finally disappear, you don't have to throw away takes because some moron with a thumpy-thump stereo drives by in the middle of it, you don't have to constantly remind the crew to quit talking because we're filming and try to explain to them that "quiet" means SHUT UP...

i don't know how well a silent feature would fare nowadays, but when I was doing corporates and commercials I would always try to come up with concepts that could be filmed MOS. It is Sooo liberating!

 

[ZazaCast]

There is nothing that speeds up a production like filming MOS. It just opens everything up. No fighting boom shadows, you can use the noisiest locations, you don't have to treat a room for echoes, you never have to hold a take and sit on your hands waiting for that confounded airplane to finally disappear, you don't have to throw away takes because some moron with a thumpy-thump stereo drives by in the middle of it, you don't have to constantly remind the crew to quit talking because we're filming and try to explain to them that "quiet" means SHUT UP...

i don't know how well a silent feature would fare nowadays, but when I was doing corporates and commercials I would always try to come up with concepts that could be filmed MOS. It is Sooo liberating!

MOS Def.....MOS Def! :2vrolijk_08:

 

[Steve House]

You could save even MORE money by filming MOP (Mit Out Picture)!

 

[GaryNattrass]

I made a movie for the deaf dumb and blind once but they didn't really see the point and it fell on deaf ears, I got no feedback comments either so I just gave up in the end! :laugh:

Sorry for the non PC posting!

 

[Steve House]

I made a movie for the deaf dumb and blind once but they didn't really see the point and it fell on deaf ears, I got no feedback comments either so I just gave up in the end! :laugh:

Sorry for the non PC posting!

Your post does rsaise an interesting point. Watch a typical TV drama with the sound turned off, then another with the sound up but the picture off. I suggest that the sound-only show would be the more easily understood of the two.

"Silent" films are not really silent. They may lack dialog but they rely on music and SFX to set mood and propel the story line.

 

[mainstreetprod]

Your post does rsaise an interesting point. Watch a typical TV drama with the sound turned off, then another with the sound up but the picture off. I suggest that the sound-only show would be the more easily understood of the two.

"Silent" films are not really silent. They may lack dialog but they rely on music and SFX to set mood and propel the story line.

Very true- see reason # 9.

 

[Barry_Green]

You could save even MORE money by filming MOP (Mit Out Picture)!

Obviously sound is vastly important -- you can see in my signature line that I thought it was important enough to devote spending tens of thousands of dollars to create a "Sound For Film & Television" DVD.

But I've done a ton of commercials where the sound was created in post. A voiceover, a music track, maybe a looped line if there's only one line... Takes an hour, costs a hundred bucks. But the cost savings throughout the shooting day of production (instead of three days or four days) make the overall project so vastly more affordable that it became one of my preferred production strategies whenever possible.

When done right, it can be very effective. I got an Emmy and three Emmy nominations for spots done that way. It's a creative challenge, yes -- but that's what keeps it interesting.

 

[j1clark@ucsd.edu]

I made a movie for the deaf dumb and blind once but they didn't really see the point and it fell on deaf ears, I got no feedback comments either so I just gave up in the end! :laugh:

Sorry for the non PC posting!

The Wife is hard of hearing and it is deteriorating even more. Un-pc aside... I've thought about making short films with deaf/hardofhearing performers, using ASL for the dialog. The problem of course is that I'm fully hearing... and so it would sort of like invading someone's turf.

Anyway, here's an example of a british deaf production. They use British Sign Language... which is not ASL... but anyway...

What is interesting is this production does have some music and sound FX added.

 

[Noiz2]

As some mentioned silent films never played silent, until years later and people who had never seen a silent film when they actually played brought some back as a curiosity.

There are really two different issues. Shooting MOS can save a bunch of time and thus money. You can walk an actor through a complicated sequence if needed etc. Hong Kong action films are mostly shot MOS and some other foreign films with very small home markets also go that route. Judging by what low budget films pay the sound department (person) you are not going to save a lot of money on personnel, but you will save a bunch of time.

However silent films were played with music AND a lot of FX. The "trap drummer" and others would do essentially what the "sound FX" person did for radio shows a few years later, and what evolved into Foley and the FX and Foley.

It's only the video transfers of silents by folks who didn't know any better that only had music. It's more accurate to think of "silent" films as films with out dialog, most of the other sound was there.

Of course you can do whatever you want but historically music only was not the case, except maybe in the smallest small town movie theatres.

The flip side is that actors had developed a "visual language" that allowed fairly complex stories with out having to use a lot of title cards. This was important since the literacy rate was not great among the "unwashed masses" that were the bread and butter of the movie going audience. You wont have that to help out so your going to have to craft the plot cleverly to avoid a ton of didactic panels.

Since action sequences work well MOS (BTW MOS gets translated as "with out sound" a lot but it should be "with out speech" (probably, it's one of those Hollywood acronyms like ADR where nobody knows for sure what the original was)) one could do a hybrid where a bunch of a film was MOS with only a few dialog scenes.

And you still need a slate to identify the shot. Especially since you don't have a audio slate, you just don't need to smack the sticks.

 

[Noiz2]

OT, sort of.

The web site for the film uses white text over a nearly white background (the open bible) and at least on my computer it's completely unreadable. I tried adjusting brightness and contrast etc but I could never get it actually readable.

Just a heads up.

 

[GaryNattrass]

We did a lot of programmes for the deaf in the 80's and even had a deaf sound recordist, she was great and used the meters on the sqn to see noise floor or any problems that were not relevant to the shot, amazing to witness and she could stop a shot before most of the hearing crew had heard a problem,

 

[Andrius Simutis]

I worked on a Japanese true crime TV show shot in the US that recorded no sound at all. It would take a couple days to shoot 30-45 minutes of screen time of dramatic reenactments at many locations complete with reverse angles and B-roll. It was always fun to explain to the actors that it didn't matter what they said, just how long they said it. "Stand there and have a tense conversation for a minute." Next! "Look up from reading this memo in shock." Next!
When the show would be put together in Japan, they'd dub all the dialogue and have a lot of narration with very little ambient sound and a little music here and there. It actually worked really well and those shows were very cost effective to make since production could move so fast.

 

[MichaelP]

Your post does raise an interesting point. Watch a typical TV drama with the sound turned off, then another with the sound up but the picture off. I suggest that the sound-only show would be

Considering most TV shows are really radio shows with picture, it makes sense that they are easier to follow as a soundtracks, than as MOS. Years ago I made an audio only recording of Raising Arizona and listened to that in the car. Such great dialog and after seeing it the first time, you can just see the images in your head anyway.

Michael

 

[davefisk]

What's funny is I prefer audio dramas (full on dialogue, music and SFX) to silent films. MUCH cheaper to make. Easier to distribute, and you don't have to worry about lighting, focus, or any of the pesky visual stuff, so saves a TON of money on production...AND..it's portable. I can keep a bunch of audio drama books on my iPod shuffle. If that's all I had, I'd be a happy camper. All the tv shows I like could be audio dramas and I wouldn't care.

 

[Noiz2]

I worked on a Japanese true crime TV show shot in the US that recorded no sound at all. It would take a couple days to shoot 30-45 minutes of screen time of dramatic reenactments at many locations complete with reverse angles and B-roll. It was always fun to explain to the actors that it didn't matter what they said, just how long they said it. "Stand there and have a tense conversation for a minute." Next! "Look up from reading this memo in shock." Next!
When the show would be put together in Japan, they'd dub all the dialogue and have a lot of narration with very little ambient sound and a little music here and there. It actually worked really well and those shows were very cost effective to make since production could move so fast.

This may be a small world connection. Our house in SF was used on two Japan TV "reenactment" shows they thought it looked european?

Anyway yes they didn't shoot any sound at all and the actors just made up line that fit "the feel" of what they were supposed to be saying. An english speaking lip reader will have a great time watching them, some of the "dialog" was hysterical.

 

[Noiz2]

What's funny is I prefer audio dramas (full on dialogue, music and SFX) to silent films.

I have a couple of hundread CD's of MP3's of old radio shows from before TV. Some are a trashy as any TV show but a lot are great.

 

[j1clark@ucsd.edu]

I have a couple of hundread CD's of MP3's of old radio shows from before TV. Some are a trashy as any TV show but a lot are great.

The only time I've 'listened' to radio shows, other than perhaps a local station that has a Friday evening Beer Hour... was the recordings done by "Firesign Theater" in the late 60's, early 70's, and played on a local radio station 'late at night'...

Even when I had a long 1-2 hour commute to and from work, the idea of a 'show', especially the idiotic 'morning shows'... other than music, radio has not interested me much.

I think there have been some retro revivals of radio shows made in the last quarter century... but I've not paid much attention...

As a note... I don't really like TV shows, perhaps in part, due to their 'radio' likeness...

 

[Andrius Simutis]

This may be a small world connection. Our house in SF was used on two Japan TV "reenactment" shows they thought it looked european?

Anyway yes they didn't shoot any sound at all and the actors just made up line that fit "the feel" of what they were supposed to be saying. An english speaking lip reader will have a great time watching them, some of the "dialog" was hysterical.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same show, but the crews changed a lot. Our director was a no nonsense kind of person so she would have gotten really angry if we missed a take because someone said something funny as dialogue in a serious scene. I was playing an FBI agent in one episode and was very tempted to improvise something absurd, but chose to keep it serious and keep the job.

 

[mainstreetprod]

OT, sort of.

The web site for the film uses white text over a nearly white background (the open bible) and at least on my computer it's completely unreadable. I tried adjusting brightness and contrast etc but I could never get it actually readable.

Just a heads up.

Thanks for pointing that out. The opaque box under the text somehow got on the wrong layer - now fixed.


Of course you can do whatever you want but historically music only was not the case, except maybe in the smallest small town movie theatres.

The flip side is that actors had developed a "visual language" that allowed fairly complex stories with out having to use a lot of title cards. This was important since the literacy rate was not great among the "unwashed masses" that were the bread and butter of the movie going audience. You wont have that to help out so your going to have to craft the plot cleverly to avoid a ton of didactic panels.


My wife wrote the script and was able to create scenes that really don't need dialogue - action takes it's place (not to say that it was easy- took several months of hard work, in basically uncharted territory). We deliberated on whether to use any Foley sound and opted not to. We will be asking the composer to incorporate music that is similar to what the Foley sound would be if used, such as in the opening sequence of a printing plant. We'll be looking for music with a "running machinery" feel.