Man at the Movies

A 1918 cartoon from Moving Picture World of a man's emotional reactions at the movies. Note how his emotions are represented as cued by the orchestra.

(Double click on image for larger version.)

FIRE!!!

As pertains to the previous post, here are some period items concerning musicians and theater fires:

Elizabeth, N.J.—The presence of mind of a pianist in the Proctor Theater, who started to play "The Star Spangled Banner" when a film caught fire, checked the stampede of freightened people and the fire was extinguished by hand grenades ("Trade Notes," Moving Picture World, 19 September 1908, 216).

Not sure what kind of hand grenades those would be...

The problem was not so much the fire itself, which was usually contained by the metal lined box that served as the projection room. Rather the greater danger was general panic:

"The study of the safeguards against accidents from moving pictures is now occupying much of the attention of electricians and insurance men,” said Mr. Sydney Andrews, of the Middle Underwriters’ Association, 316 Walnut street [Philadelphia]. "So satisfactorily has the problem been solved, however, that it would appear to me personally that the greatest danger from the moving picture places was that of stampede from fear of fire rather than from the actual results of fire. You see the most of these places have only one exit, and that is in the front. Consequently, in case of fire the audience would be compelled to rush by the booth, which is in front of the building." ("The Situation in Philadelphia," Moving Picture World, 2 November 1907: 560)

In such situations, music was understood to be a definite ally:

The coolness of George Hunter, proprietor of a nickelodeon at 4115 Butler street, Pittsburgh, Pa., and his piano-player, in the face of danger saved an audience from panic the other night when the moving picture film fired and set fire to a curtain. The flames were spreading rapidly through the room. Hunter leaped to the platform and assured the audience there was plenty of time to get out. At the same time the piano player struck up a lively tune, and their combined efforts served to calm the frightened people. Ushers succeeded in getting every one out safely. Harry Wills, the operator of the machine, was slightly burned about the hands and face. The damage to the building was about $600. ("Trade Notes," Moving Picture World, 1 June 1907, 200)

Nickelodeon Plan

Source: Moving Picture World 28 March 1908

Here is a cut-away drawing of a nickelodeon theater from 1908. The article that this picture illustrates concerns theater safety; hence the annotation: "The only exits." Note that the exits are both located next to projector room, and, at the time, fires were extremely common due to the flammable nature of the film stock. Obviously, a theater constructed in this manner was not particularly safe, and there were frequent campaigns at the time to regulate theaters to avoid floor plans such as this one.

But theater safety is not what drew my interest to this drawing. Instead, the piano situated oddly along the right edge intrigued me. Notice how difficult it would be to see the screen from the position of a player. The obvious implication is that pianist was not expected to play to the film. Actually, given the limited space, it seems quite probable that this is actually supposed to represent a player piano.

(For large size scan (2100 × 1344), double click on the image)

"Does it sound expensive?"

One of the busier composers to have been thrust into the spotlight over the past couple of years is Tyler Bates. In the grand tradition of many successful film composers, Bates began writing for low-budget films and had graduated to mid-level horror films (Dawn of the Dead, The Devil's Rejects, Slither) when he seemed to come out of nowhere with his 2007 score for Zach Snyder's 300. Since then, he's added a television series and video game score as well as three other scores to his resume (including Snyder's Watchmen) and has a nice write-up in Electronic Musician this month. As he's been doing all of this work out of his home studio (hence the title of this post), the article and photos are a good indicator of what a currently successful film composer's life and environment can look like.

Voice as Demonstration Tool in Chapter 2

Chapter 2 uses multiple examples from films to illustrate the musicality of the sound track. In class, demonstration of musical terms using live musicians is ideal, of course, but a compact "bare bones" introduction can be easily managed by using the instructor's own voice (augmented by assistance from students' voices to illustrate polyphony or textural layering). The advantage of this is that the concepts are thereby transferred out of the musical setting to the speaking voice (similar to dialogue) and the instructor's physical movements (similar to acting). The final transfer to the film sound track, then, can be made with little difficulty.

Offscreen vs. Ambient Sound

When we hear a bark but do not see the dog or hear birdsong but do not see the bird, it can be difficult to decide whether to classify such sound as offscreen or ambience. This ambiguity points to a fundamental difference in narrative function, which in turn determines whether we expect the source of the sound to be shown. If the function of the sound is primarily atmospheric, if it serves primarily to establish mood and setting, then there is no reason to show the source. Indeed, showing the source might actually endow it with undue narrative significance. Think here of the atmospheric sound of a howling wolf against the image of a full moon; now think of that same sound, only this time the fog parts on a hilltop revealing an image of a wolf beneath the full moon. The presence of the wolf with synchronized sound asks for a much more direct interpretation. It asks us to make some narrative sense of the bodily presence of that wolf as opposed to the atmospheric presence of the call.

This suggests that one way of thinking about the difference between offscreen sound and ambient sound is in terms of an expectation determined by the needs of the narrative: with offscreen sound we expect the source to be shown whereas with ambient sound we do not expect the source of the sound to be shown. Sometimes, as with crickets at night or the wind howling, we understand that this sound could never be localized to a single sound source; such sound in that sense will always be ambient because, in a sense, it cannot be narrativized, cannot be turned into a character. (Crickets could, perhaps, (like locusts) manifest themselves as a swarm and the wind could become, say, a tornado—as it does in Twister. These are limit cases that show how ambience is bound to a general, rather than particular, representation of the environment or setting.) Even with bird song or a dog bark, where the sound could be much more easily synchronized and so be made particular, we do not expect the source to be revealed to the extent that we understand it as ambience.

Simple pedagogical example in Paris, Texas

Exaggerated, and therefore unusually clear, examples of offscreen sound occur one after the other in Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas (1984). At the beginning of DVD ch. 16 (01:10:50), Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) walks past a club playing tejano music; we see the club only several seconds after the scene starts, and volume levels even rise and fall accordingly. Cut to daytime as he walks on a particularly long highway overpass; immediately we hear a man yelling; Travis continues to walk and only 30 seconds later does the man come into the frame as Travis pauses briefly before going on -- and the man's voice goes offscreen again.