The Sounds of Early Cinema, edited by Richard Abel and Rick Altman, 2001, Indiana Press (from UofR library).
Early Phonograph Culture and Moving Pictures by Ian Christie
Page 7, "L'Eve Future", a novel in which a fictional Edison creates a duplicate person.
Early history of sound recording and association with images including idea of artificially preserving the dead.
Doing for the Eye What the Phonograph Does for the Ear by Tom Gunning
Page 14, (re: Frankenstein) "The nineteenth -century attempt to capture a modern vision involves redefinitions of the act of seeing and of perceptions's relation to the outside world. Key among these, as Crary has shown, was the separation of the senses, the treatment of the human sensorium no longer as a single whole in which the various senses converged to produce a "true" representation of the outside world, but as a bundle of processes, each subject to different physical conditions and processes of stimulation."
Page 15, Charles Cros, poet/inventor, an interesting figure.
Page 16, 1877 phontograph recorded onto tin foil, unsuccessful, was shelved until 1889.
Page 18-19, Reproduced human beings.
Page 23, describes American Gothic writing in which characters cannot trust their senses. "The separation of voice from the body ... becomes a dangerous tool that upsets the moral order of the universe".
Remarks on Writing and Technologies of Sound in Early Cinema by Mats Bjorkin
Page 34, Citing 1987 novel "Inferno", suggests that one man repeating all actions and sounds of another could be a medium himself.
Pag 35, "Losing control of hearing is more complicated than losing control of vision, because sound normally has to be verified by vision".
Page 36, When sounds and images could be stored through any medium, the memories of these sounds and images no longer were necessary;p their "liberation" became their end.
Page 37, "after the phonograph, writing no longer was the only means of representing sound"
'Next Slide Please': The Lantern Lecture in Britain, 1890-1910 by Richard Crangle
Page 39, [turn of the century] contemporary representation show few differences between the lantern lecturer and the moving picture commentator.
Page 43, word count of lectures was 150 - 200 words per slide (1-2 minutes) for a total of one hour.
The Voices of Silence by Francois Jost
Page 48, "in spite of standard terminologies, sounds are never produced by images" <see three conditions for An>
Page 49, "The falling stone makes a noise as it drops"
Page 51, Brisson quoted: "Characters must act and must do so clearly and not confusedly, and each of their movements must be expressive as well as produced with an overall coherence through a constant relation of cause and effect".
"transparency of souls could be achieved only as long as human beings could communicate without resorting to language."
The Event and the Series: The Decline of Cafes-Concerts, the Failure of Gaumont's Chronophone, and the Birth of Cinema as an Art by Edouard Arnoldy
- no notes
Dialogues in Early Silent Screenplays: What Actors Really Said by Isabelle Raynauld
Early films- amateur acting, inprov and random talking on screen. However, later when professional actors from state moved into film, they stuck to the script even when there was no sound recorded.
The First Transi-Sounds of Parallel Editing by Bernard Perron
Page 84, College Chums (1907) "to express their [telephone] exchange, Porter animates letters, which seem to drift in the air toward the man and the woman, creating a wave connecting the interlocutors. This is a lovely example of a literal transi-sound"
Sound, the Jump Cut, and "Trickality" in Early Danish Comedies by John Fullerton
Page 88, Look for Danish Nordisk Films by Viggo Larsen and photographed by Axel Sorensen (aka Graatkjaer).
Page 90, "often excitement, fear, frustration or anger is figured through gesture"
Setting the Pace of a Heartbeat: The Use of Sound Elements in European Melodramas before 1915 by Dominique Nasta
Page 96, "Subception, or subliminal auditive perception, when voices or music are only simulated visually, one has to find a justification for the inaudible sound"
Page 105, "contrary to what happens in the twenties when the interest shifts to sophisticated scores written for the films, in the early teens the dominant trend is not to pursue the synchronizing practices developed by the Gaumont Chronophone, but to visualize significant pieces of music in films."
Talking Movie or Silent Theater? Creative Experiments by Vasily Goncharow by Rashit M. Yangirov
Page 111, Film/stage combination in 1906 Russia discussed.
for Rania?
Sleighbells and Moving Pictures: On the Trail of D.W.Robertson by Gregory Waller
Page 123, Chautauqua is a traveling tent variety show t. They had some that held 2000 people.
The Story of Percy Peashaker: Debates about Sound Effects in the Early Cinema by Stephen Bottomore
Page 136, "selectively indicate the car through a horn, not to imitate it with an engine sound"
This was an entertaining article on history of sfx being performed live at films by "effects boys" from around 1905-ww1
That Most American of Attractions, the Illustrated Song by Richard Abel
Page 150, "Well into 1908, often a majority of the moving pictures shown in nickelodeons were "foreight" (most of them from Pathe). By contrast, illustrated songs were expressly, blatantly "American." If y 1908, as I have argued elsewhere, American films tended to be characterized in teh trade press as "upbeat" in comparison to French films, whose stories increasingly were denounced as "depressing" or "in bad taste, " the distinction was equally in not more valid for illustrated songs.
"The Sensational Acme of Realism": "Talker" Pictures as Early Cinema Sound Practice by Jeffrey Klenotic
Page 157, "'Talker' films with live actors behind screen, 1907-1908 companies of touring performers esp Humanovo, Actologue, Dramagraph"
"Bells and Whistles": The Sound of Meaning in Train Travel Film Rides by Lauren Rabinovitz
Page 174-175, "Hale's Tours ... were the first virtual realities of the 20th century"
"Early industry accounts reported rather apocryphal stories ... reminiscent of reports about Lumiere films ... members of the audience frequently yelled at pedestrians to get out of the way"
The Noises of Spectators, or the Spectator as Additive to the Spectacle by Jean Chateauvert and Andre Gaudreault
Page 184, [1908-1913] "the sound space of the screening is being organized"
Page 186, "the close up begins to play a crucial role in cinematographic expression at the time the lecturer declines in importance"
Early Cinematographic Spectacles: The Role of Sound Accompaniment in the Reception of Moving Images by Jacques Polet
Page 195, describers 19th century piano imporv leading to virtuosos performing free cadenzas but by 1900, cadenzas were "codified, fixed, rigid" ... "classical music then appears too serious a matter to be left to its performers". ... "Cinema ... did, in a way, re appropriate for itself this area of performative freedom". FOR JONATHAN
Sounding Canadians: Early Sound Practices and Nationalism in Toronto-Based Exhibition by Marta Braun and Charlie Keil
Page 201-202, "Owen Smily became the most distinguished of the Toronto lecturers".
""Smily not only spoke with a Canadian accent but he directed a school of elocution in which he taught his students the Canadian way of pronunciation. Smily's "Canadian" accent - neither British nor American but something in between - reflects the aspirations of his class at the beginning of the century. A Canadian accent was not an indigenous accent, but rather the product of trying not to be something else.
The Double Silence of the "War to End All Wars" by Germain Lacasse
Page 210-211, Walter Benjamin quoted about silence after war "a necessity because the experience ... was not translatable" AN
Domitor Witnesses the First Complete Public Presentation of the [Dickson Experimental Sound Film] in the Twentieth Century by Patrick Loughney
- no notes
A "Secondary Action" or Musical Highlight? Melodic Interludes in Early Film Melodrama Reconsidered by David Mayer and Helen Day-Mayer
Page 222-223, Panic of 73 leads to evolution of touring variety theatre in USA, influencing early film.
The Living Nickelodeon by Rick Altman
Music for Kalem Films: The Special Scores, with Notes on Walter C. Simon by Herbert Reynolds
The Orchestration of Affect: The Motif of Barbarism in Breil's The Birth of a Nation Score by Jane Gaines and Neil Lerner
