Silent Movie

Silent Movie 

Lockdown

For our next project we will be working on silent movies. We will be filming and performing a silent movie. The theme will be horror.

Research:

What is a silent movie?


A Silent Movie is a movie that has no sound especially dialogue. Silent movies were made from the late 1880s to the early 1930s. They used cameras that could not record any sound. To explain what was happening they had to use placards/subtitles to show the speech, actions and plot.


Timeline of silent movie/ first to last movie:


The first “silent movie” was made in 1903. It was produce by Thomas Edison however; it was directed and filmed by Edison Company. The movie was called “The Great Train Robbery” this was a feature length film.12 minute long silent movie.


The last silent movie was produced in Hollywood but it was filmed in Bali, Indonesia. This movie was called Legong: Dance of the Virgins, this originally shown in the USA, they concerned about the female nudity in the movie. They were worried about the chaos it would cause.


Finally; the first “talkie” movie was made in 1923. This movie had full sound and dialogue. However, the first featured length movie was presented as a “talkie” movie and it was released in 1927.


Silent Movie Stars:

 Charlie Chaplin was one of the most significant stars of in the early days of Hollywood. Charlie had an interesting life as an actor on screen and behind the camera. Charlie became one of the one famous icon in Hollywood. He did go on to do “talkies” as he started in “City Lights” which was released in 1931. Charlie Chaplin always played the role of “the fool” this built up a reputation for him across Hollywood.

Harry Lloyd was a silent movie comedy actor as he always played “the comic relief”. In 1921 he began to make feature length comedies. He stared in “Sailor-Made Man”, this was a huge success for him and he carried on; the next movie he starred in was “Grandma Boy”; however this was not a success because when he went to see the movie for himself no-one in the audience wasn’t laughing. Roach got writing to work out the gags and knee slappers for the film; Lloyd recognised this as one of his greatest accomplishment.

Marlene Dietrich in the 1920s she was acting on the Berlin stage and in silent movies. Nevertheless, she made her debut in 1922 after the debut, she had international fame as she was cast by the director Josef Von Sternberg as he casted her as Lola-Lola in “The Blue Angle (1930)”. This was as success and led her to into the world of Hollywood.


Why silent movies/Why did they finished?


With the invention of sound cameras, directors and movie makers what they realised that there was no longer a need to make silent movies. Nonetheless; silent movie were still being made. But near 1930s silent movies stopped being made as the sound cameras have been invented and these were being brought by the camera crew. When the movie “The Jazz Singer” was resealed in the 1927 then all silent movie stopped being produced and talkies were being rolled out. But the silent filmed era was seen as “Age of the Silver Screen”.


How were silent movies made? /Did the actors “act”/ Did it affect ‘how’ they performed?


Silent movies were made silent cameras that obviously could not record any sound on the cameras there must have been reason why they were not any sound cameras these cameras were used n the time period of 1880s to 1920s . One of them could be that the movie makers could not afford sound cameras as it must have been really expensive or that the sound camera had not been invented yet that is why there are silent movies being made in the time frame.

Anyone, who has watched a silent movie, knows it contains strange kind of acting. This is because before screen acting became a profession. Actors were trained for the theatre so for them it was natural to act as if one were on stage; to get this habit out of actors they used “Victorian theatre conventions” which was highly exaggerated acting. Professional actors like Charlie Chaplin and Harry Lloyd used them. 

The acting that the actors did was long, exaggeratedly dramatic as moments like these were improved by slow, long-standing speech, overstate actions. Actors performed directly to the audience rather than an imaginary “forth wall” between the actors and the audience.

Skills:

The skills for screen acting and live stage acting are VERY different.

Both screen acting and live stage acting needs facial expressions but live acting needs it more. Creating movies is slightly harder as there are more departments involved.

Here are the skills I learned for making and shooting a movie:

v    To create a storyboard; this will help me understand the breakdown of scenes

v   I have learned to make my actions even bigger. This will help me if I get into the filming scene.

v     I have learned how to mime and make my actions bigger and better than looking under realistic.

v     I have also learned that when filming it does not take one take there are many more takes that need to be done in order for the movie to be perfect. 

Creating our movie:

Plotline:

At first we were going to a supernatural school that only we could see and enter with our supernatural powers which were; fire, ice, wind, earth and water. And the school was left abandoned after a Supernatural event. But there was a supernatural creature that we would have to fight to keep earth safe. But we decided to scrap that and go with a school shutdown and zombies.

Now we are making our silent movie about a lose killer, who fakes being a school student. The lose killer has a knife that can turn anyone into a zombies. The zombies cannot be killed in the stomach as they will just keep on getting stronger. The hero is Shadhut, who has a dream about the killer and he knows to kill everyone and save the day.

Filming:

Scene Break-Down:

                               

Actors:                                                       

Henok as Simon

Alana as Marie

Albiona as Miss Diane

Adina as Kathleen

Shadhut as Kiran

Scene 1 (The Nightmare)

 (Camera Angle: Close-up shot)

Kiran is sleeping in his bed when suddenly he gets a starts feeling uneasy. He then realises that he’s having a nightmare. Kathleen starts to ascend from the darkness and starts to strangle Kiran. He then wakes up in shock breathing heavily. He looks at the time and starts to get ready for school.

Scene 2 (Bus Stop Scene)

(There are rumours spreading around the that there is a killer roaming around town. There are no descriptions of the killer nor is there any evidence towards anyone.) 

(Camera angle: Long shot)

Simon and Marie are at the bus stop waiting for Kiran. Kiran starts walking towards the bus stop while reading a newspaper. It stated “Killer who escaped from jail on the loose!  So stay alert and please report if you see anything suspicious” Kiran shows the newspaper to Marie and Simon, but they start laughing at him and brush him off. The bus arrives and Kiran puts the newspaper in his bag and enters the bus.

Scene 3 (Classroom)

(Camera angle: Medium shot, Pan shot-sideways)

Simon, Marie and Kiran enter the classroom together along with Miss Diane, the teacher. Kathleen then enters with a cup of tea and hands it to Miss Diane. She then takes a seat at the back of the classroom. Miss Diane then starts observing the students. She goes from Marie to Simon, when she reaches Kiran, she realises that he’s sleeping so she walks towards him and claps her hands to wake her up. He then wakes up in shock while dropping his pen, so starts looking for it. Sirens start to occur making everyone panic.

Scene 4 (Murder in classroom)
Kathleen then appears behind Marie and kills her. Simon and Kiran shriek and run away from Kathleen. Simon runs to the office to tell Miss Diane about what happened, but she doesn’t believe what he says and just carries on sipping her tea. Kathleen then appears behind Simon killing him with a knife. Kathleen then heads towards Miss Diane with the knife (scene blacks out).

Scene 5 (Fight against zombies) 

Kiran is running away from the Kathleen and suddenly bumps into Marie, Simon and Miss Diane, but they have turned into zombies. He starts backing away from them eventually bumping into Kathleen. Kiran notices the knife on Kathleen’s hands and goes to snatch it off her. They both fight for the sword, but Kiran eventually takes it away from her barging her onto the floor.

Scene 6 (Executing the 3) 

Kiran switches his focus to Marie, Simon and Miss Diane, he lifts the sword and charges towards them. He kills Marie first, then executes Miss Diane, then goes to behead Simon but he blocks it with his hand. Kiran throws the knife to his other hand and stabs Simon in the stomach killing him.

Scene 7 (Final showdown)

Kathleen gets up from the floor and notices that her troop has been eliminated. She quickly gets up and makes eye contact with Kiran. They both stare at each other and charge. Kathleen goes to punch Kiran, but he dodges the attack and finishes Kathleen off.

Scene 8 (It’s all over...Or is it?)

Kiran starts breathing heavily and looks around. He darts his eyes all over the place realising that everything has finally come to an end. He smiles towards the camera and gives a thumbs up. All of a sudden, Marie, Miss Diane, Simon and Kathleen start rising from the dead. Kiran starts to sense that something isn’t right, so tilts his head slowly and starts to scream. (everything blacks out.)
 

What is going well:

When we were filming I was taking in feedback from the director as I changed the mistakes that I internally got wrong a couple times. I also worked well with my co-stars which were Henok, Albiona, Dee and Shadhut.

The props we chose also were very fitting our plot. We had fake blood this linked to sword cutting us to fight. I will show you two examples of the makeup.

Example 1 (Close up):

This is the fake blood that we used for the zombies but this is not the final product. This first stage as we used a type of clear nail polish then we added the eye shadow.

Example 2 (Finished makeup):

This is the finally product of our makeup. I feel like if we were not rushed we would have much neater and clean finished product.

The Problem:

What could be improve: 

I think if we had more of an idea of our plot then maybe we could have filmed quicker and we would than having to explain our entire plot line.

 I also feel like a certain scene that we created could be cut as Dee, who plays the killer has a knife. So poisoning Albiona would not make sense as she also has slashes across her face. 

I would change a certain scene this is scene 3 when we are in the classroom it would make sense if we change it. The plot would make a lot more sense because their is a killer on the lose so if Adine came in as new student instead of an existing student that would have made it better.

What went well:

 I think that we did our makeup and stunts well. When we redid certain scenes that we actually did them better than originally.  liked how when we choreographed our fights scene it actually worked well with our standing positions.

We always took on advice from the director and feel the advice we were given actually helped us made our movie better especially with the school scene it actually made it more like school as Albiona, who plays the teacher checked on all the students because that is what a teacher actually does.

Other than that I think our filming process went really well.

Solving the Problem:

Finished filming:

We have now finished filming our silent movie. Having time to reflect I would change some things about our movie and the context of our movie cause we did a classic stroyline which was zombie but we did have twist in it. 

Firstly, I would change our customs instead of being our clothes it would have been nice to be in uniform like our old school uniform; this would have made it a bit more realist as we filmed in UK not America. 

I would wore something like this for our custom instead of our own clothes.


Another thing I would change is our fighting choreography. I feel like they were quit plain but when we were filming we did change it a bit so now looking back I would not change that. However I would have bit more fighting 

I feel as if we are trying fit a lot of plot into a really short time frame and that felt really rushed that it is the only thing I would change is that we have a small and easy plot and not a massive plot.

Movie premiere:

Our new plot line is a haunted house is gonna be called "

We are premiering and doing a live performance at Camden People's Theatre 

This is our theatre space empty:

This is our theatre full

We saw our techniques Ezra and we gave him detailed description of the lighting for our scene

For mine and Albiona we are doing a dark blue colour because it shows fear and sadness because we wanted to show that we did not want to go in the first place there.

Evaluation:

After we performed at Camden People's Theatre: We have time to think about what we should improve on and what went well.

Improvement: 

  

•  My facial expressions = I have to work on my facial expression as they did not seem clear enough.

What Went Well: