Silent Film Simulation

1) Artwork: You can create your borders in Photoshop, import them into FCE then Matte them as desired

2) Fonts: Scroll thru the Boris Calligraphy (Title 3D) fonts to see if something there suits you. Can't think off hand what silent movie fonts looked like but you have lots to choose from

3) Music: On your own there. Maybe you could work up something with Garage Band or Soundtrack; both of them give you piano loops, not sure if they have what you need

4) Degraded film look: Lots of choices here, ranging from the old film effect in iMovie, to FCE's Sepia filters (one under Effects>Video Filters>Image Control and another in Effects>Quicktime>Color Tint. Both offer lots of adjustments. Color Tint also gives you a B&W option.

You can further effect your shots by layering duplicates of a clip on top of itself and playing with the Composite Modes, filters, etc.

If you are truly serious about getting great results and have some money, you can check out the Nattress Film Effect plug ins

For the visual, of course, considerations to lighting and camera work best

Hi Ira.

With the old film look you should have at least 2 choices:-

1. Select File>Export>Using QuickTime Conversion.

A window will appear. Click Options and the Movie window will appear. You will have to adjust the Settings parameters to suit your equipment.

Click on "Filter" to open up the QT Filters. One of them is a Film Noise Filter.

2. You could simply export your clips to iMovie, use the "Aged Film" filter, then bring them back into FCE.

Finally use either the "Desaturate" or "Sepia" filter to get rid of the colour.

Ian.

I'd highly recommend you watch some old films from someplace like the Internet Archive ( http://archive.org/) to get a feel for what that style of film is like. You could even rip some borders and decorations for dialogue cards off of some of those films and clean up them in Photoshop.

In particular, check the Prelinger Archives and AV Geeks collections. Newsreels are a good place to start for finding dialogue card examples.

Ira,

I'd suggest looking into frame rate simulation as well. Old films were filmed at frame rates of 16 to 23fps. However, they were often projected faster than than they were recorded at giving a speeded up look. You may want to emulate that as well. Or if really clever, figure some way of getting a varied frame rate throughout the movie to simulate hand-cranking.

To achieve a lower frame rate look you could outputcrank your sequence using Quicktime conversion at 16 fps, de-interlacing to progressive frames. Then re-import and render to your sequence settings.

Usually when going for a film look, you'd want to do some clever (expensive) de-interlacing with adaptive blending of the fields, but since you don't want a 'clean' look I'd settle for the built in de-interlacing available at export.

It depends on what you are trying to achieve. Do you want to make your project look like a silent movie as it appeared in the 1920s, or how that same film would appear today. Silent movies back in the 1920s looked just like any black and white movie shot today. The "look" we associate with silent movies -- fast motion, grainy picture, high contrast, etc. -- is due to the aging of the film, endless copying of copies, and being shown at the wrong speed. If you ever see a silent film that has been properly preserved or restored, especially one from the late 20s, you'll be amazed at how "modern" they look.

As for title cards, there was no set standard across the industry. Usually, they had a border that might have a studio logo or the name written at the top or bottom. Some would even have small illustrations in the corner, but that was rare. Likewise, there was no typical font. As was suggested previously, you should watch a number of silents online. TCM also shows a different silent movie every Sunday night at Midnight.

Music varied as well, depending on venue. Films shown in small towns would only have a piano, where films shown in big cities could have a full orchestra. While some films in the late 20s would have a score written for the film, generally the accompanist would work from a set collection of familiar songs/music to set the mood for a scene. For example, if a character on screen was drunk, they'd start playing "How Dry I Am." (This practice was carried over into the Warner Bros. cartoons to supplement original music by Carl Stalling). Accompanists had to play the full length of the film (no quiet spots like modern movies), so they had to have a full library of music at the ready. While some large-budet films in the late 20s did get original scores (distributed as sheet music), it wasn't really until the Sound era that silent films really got dedicated scores. Chaplin continued to make silent movies well into the sound era -- his one concession was music and sound effects because he liked the additional control. He wrote scores for his films by "la-la-ing" for a transcriber and went back and scored his earlier features. You can even buy some of Chaplin's music on CD. For the expert on silent film scores, look up info on Carl Davis. He has scored many silent films. If you live in the LA area, you can also visit the Silent Movie Theater.

How about shooting it on 16mm?
Nothing wrong with au-natural.

Yeah, with a spring wound Bolex! Or even better, a VERY early hand cranked Mitchell. You could always tell when the camera operators arm was getting tired-- the film slowed down.

Wow, you know what? I was tired when I wrote the above post. When the operator got tired, the film sped up in projection, not down. Duh.

Don't worry Jim, it passed me by and even with your correction it took me a couple of minutes until I realised it was the CAMERAMAN's arm!

Ian.