Hannah Kemp-Welch spoke and mentioned the power of silence in her lecture. Claiming that despite the fact we work with the sound we can also embrace silence in our work to create the true effect. I wanted to read into this and maybe experiment, especially when including other mediums such as screens.
After the discovery of sound on screen in the 1920s, ‘The Jazz Singer’ – 1927 became the first movie to premiere with additional sound. It can be noticed that this was a monumental step for cinema one to which most people would never go back. Despite music and sound is such a vital part of cinema and television can it be said that silent movies still have the same effect?
Silence movies back in the day were as much of a success as they were before cinema added sound. As humans, we are now conditioned toward expecting movies to have a dazzling score… For example, if someone plays the film with the volume muted no one would fight the urge to turn it up. However, I strongly argue that silence can be just as powerful. Intrigued by this I researched several different modern silent movies to see if this old fashioned way of creating film still existed. Although despite many google searches I was shocked to find that all modern silent films had adopted old fashioned aesthetics such as the time in which it was set, filters, cameras and storylines. Examples such as Brand Upon the Brain! ( 2006) and Return to Babylon (2013) all fit into one certain style. All films were made to look as if they came out before the invention of sound. Is this because we have made silent movies a cliché and habituated ourselves into thinking that modern styled film can not be silent.
If I worked in sound for the screen I would one day like to experiment with silence and use it as a powerful technique rather than an approach for 1920s cinema.