On this episode Ben talks about meeting an audience’s expectations of a score when a certain piece of music or style is indicated onscreen, and in a rare case of a non-narrative film made after the silent era. Also covered… Read More »ep. 38: scoring for scenes that suggest or specify a piece of music, and scoring a film from 1948
On this episode Ben talks about: the annual Mostly Lost film identification workshop at the Library of Congress, currently postponed until 2021; underscoring a key scene in Keaton’s “The Cameraman” and noticing a parallel with “Singin’ In The Rain”, playing… Read More »ep. 37: Mostly Lost, Keaton’s The Cameraman and The General, an electric organ and Laurel & Hardy
On this episode Ben talks about: using music an audience may or may not expect to hear during a film in preparing scores for shows of Fairbanks’ “Robin Hood” and Raoul Walsh’s “Loves of Carmen”; using underscore to help smooth… Read More »ep. 36: scoring Robin Hood and a 1927 Carmen, using the orchestral and cartoony sounds of a theatre organ, more live-streaming
This summer, I read two books, inspired by my being booked for a film series that will run at MoMA from October 21 through the end of the year. I wanted to get inside the point of series, and not… Read More »Reading Up on Iris Barry and MoMA Film’s Beginnings
The Mack Sennett films released through Paramount in the late ‘teens give you the impression that an effort was underway to take the Keystone format up a level. That is, if you can see one of the Paramounts. Despite who… Read More »Finding a Chestnut in a Haystack
When I meet people from other parts of the country and tell them I’m a silent film accompanist , they are often surprised when I tell them there are (currently) no theater organs in Manhattan. There are instruments around the… Read More »The Sounds of the Silents — Theatre Organ Accompaniment in NYC, part 3
I don’t remember how or when I started doing this, but I’m certain it’s something I picked up or learned from Lee Erwin. I start playing before the film begins. I’m pretty sure it’s a traditional way to begin a… Read More »Playing The Audience In To A Film
I first heard about this CD project during the Arbuckle retrospective I co-curated for MoMA in 2006 with Ron Magliozzi, Curator in MoMA’s Department of Film and with Steve Massa. Ron had spent a number of years acquiring dozens and… Read More »“Let’s Go In to a Picture Show” – popular songs about silent movies
Two main elements in film programming, I’ve found, are knowing the films and knowing where prints of them are. The rest, to a certain degree, is setting the table or parking cars in a lot. Sometimes the prints turn up… Read More »Looking for Squibs
There is no deeply dramatic reason for Douglas Fairbanks to leap over the benches and fences or climb the trees or anything else of extreme athleticism he does to get from point A to point B in American Aristocracy (1916),… Read More »Before There Was Parkour, There Was…Douglas Fairbanks