8mm Forum: Playing music with silent digests

This is topic Playing music with silent digests - serendipitous sync in forum 8mm Forum at 8mm Forum.

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Posted by Jeff_Green (Member # 5552) on October 22, 2016, 12:28 PM:

I've got quite a few silent digests, and realized that I really missed the audio aspect of film. So, I started getting mostly sound, and also full features.

Well, one of the features was Cabinet of Dr Caligari. Since it was silent, but had live accompaniment when projected, I thought I'd find a Caligari soundtrack I could play as I project it. This led me to all of the people who have tried OTHER music, sort of like Dark Side of the Moon with Wizard of Oz. Now all of the sudden, I see a huge opportunity with the silent digests.

Does anyone have any unique combinations that are interesting or work really well? I've got a nice recording made specifically for Caligari that I'm going to try, as well as trying Radiohead's Kid A.

Posted by Melvin England (Member # 5270) on October 22, 2016, 04:01 PM:

Jeff - Although I cannot give you any specific suggestions, I recently transferred,fairly crudely, my silent home movies to Dvd. Once they were in the computer, I got the running time, picked a number of tracks with the same running time and saw which one was the best, then used that over the film. Hey presto! It actually works out much better than you think it would, and it looks quite professional that the sound and vision starts and finishes together. Give it a try and see what you think.

Posted by William Olson (Member # 2083) on October 22, 2016, 05:40 PM:

I used to buy and borrow Blackhawk prints in the 1970's. They were prints of silent films from the teens and twenties. I had a vast LP collection of classical music and film scores. I would use my reel to reel tape recorder to compile scores for these films using excerpts from the LP's. Although 100% synchronization was next to impossible, the results were quite pleasing.

Posted by Jeff_Green (Member # 5552) on October 22, 2016, 06:00 PM:

Well, tried Radiohead for the first reel and it just wasn't right, I'm not expecting synchronization, but a high yield of those "almost like it was meant for it" moments. Even better is when the lyrics or tone of the music teases out some deeper meaning to the film, even if it's fabricated by your imagination.

I also tried Nine Inch Nails Downward Spiral and it was downright perfect at times, but a little heavy handed. i'l keep exploring.

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