Directions Unit: Style of film

When i began thinking about how i wanted my film to come across, the lack of dialogue posed me with a few problems. How can i tell a story without words? Then i remembered silent films did tis all the time. They told a whole story through facial expressions and movement with the odd title card to help move things along or get a vital bit of information across. I thought this was an interesting concept for my own film and decided to do a bit of film watching.
I googled the best silent films and found a top 10 by the telegraph, i decided to make my way through the list.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/classic-movies/10002806/10-best-silent-films-selected-by-Tim-Robey.html

Initially i found some of the films hard to get into and i think this is because the films are a different pace to modern films, sound is rife in the modern era, everything from a car door slam to a telephone ring is added to enhance the film.

I asked a friends grandparents what their favourite silent films were and they gave me a list of 3 i
should watch The kid, The plank and 7th Heaven. I really enjoyed The Kid especially as it mixes comedy with drama and really pulls on your heart strings. Charlie Chaplin is brilliant and really picked up my interest into the silent film world. The Plank is hilarious and 7th heaven is more about the romance. These 3 films really helped me decide that creating my film in this style would be the way forward. I could already imagine Paul's expressions enhanced by a piece of music perfectly and was excited to set it into motion.

The final film i watched was The Artist, a film set between 1927 and 1932 but made in the modern era. This was important to me as i would be making a silent film under these kind of restrictions but i would chose to do a modern take on an old style in terms of the time period is it set. The Artist is great and i especially love the scene at the beginning were George and his cast and crew mates are waiting behind the cinema screen to hear the audiences response to their film. Rather than seeing the audience cheer, we first see Georges face and his reaction. As their is no sound this reaction tells us everything before we see it.

Stay safe,

Helen