11/25/22
Newletter169
The Crack of Dawn
When sound came into the movies in the late 1920s, as I’ve previously mentioned, no one had a clue how to score movies. For the first three- or four-years movies were arbitrarily covered with jazz music that didn’t fit anything. Then two young composers, Max Steiner and Alfred Newman, figured out the proper method of scoring to the action, and laying down an emotional bed for the drama or comedy to play against. This same issue had to be confronted in the world of animation. If you watch the earliest sound cartoons – the first sound cartoon was Walt Disney’s Steamboat Willie (1928) – they too didn’t understand how to use music. But in a chance meeting in Kansas City, Disney met Carl Stallings who was a movie theater organist who was very good at improvising scores. Disney hired Stallings to score his cartoons. This was when Carl Stallings invented what is now known as a “Click-track,” but was initially called a “Tick-track.”
I find this fascinating. A click-track is a metronome. In the early cartoons, to expedite the process – instead of waiting for the cartoon to be finished, then scoring it – Carl Stallings and the animators would go through the storyboards, agree on a tempo, then the cartoon would be animated at that tempo while Stallings would compose the score at the same time. Carl Stallings left Disney, went over to Warner Brothers, then scored every Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and all the Warner’s cartoons for the next twenty-two years, 1936-1958.
The click-track quickly made its way over to live-action movies and is still in use. I first encountered it on my first feature, Thou Shalt Not Kill…Except, in 1984. I worked with composer Joe LoDuca, who has since scored all of my movies, and he explained and demonstrated the system to me. As we watched a scene of the film Joe manipulated an electronic metronome that emitted a clicking noise. Eventually, the clicking and the editing of the scene synchronized, thus revealing the tempo of the music needed. Joe then improvised a score at that tempo with one hand on the keyboard just to show me how it worked. Even though it’s a system Carl Stallings figured out in 1928, I sat there in 1984 with my mouth hanging open. Oh, my God, is this how it’s done? It’s so simple (other than the writing of the music part). And I’m sure Carl Stallings had this all figured out as he sat there at the organ in front of silent movies scoring them on the spot.
As a historical note, big silent feature films came with written and arranged scores provided by the production company, and big movie theaters had full orchestras. But mostly, movie theaters had a piano or organ player.
As my ideas run one into another: I regularly attended screenings at UCLA when their wonderful restoration department would show the newly restored films just to see what they looked like. At these screenings there was no musical accompaniment at all. That meant that it was entirely up to the visuals to hold our interest. In many cases we, being me and my pals, Rick Sandford and Don Bachardy, left in ten minutes. The restoration would look great, the movie was just another movie. The only feature film we stayed and watched all of was Joseph von Sternberg’s, The Docks of New York (1928). About twenty people in the small theater sat there and basically didn’t breathe or swallow for about 80-muntes. It was spectacular. That’s a piece of filmmaking.
I presently have an editable file of The Docks of New York on my brand-new iMac, and I have downloaded editing software. My intention is to cut out the title cards, dub the voices, add sound effects and a score, and colorize it so that people will start watching it again. There are a bunch of good silent movies with enormous production values that nobody ever watches because they’re silent, and the accompanying lone piano or organ score sucks. Now, all I have to do is do this.
Please have a nice day. Please.
"I presently have an editable file of The Docks of New York on my brand-new iMac, and I have downloaded editing software. My intention is to cut out the title cards, dub the voices, add sound effects and a score, and colorize it so that people will start watching it again. There are a bunch of good silent movies with enormous production values that nobody ever watches because they’re silent, and the accompanying lone piano or organ score sucks. Now, all I have to do is do this."
Josh that's awesome.