Era of Silence

The period of filmmaking before synchronized recorded dialogue became standard, when films communicated mainly through images, intertitles, music, and sound effects.

Intertitle: A text card inserted into a film to convey dialogue, narration, or other information. Intertitles supplied spoken words and explanations that the image alone could not convey.
Eadweard Muybridge: A photographer whose sequential images of animal and human movement advanced the study of motion. His motion studies helped establish the photographic basis from which cinema developed.
Charlie Chaplin: An English actor, filmmaker, and composer whose screen persona became one of cinema’s most recognizable figures. His Little Tramp character used precise physical comedy to communicate across language barriers.
Slapstick: A form of physical comedy built around exaggerated action, mishaps, and visual gags. Slapstick thrived in silent cinema because its humor relied less on spoken language.
The Jazz Singer: A 1927 American feature film featuring synchronized songs and spoken dialogue in selected scenes. Its commercial success became a landmark in the shift away from silent feature production.
Silent film score: Music composed or selected to accompany a silent film, often performed live in theaters. Musical accompaniment shaped mood and rhythm despite the absence of synchronized dialogue.
Thomas Edison: An American inventor and industrialist whose company developed early motion-picture technologies and production. Edison’s Kinetoscope helped turn moving images into a commercial entertainment.
Buster Keaton: An American silent-film actor and director known for deadpan performance and elaborate physical comedy. His controlled expression and stunt-driven scenes show a distinctive silent-screen performance style.
German Expressionist cinema: A German film movement known for distorted sets, stark lighting, and psychologically charged imagery. Its visual style turned silent film design into a means of expressing inner states.
Vitaphone: A sound-on-disc system used to synchronize phonograph records with motion-picture projection. Vitaphone offered one major technology for pairing recorded sound with silent-era images.

Linked from 4 pages