Silent Film
A Silent Film is a recorded clip that had no sound recorded synchronised with the video. Although these film are called "silent" films, they would most likely have some sort of sound to accompany them. These would generally be music played through the medium of an orchestra.
The silent film era took place between 1894 - 1929, and not many of the original films have survived due to lack of preservation and care to the roll film. Also these films were edited for reasons of censorship, causing frames to be removed making the final result choppy, with the standards of the film being lowered. Most of the classic silent films are 2nd or 3rd generation copies that have a lower quality than the original.
Due to the lack of sound in the film, it would be unclear what was happening so 'Intertitles' would be used through out the film, these title screen were used to narrate key points of the story or what dialogue was taking place. Musical scores would also be written to be played along with the film in sync.
Here is a famous example of a silent film, A Trip To The Moon made in 1902
Foley Art-
The inventor of that art, Jack Foley performed live sound effects in time with the movements seen on screen.
Foley artists are required to recreate sound effects for film, tv series and also in radio productions. When recording a film, the voices are the focus of the audio recording, leaving everything else too quiet. The Foley artists, replace these sounds with more exciting and enhanced sounds. For example footsteps are always recreated in a foley stage. A lot of research and practise goes into creating the right sounds for each character. For example the artists have to experiment with different shoes, surfaces and practise how the character moves to have the most realistic sound possible.
The difference between Foley art and Sound effects is that foley is the sound produced when a character is interacting with the surroundings and their cloths for example. So the sound of rustling clothing would be created in a Foley booth as it wouldn't have been picked up in the original recording.
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