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[11 Feb 2004|10:38am] |
the dude sitting next to me has rotten taste in music. yes, dude sitting next to me, i mean you.
[edit] god WHY are you tainting the school computers with your alcoholica fan games and font and shit? i'd almost would rather have spyware to deal with.
wait. i DO have spyware. fucking old people clicking on anything that pops up.
[edit2] ...hahahahahahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA you're trying to start up "tarp7's metallica site"? fail. do this at home so i don't have to look at it, eh?
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[11 Feb 2004|12:17pm] |
[wild] whats the difference between jesus and a picture of jesus?
[wild] it only takes one nail to hang a picture of jesus
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[11 Feb 2004|01:00pm] |
Joey Ritter
David Brown
02-10-04
Speaking Silently
Years back when FOX was auditioning for a television sitcom called Married with Children they came upon a man who, for his audition, mimed coming up to a door, opening it, stepping through, and then drooping his head and sighing. They stopped auditioning for that character and hired the man, named Ed O’Niell, to play the part of Al Bundy. This is evidence that even in today’s world of sound in film and television it is possible to convey an emotion, humour, or a point, simply through visual cues, a style dating back to the time of Charlie Chaplin and the silent films of the 1920s. The trick is to know how to do it right.
Married with Children relied mostly on its raunchy lines to sell itself, but the program was no stranger to visual humour as well, especially in the middle to later seasons, when they used a lot of dummies, usually when the script called for a character falling from a height (usually the roof). One of my favourite examples of such visual comedy (in this show at least) is showing a sunny beach scene during spring break, and then switching to Al and his co-worker at the shoe store, the mall barren and empty in the middle of a snowstorm because the entirety of Chicago (except for a few) has blown town for a few days to head for warmer climates. The lines spoken during this scene aren’t strictly necessary, as it’s obvious by the burning barrel in the middle of the store (which is empty of furniture and shoes) that it is quite cold, and they burned everything they could to keep warm. The phone rings, and Al answers it- it’s his wife. After the conversation ends, he dumps the phone into the fire.
With the advent of “the talkies” dialogue became an important part of filmmaking, and while the dialogue, if well-written, can flesh out and expand a concept, idea, or image, it is still possible to convey the same basic concept in a silent film. And, at the same time, if you want to get analytical one could say that Charlie Chaplin’s film Modern Times said a whole lot without saying anything at all. Sometime before the film was released he had remarked that “there are those who always attach social significance to my work. It has none. I leave such subjects to the lecture platform. To entertain is my first consideration.” Was he being disingenuous? Or did he simply change his opinion between saying that and making Modern Times? It’s a question certainly up for debate, but the fact remains that he was able to convey an image of the dehumanizing effects of the Industrial Revolution while at the same time portraying the events that formed that period: the first “Red Scare”, the Great Depression, among other things, all without saying a word. To that end, I don’t think many people realize this, but the characters actually DO speak in the film. You just don’t hear them. My hearing loss has helped me be able to read lips somewhat (although I’m nowhere near approaching some semblance of being good at it) and it’s obvious to me that the characters do speak; they’re not just flapping their jaws.
I think these days it’s harder to convey an image and at the same time give more of a message than what is physically visible. The film and television industry seems to have largely lost the ability to do such. I would love to see a modern-day silent film, but I doubt we’re going to see that ever again. And even if my wish were made reality, it would probably be so trite and so pseudo-artistic it wouldn’t be of much worth.
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