Film History, Analysis, and Criticism
Yale Guide to Film Analysis Basic film terms defined, principles of continuity editing explained. Includes video examples. Bordwell is the co-author of Film Art: An Introduction, by far the most important and influential introductory film studies textbook. On his site, he not only has extensive links and other information related to film studies, but he maintains a blog and has posted a number of analyses and chapters from earlier editions of Film Art along with stimulating original essays. His hallmark is clear, understandable writing and deep insights into film production and style. One of the most valuable websites on film and film studies. Composer Sites Franz Waxman Composers & Songwriters: The Film Music Society's excellent set of links to composer sites General Film Music Trade and Fan Websites Film Score Monthly Film Music Magazine Filmtracks Photoplay Music The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra The
Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra specializes in accompanying silent
film and the group has released a number of CDs with photoplay music
cues from the period. The site contains a lot of information and
source material that Rodney Sauer has collected, including Sam Fox Moving Picture Music, vol. 1. This link will take you to a page with both PDF and midi files of the music. The Susquehanna Valley Theatre Organ Society is "dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Theater Organs and to their use in musical performances." The site has a page with a number of PDFs of photoplay music.
Sheet Music Sites
Sheet Music Consortium
This link provides access to a global search engine for most of the sites below. It does not seem to be always accurate, however, so it is worth searching individually as well.
Duke University Lester S. Levy Collection (Johns Hopkins) Lilly Library (Indiana University)
The Maine Music Box (University of Maine) Music for the Nation (Library of Congress)
There are at least twelve sets of nineteenth-century melodramatic cues available here. Search under "melodramatic" rather than "melodrama."
General Sound and Recording WebsitesDavid Morton's Recording History Steven Shoenherr The material is excellent and the whole site is very well illustrated. Film Sound History (MTSU SMPTE)Vitaphone Project List of Pre-1927 Sound Films Widescreen Museum Some PDFs of period maintenance manuals and trade journal articles as well as numerous high quality images. in70mm.comLots of good stuff on widescreen film formats and the various sound technologies that went with them, though the information can sometimes be hard to find. History Lansing Heritage Site devoted to history of Lansing, JBL, and Altec, with a lot of material on loudspeaker technology for motion picture auditoria.100 Years of Cinema Loudspeakers (filmsound.org timeline) Digital formats and theater standards Dolby Labs DTS (Digital Theater Systems) SDDS (Sony Dynamic Digital Sound) THX | Reliable Wikipedia Articles Illustrated Song Short, but reliable information with links to some examples. KinetoscopeIncludes information on original Kinetophone. Sound FilmGood coverage of early (pre-Vitaphone) sound film. Lots of pictures. Surround SoundInternet Movie Database (IMDb) Information on production, box office, music credits, sound credits as well as sound formats on release prints and sound track listings. Links to trailers and reviews.
Turner Classic MoviesSimilar information as IMDb, with especially strong music credits. Links to trailers and clips from films. Good synopses. Some production materials from Time Warner archives and original content from TCM.
WikipediaMany Wikipedia articles on individual films contain information on the sound track not available on IMDb or TCM. As with all these sites, the information is not always accurate and is so best confirmed through other sources. searchable database The Oscars page; searchable Jazz on the Screen (Library of Congress)searchable filmography of jazz on screen. good commercial site for world cinema.filmarchives online A searchable database pointing to mostly non-fiction films in European archives. The venerable print index has been digitized and made available through the Indiana University Libraries. Coverage of film and television periodicals, plus some related journals, through 2001. To be effective, searches on this database (or the Film & Television Literature Index below) should be combined with results from RILM or Music Index, which index music periodicals (both FILM and Music Index are available through library subscriptions).Film & Television Literature Index (no link) -- available through EbscoHost; check with your library to see if they have a subscription. Far more extensive coverage than Film Literature Index, including current issues of periodicals. Asl see the comment about music literature databases under Film Literature Index above. Bill Wrobel's Film Score Rundowns detailed descriptions of music cues for a subset of classical films, in particular those with underscoring by Bernard Herrmann. The cue lists are derived from archival sources. Google Video Hulu Particularly strong in television, both new and vintage. Internet Archives (includes Prelinger Archives)This is a free (ad-supported) Flash converter, which takes Flash video files (FLV) and transcodes them to MP4. Copyright Copyright Chart for Public Domain (Cornell) Copyright Renewal Database (Stanford) Copyright Quick Guide (Columbia) Fair Use Publication of Film Stills (Society for Cinema and Media Studies) Fair Use of Film Materials (Kristin Thompson) Copyright Issues with Mash-ups (American University) "Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video" (American University) Orphan Works (American Society of Picture Professionals) Video Game Music and Sound approachable, sometimes whimsical site devoted to popular culture and cultural-theory influenced media studies. (NB: The site is currently generating malware warnings.) last update: 03 February 2010. (c) All original material on this website copyright by the authors.
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