Links to relevant film and film music websites
IMPORTANT NOTE: You can find updated materials for the second edition here. The materials on this page and its sub-pages were designed for the first edition of Hearing the Movies. We will not remove anything from this page but we will also not maintain or update it in future.
Film History, Analysis, and Criticism
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
Composers & Songwriters: The Film Music Society's excellent set of links to composer sites
General Film Music Trade and Fan Websites
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.
Susquehanna Valley Theatre Organ Society
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
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.
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 Websites
Reliable Wikipedia Articles
Short, but reliable information with links to some examples.
Includes information on original Kinetophone.
Good coverage of early (pre-Vitaphone) sound film. Lots of pictures.
Other Encyclopedia-style Sites
Film Information (including reviews and awards)
Internet 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.
Similar 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.
Many 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.
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.
Online Film Resources
Particularly strong in television, both new and vintage.
Internet Archives (includes Prelinger Archives)
Movie Trailers (Apple/iTunes)
Texas Archive of the Moving Image
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
Game Sound (Karen Collins)
Bibliographies: articles and books.
Bibliographies: articles, books, and links.
Media Theory, Cultural Theory
Media and Communication Studies
essentially a bibliography whose links take you to online articles (or online copies of published articles). Very clearly organized.
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.
History of the Sound Track
David Morton's Recording History
Steven Shoenherr
History of Motion Picture Sound
The material is excellent and the whole site is very well illustrated.
Film Sound History (MTSU SMPTE)
Some PDFs of period maintenance manuals and trade journal articles as well as numerous high quality images.
Lots 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.
Exhibition Sound
History
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
DTS (Digital Theater Systems)
SDDS (Sony Dynamic Digital Sound)