The Project

There is a great deal of scholarly work that needs to be done on Italian silent cinema, and some of it can be done by you. Many films have no entry on Wikipedia in English or, sometimes, in any other language. The vast majority of films that are available on the internet do not have English language subtitles (they also do not have any musical accompaniment). Together, these make it almost impossible to teach a class on Italian silent cinema, and very difficult for American college students to watch, read about and write about this era of Italian film — and similarly, makes it difficult for scholars of cinema who are outside of a very narrow specialization (i.e., who speak Italian and have access to contacts in Italy and archives in Italy and in Europe) to know much about what was one of the most important early rivals to Hollywood.

So, you will help future undergraduates studying silent film and help enrich the understanding of Italian film by addressing both Wikipedia and the question of subtitles by (a) creating or significantly enhancing a Wikipedia entry for an Italian silent film (including those we are seeing this semester), and (b) creating English language subtitles for at least one Italian silent film we are not seeing this semester. You will write 1-2 pages that summarize the work that you've done. I will give guidance on all the elements of the project: where can you find the movies? How do you create and edit subtitle files? How does editing on Wikipedia work?

The project is due 11/3. You will need to do research for the Wikipedia entry, and the best book for that is Italian Silent Cinema: A Reader. I will communicate with you in class about how to make it available to everyone when they need it.

Overview

• 1-2 page summary of what you did, and why this is a worthwhile contribution.

• 1 or more Wikipedia pages created with links both from and to your article, and references (Wikipedia requires that every article should have references to a printed, paper book). In some cases, you may choose to enhance an existing article, especially if it is a "stub." If you do not wish to actually submit the article to Wikipedia, you may send it to me as Word document (with embedded links and images), and your grade will not be affected — but it doesn't teach you how to edit and create on Wikipedia, and it doesn't enhance the state of publically accessible knowledge.

• 1 or more films that you have subtitled. Google Translate works remarkably well for Dutch and French intertitles, and okay for Italian ones; all you need is to get the basic sense of title, and then you can render it in better prose. Your subtitle files are your own work, of course, but with your permission, I will send them to the various film museums under a Creative Commons license — and then your work really will be helping scholars and students for years to come.

Films

     Where can you find Italian silent films? The internet! YouTube has many (most of very poor quality), as does Vimeo. I would recommend in particular one YouTube channel, the Eye Filmmuseum of Amsterdam — if you search within the channel for "production country: Italy," you will find many, many Italian silent films that are unsonorized and without subtitles, and which are often at a very high resolution.  Better still, if you click on a film, it will bring up a page with the video, and if you click on the "show more" button just beneath the video, there is a short summary in English. Similarly, you should look at the Vimeo channel for the Museo Nazionale del Cinema in Turin, which has an extensive archive with descriptions in both English and Italian. Similarly worthwhile is the Fondazione Cineteca Italiana in Milan (although their summaries are generally only in Italian). Do you want to work on a coupld of short comedies? Perhaps a feature-length melodrama? Great. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world's largest and most important silent film festival, held every year in Pordenone, Italy, will be held online this year, so it is possible that we may have some additional events and films available to us at that time.

Wikipedia

     Perhaps you've heard of "Wikipedia" before? Many early films, especially from outside the United States, have no entry or only a very short entry. It is incredibly easy for anyone to edit or create on Wikipedia, and you don't even need an account; you used to have to markup your article with special codes, but now Wikipedia has a visual editor that works more or less like a word processor. There's a ridiculous amount of help on Wikipedia (almost too much, frankly), but you might begin with "Your First Article," which also links to the Create an Article Wizard, which walks you through everything. One of our films, Socrates Takes Flight, has a wikipedia article, but as you can see, it has virtually no information on it. Others, like Un successo diplomatico (A Diplomatic Success), have nothing. Most that have an entry don't even have a plot summary. An ideal case would be something like the entry for Assunta Spina, with a section on plot, production, importance, and perhaps one other short section, links and a few images. If I see a solid "Assunta Spina"-type entry, that portion of the project gets an A. For Wikipedia, you can work on any Italian silent, including the films we are watching this semester — and it's probably ideal for you to do the wikipedia for a film you'd like to write about for the final paper.

Intertitles and translation

     Use  Google Translate to translate the intertitles for a silent Italian film that does not already have them, taking note of the time stamp for when each intertitle starts and ends. Depending on how much text there is, intertitles (and hence your subtitles) will last between 2-12 seconds, and you may need to break up the translation into 2, 3 or even 4 subtitles if it is a translation of something long, like a letter. You'll then use software (see below) to create an .SRT file that has the time stamps and the subtitles. With subtitles, it is best to stick to the basics, without any formatting or special colors. Many short or even medium length films have two dozen or so intertitles to translate (A Diplomatic Success is about 17 minutes long, and had 25 intertitles or titles to translate. If your film has between 12 and 20 intertitles, you've done enough work; if it's less than a dozen, you should do two or more films. The hardest, most time-consuming part about creating intertitles is typing a bunch of Dutch into Google Translate (it turns out you can't copy and paste an image of text!). Your grade will be based on quantity (but I don't expect one person to do more than about 20-25 titles) and quality (do they make sense? Is the English concise and easily readable? Is the tone right?). Titles can't be too long to read, and have to be short enough to fit on the screen.

Software

      Unfortunately, I cannot be an expert in every sort of platform and software. I have been a Mac user exclusively since 1987, so I will only be able to guide you in the Mac ecosystem, but there are free versions for everything you need to do on the PC and Linux as well. First of all, you should download and install the free, open-source VLC, which runs on every platform (Mac, PC, Linux) and can play virtually any video file. You may need it to get some of our movies to play correctly. Otherwise you will need something that can create a subtitle file. I use Jubler, which is free for Mac, PC and Linux, and not too hard to use. I will show in class how I use Jubler to create a subtitle file. Lastly, if you want to embed your subtitle in the movie, so that it's all one file, you'll want to check out HandBrake, a fantastic free tool (Mac, Windows, Linux) for doing a lot of things with video, audio, and subtitles.

Extra-credit: Sonorization

     Silent films were never screened in silence, as you now know; they virtually always had music to accompany them. If you are interested in a small amount of extra credit, you may "ensound" or "sonorize" an Italian silent. You may of course record yourself if you are a musician, but most of us will use recorded music we already have access to: there is a general consensus that classical music and jazz work best — many fans of silent film beilieve that any music with vocals is bad and that "modern" music is stylistically problematic, but you may want to experiment or be more creative here. The safest choices are Romantic-era music (Beethoven, Lizst, Rachmaninoff) or early 20th century classical (Debussy), and jazz up through the 1950s (jazz can work well for comic films, in particular). I am not expecting you to do a feature length film, but just experiment a bit until you find something you like. I actually recommend against you doing a feature length film -- the frequent mood changes mean you will have to find many different pieces of music, and ably blend them together. Depending on the quality of your work, you will receive 1, 2 or 3 points of extra credit on your project (out of 100). You will need additional software for this, such as iMovie (free and available on any Mac). I'm happy to discuss sonorization with you during office hours (and we will discuss at length silent film sound practices in class).