A more organic take on ‘Phantom of the Opera’

The Phantom is back and playing a somewhat different tune, or at least organist Steven Ball will be. Ball will accompany the 1925 silent film “The Phantom of the Opera” on the Skinner organ in Royce Hall this Saturday at 8 p.m.

“Given the fact that about 90 to 95 percent of all silent films are lost completely … I think it’s important that we preserve what’s left because we have as few films from the silent period as we do medieval pottery ““ most of it’s gone, and so what remains is very important,” said Jan-Christopher Horak, director of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

Motion pictures present an expression of our national culture and history in an immediate and visual manner, according to Horak, who worked with George Eastman House on preserving the vintage classic.

“I think (live music) is great because it is (like) the golden age of silent films ““ this is exactly what they did when the film was originally screened in movie houses across the country,” said Phil Rosenthal, director of marketing and communications at UCLA Live.

During the 1920s, an organist took over the role of an orchestra and played alongside silent films because it was easier for one musician, the organist, to remain in sync with the film score than a larger number of musicians in the orchestra, according to Ball.

“Doing a (live) performance is a way of both demonstrating what the original function of organs in theaters was … but it’s also keeping alive the tradition of art accompaniment,” Ball said.

In addition to recreating the traditional atmosphere for silent films, Ball also assembled the score in accordance with the time period by adding his own compositions to the original piece, according to Ball.

“Music is so crucial to movies in general, and how its used to enhance a scene or a dramatic turn, or convey emotion on the screen ““ however, when (music) is done live, I think it is just all that more exciting for the audience,” Rosenthal said.

In this version of “Phantom of the Opera,” there is a brief sequence of color to the black and white film as the Phantom makes a dramatic entrance into the ballroom with his extravagant red cape, Rosenthal said.

“An organ is like an artist’s pallet, and every artist uses their pallet in a different way. … What an organ is an enormous library of different sound “˜colors,’ of all sorts of descriptions: high and low, bright and dark, powerful and soft,” Ball said.

According to Ball, the organ’s magic lies in its ability to imitate nature with the help of the organist’s imagination and the organ’s ability to support any emotion.

“Unlike the experience of watching a film score on a DVD where the film score is forever the same ““ a fixed medium ““ there is really a relationship (as) the organist learns what the audience reacts to in the film and plays off of that,” Ball said.

According to Ball, the live dynamic allows the audience to react in different ways to the film’s suspense or humor. “One of the first things you have to realize about a film player is that to do it well, you have to take your ego completely out of the performance because, if you do your job well, you will disappear for the audience in just a few minutes,” Ball said.

Having live music accompany film makes the viewing experience more immediate and theatrical, according to Horak.

“One of my best friends, Rosa Rio … told me, “˜You know it’s not really a mistake, Steven, that the musicians in the pit sit between the audience and the film because their role is to really draw the audience into the film and make that experience their experience.’ I thought it was a very beautiful way of describing it,” Ball said.