<P> Until 1927, motion pictures were produced without sound . This era is referred to as the silent era of film . To enhance the viewers' experience, silent films were commonly accompanied by live musicians in an orchestra, a theatre organ, and sometimes sound effects and even commentary spoken by the showman or projectionist . In most countries, intertitles came to be used to provide dialogue and narration for the film, thus dispensing with narrators, but in Japanese cinema human narration remained popular throughout the silent era . The technical problems were resolved by 1923 . </P> <P> Illustrated songs were a notable exception to this trend that began in 1894 in vaudeville houses and persisted as late as the late 1930s in film theaters . Live performance or sound recordings were paired with hand - colored glass slides projected through stereopticons and similar devices . In this way, song narrative was illustrated through a series of slides whose changes were simultaneous with the narrative development . The main purpose of illustrated songs was to encourage sheet music sales, and they were highly successful with sales reaching into the millions for a single song . Later, with the birth of film, illustrated songs were used as filler material preceding films and during reel changes . </P> <P> The 1914 The Photo - Drama of Creation was a non-commercial attempt to combine the motion picture with a combination of slides and synchronize the resulting moving picture with audio . The film included hand - painted slides as well as other previously used techniques . Simultaneously playing the audio while the film was being played with a projector was required . Produced by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania (Jehovah's Witnesses), this eight--hour bible drama was being shown in 80 cities every day and almost eight million people in the United States and Canada saw the presentation . </P> <P> The first eleven years of motion pictures show the cinema moving from a novelty to an established large - scale entertainment industry . The films represent a movement from films consisting of one shot, completely made by one person with a few assistants, towards films several minutes long consisting of several shots, which were made by large companies in something like industrial conditions . </P>

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