Art Beat Q & A: Ed Hartman brings Richard Lyford’s silent films back to life

Worldcon Film Festival

Friday, Aug.15 at noon

Seattle Convention Center (new Summit expansion), 900 Pine St., Seattle

Registration

Seattle Worldcon Film Festival will present a special screening of three films newly scored by local composer-producer Ed Hartman. The films focus on Seattle filmmaker Richard H. Lyford, whose early work remains largely obscure. This event is part of Worldcon, an annual international convention of the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS).

Born in Seattle in 1917, Lyford wrote 58 stage and screenplays and directed nine films –  all before the age of 20. In the 1930s, he converted the basement of his family’s Seattle home into a 50-seat theater, complete with a 12-foot proscenium arch. 

Working with a bare-bones budget, he shot on 16-millimeter film, experimented with cutting-edge special effects, and enlisted friends and family as cast and crew.

The Aug. 15 lineup includes The Scalpel (1936/2024), fully restored in 2024; As the Earth Turns (1937/2019); and Hartman’s own documentary, It Gets in Your Blood (2021). 

The man behind the music

Hartman has scored numerous features, shorts and documentaries, including Fitz, The Son, The Father and DACA: The Story of Dreamers. His music has appeared in television and film projects, such as The Blind Side, Stranger Things, The Twilight Zone and Scooby Doo! The Mystery Begins.

The story began in 2018 when Kim Lyford Bishop, the mother of one of Hartman’s percussion students, decided to take up percussion herself. Bishop came across a YouTube video Hartman had posted: An orchestral-style score he had created for a Buster Keaton silent.

Impressed by his work, she asked if he might consider scoring a 1930s silent sci-fi film As the Earth Turns made by her great-uncle, Richard Lyford. Hartman is now writing a screenplay based on Lyford’s first 20 years in Seattle.

The films

The Scalpel  (1936/2024)

The Scalpel was Lyford’s seventh film that he made when he was 19 and filmed in and around Seattle.

The short showcases advanced special effects for its time, including double exposures, transformations and macabre makeup. It has been featured in 159 film festivals and has earned 199 awards and nominations. The film features a new score by Hartman.

It Gets in Your Blood   (2021)

This documentary explores the life of Lyford, from his prolific teenage years to his work at Disney to the draft to his documentary The Titan: The Story of Michelangelo (1950). 

The film has screened at 128 festivals and received 113 awards and nominations.

As the Earth Turns (1937/2019)

A 45-minute silent sci-fi film, As the Earth Turns predicts themes of war, climate change and scientific ethics. Lyford stars as “PAX,” a scientist desperate to achieve global peace (“pax” is “peace” in Latin). Actress Barbara Berger plays Julie Weston, a female lead and investigative reporter.

The film has been screened in 123 festivals, received 136 awards and nominations and was featured on Turner Classic Movies. As the Earth Turns premiered at the Egyptian Theatre in Seattle in 2019 as part of the Seattle International Film Festival. Today, the film features a new score by Hartman.

Q&A with Ed Hartman

Hartman will appear in person for a live Q&A following the Worldcon screenings. Ahead of the event, My Edmonds News caught up with him to talk about the music and the stories behind the revived reels.

Nahline Gouin (NG): How did you first come across Richard Lyford’s work?

Ed Hartman (EH): So basically, the story goes back to 2013. There was a thread in a classic horror film chat group – people talking about a Halloween video called Monsters Crash the Pajama Party, and it was done by Something Weird, which is a distributor in Seattle. 

The people in the chat group – really smart folks – were able to figure out that a couple of fragments from that video were actually made by this guy named Richard Lyford. They had no idea who he was at first, but they researched the heck out of it. Eventually, they contacted the family. The fragments from the video were from Ritual of the Dead and The Scalpel.

Kim [Bishop] eventually took over the Lyford film estate from Chris Lyford and digitized all the films. In 2017, Kim asked me to score As the Earth Turns. [Bishop was taking percussion lessons from Hartman at the time].

I became a co-producer and got more involved. I edited the film and even found more footage. She eventually gave me the footage to take care of, and eventually, I ended up owning the film estate.

So fast forward to 2024, I’m preparing all these stock films, you know, 16 and 35-millimeter reels. We had already scanned everything, but then we discovered Periscope Films in Los Angeles, which is a stock and film archive. While going through the material, I found a [film] can I hadn’t seen before. As I started preparing it, I realized it was the first half of The Scalpel. The fragment we already had was the second half. We were able to edit the two together.

That discovery really launched this whole new adventure for me over the past 17 months or so. Now, here’s the really wild part – the second half of The Scalpel came from Lyford’s son, who lives in New York state. The first half came from right here in Seattle. And when we put them together, they edited perfectly. I mean, frame by frame – it just fits. So that tells you how this whole thing came together. It was completely serendipitous.

I had no idea any of this was going to happen, and it got me deeply involved – eventually taking over the film estate.

NG: What was your process like for composing scores for silent films from the 1930s?

EH: Well, before I even knew about Lyford’s experiments, I had already watched a lot of silent films. Turner Classic Movies has that “Silent Sunday Nights” series, and As the Earth Turns was actually featured on it. I’ve always personally preferred period-appropriate music for silent films. Some modern composers use electronic scores, but for me, with this material, I really wanted to do something that felt right for the era.

I borrowed a bit from 1940s film scores, especially Bernard Herrmann – he [scored] a lot of Alfred Hitchcock’s work. Adding an organ to some scenes was definitely a tribute to him. There’s something unearthly about that sound, which fits the sci-fi tone Lyford was working with.

The music I composed was orchestral but also included touches of light jazz – old-school stuff like clarinet and vibraphone. I’m a percussionist by training, so using a vibraphone came naturally to me. I also write a lot of period music for music libraries, and my work regularly appears in film and TV, so older styles are kind of my thing. I’ve always been drawn to Bach – his harmony and counterpoint are sort of at the center of how I approach composition.

With As the Earth Turns, I created distinct themes for individual characters – kind of in the style of Wagner or, more recently, what John Williams did with Star Wars. It’s not quite that linked up, but there are definite themes that follow characters throughout the film.

My process usually starts with sitting at the piano, playing along with the scene until I find something that fits emotionally. From there, I orchestrate it out. One of the big advantages now is technology. If I had tried this 20 years ago, it would’ve been incredibly difficult – or taken a whole lot more steps. But today, with digital audio workstations (DAW) I can load the scene into the software and score directly into the picture, synchronized frame by frame.

That allows you to hit exact timing – when someone swings a fist, or knocks somebody on the head, the music can land right with it. And though I’m creating the score digitally, I can always export it and have it performed by live musicians. These days, if you understand orchestration and how instruments work, you can make a virtual orchestra sound incredibly realistic.

Well, there’s no dialogue in these films, which actually makes it easier to mix and easier to score. I didn’t have to dodge around people talking or anything like that, so the music could take center stage. The score itself carries a lot of energy and emotional weight. It even plays a big role in the atmosphere and sound design.

I was very determined not to use cartoonish or artificial sound effects. Every sound you hear emanates from the orchestration itself. That’s something people have really responded to. It keeps the mood intact – almost dreamlike. If it were too realistic, I think it would pull you out of that feeling. It’s more like a ballet or an opera in that way – constant music that suspends you in the world of the film.

NG: How do you achieve the effect of sounding like there is a live orchestra accompanying the silent film?

EH: There actually are a lot of live instruments in it. But if you were to do a complete live orchestral score, it could cost half a million dollars. These projects just didn’t have the budget for something like that. So, we worked within what we had.

I think the secret to working with electronic composition is combining live and electronic features. If you’re creating electronic sounds from scratch – synthesized sounds – people are fine with that. It’s when you’re trying to imitate real instruments that you need to be really careful. That’s where understanding orchestration really matters – knowing how instruments are actually played.

It’s nice that you thought it sounded live, because honestly, I’m never 100% sure the listener will buy it. I’d honestly rather not talk about it too much and just let people assume what they will. But yeah – such is life.

NG: Would you someday like to see it recreated as an actual live performance?

EH: Oh yeah, absolutely. But it would take a lot of work. I’d need help preparing those scores for live orchestras, and you’d need rehearsals, of course. There are film festivals that specialize in that kind of thing, and [have] chamber orchestras that use maybe 20 players.

But these particular scores –  especially As the Earth Turns – they sound really big. A full orchestral kind of sound. So it might be tough to pull off unless you had a major symphony involved, maybe through a grant or something. Still, that would be a total highlight. It would be incredible.

NG: What makes The Scalpel and As the Earth Turns stand out artistically or technically among other silent films of that era?

EH: Well, the first thing you have to understand is Lyford was in his teens when he made these films. That alone sets them apart.

If you try to compare The Scalpel to something like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from 1931, which was an Academy Award-winning film with groundbreaking special effects for its time – it’s remarkable what Lyford accomplished. That film had a transformation sequence people talked about for decades. It was shot by Karl Struss, a top cinematographer.

Now imagine this: Lyford pulled off a similar transformation sequence in The Scalpel when he was just 19, working alone in Seattle with a 16mm camera and developing the film himself. He was using lighting tricks and technical effects that simply weren’t known or accessible outside of Hollywood.

How he figured it all out, I can’t even say. He somehow made trips to Los Angeles, and while I don’t think he met Struss, he worked things out on his own. He also wrote several articles for American Cinematographer in the 1930s, which is amazing. Filmmakers in their 60s are still trying to get published in that magazine today. He wrote them in his 20s. 

There was a pretty big amateur filmmaking network back then, and American Cinematographer had a whole section devoted to amateur filmmakers. That’s where Lyford documented his sound experiments and visual effects. Other filmmakers in the scene even wrote about his work.

As the Earth Turns includes laser shots and other sci-fi visuals that weren’t all that different from Flash Gordon, which came out just a year or two later. Lyford’s storytelling was strong. He wrote 58 stage and screenplays before his early 20s. So even without a big budget or high-end equipment, he had what mattered: He could tell a good story. And if you don’t have that, all the CGI in the world won’t save your film.

This was all done with no money. He cast his friends and family – many from Franklin High School and filmed around Seattle and the surrounding areas. He even shot guerrilla-style in places like Gas Works. There’s a scene where the characters escape by jumping a big cement fence. They were running from security – that was real! They had no permits. It was classic guerrilla filmmaking.

So you have to look at all this in the context of the era. For a teenager in 1930s Seattle to be doing this kind of technically and artistically ambitious work…it’s just astonishing.

NG: What surprised you most in your research for It Gets in Your Blood?

EH: Well, you know, I feel very close to Lyford at this point, just because I’ve been involved in his work for so long – five, seven years, something like that. There are so many stories. Like, I know that he did a kind of crazy version of Dracula in third grade, and it was so gory that they [Lyford and students] actually got suspended for a couple of days. You want to see that in a movie. That’s just one of the moments that really foreshadows the kinds of things he would do later in film. You see those early instincts in his later work.

One story that really stands out: I believe it was As the Earth Turns that almost didn’t make it into a competition. He only had 48 hours to finish a film to meet the deadline, so he wrote, shot and completed a whole movie in two days. He played five out of six parts himself, and he got it in on time.

The documentary took about a year or two to assemble. What’s interesting is, when I was a kid, I had Super 8 cameras – I was just writing about this in a newsletter I do for composers about music licensing and scoring. I was thinking about how early interests develop, and I remembered this toy someone posted about on Facebook: A Kenner Give-A-Show projector. It was this little 8mm projector, battery-powered or wind-up, and I think I had a cartridge of cartoons for it.

So everyone has these weird little things in childhood that sort of create some of the early interests. For me, that turned into filmmaking. I got a Super 8 camera and started making these little amateur films, and I always wanted to add music to them. They were silent, obviously, but it’s kind of ironic now because I ended up in the same position as Lyford: Scoring silent films. At that time, sound wasn’t accessible – certainly not in Seattle – so I found out he used turntables, just like how Hollywood originally synced sound to film. Except he was doing it in his basement.

There’s this weird parallel I have with Lyford. I could’ve easily gone into film if music hadn’t taken over. I was always teetering between the two. That’s part of what made this documentary project so wild for me. It was like coming full circle.

With his screenplay The Filmmaker in the works and several of Lyford’s films still presumed lost, Hartman continues his mission to unearth a cinematic legacy.

More information about the films and Hartman’s work can be found on his website, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.