They cannot take their eyes off the movie screen for more than a few seconds. Their fingers fly through action scenes and lovingly stroke notes from their keyboards as actors gaze into one another's eyes.
These musicians in the New York region are among the few remaining practitioners of a nearly lost art: composing and performing accompaniment for silent films.The job calls for intense focus, stamina and a genuine love for these old movies, said Steve Sterner of Manhattan, who has performed at the Film Forum in the South Village for about 15 years. Sterner, 48, plays for series there about 30 days a year. The rest of the time he works as an actor, pianist and musical director.
"You just get so wrapped up in the movie and often forget the audience is there," said Sterner, who has played piano for at least 230 films. "But it can also take a lot out of you, especially films that have a lot of action sequences."
To prepare, he screens each movie on video or in the theater; takes pages of notes on action, characters and subjects, and composes general themes for each. He estimates that it takes eight to 10 hours to prepare for a show.
During a recent showing of "Girl Shy," a hopping Harold Lloyd film from 1924 that includes an action scene nearly 30 minutes long, Sterner's skills were put to the test. The film is one of the most difficult he has worked with, he said.
"The chase scene is just so long, it's tough to keep up with everything," he said, "and you want to get all the falls and effects."
Sterner also recently played for showings of Erich von Stroheim's "Merry-Go-Round" (1922) and for Lloyd's "For Heaven's Sake" (1926) at the Film Forum in Manhattan.
Sterner and a handful of others in New York who play music for silent films said the best compliment they could get was to have members of the audience say they forgot about the musician after awhile.
"You only want to complement the film and help the viewers get into it, not to draw attention to yourself," Sterner said.
Moviegoers said he succeeded. "He was right there near me, and I thought it was interesting to watch him," Paul Zimmer-man, said. "But after awhile I was just so into the movie that he left my field of view."
That reaction is one Lee Erwin likes, too. A legend in the silent film music business, Erwin, a 90-year-old organist, has performed in theaters across the world. He has recorded scores for dozens of silent films -- including the works of Lloyd, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton -- in his apartment near Union Square. The recordings were added to films and sold to theaters.
Some silent movies had scores written for them, but for many, a pianist or an organist composed music on the spot.