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First horror movie given musical accompaniment

What : The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari Where : Cinecenta, Student Union Building at the University of Victoria When : Wednesday, Feb. 14, 7:15 p.m. Tickets : $7.75 ($5.
Dr. Caligari.jpg
A scene from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. You can see the film while listening to Thomas Shields's score at Cinecenta, in the University of Victoria's Student Union Building, on Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2018.

What: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Where: Cinecenta, Student Union Building at the University of Victoria
When: Wednesday, Feb. 14, 7:15 p.m.
Tickets: $7.75 ($5.75 for students, seniors and children)

Film scores are full of musical intricacies that escape most of us. Would a casual observer notice the 50-string monochord with adaptable bridges on Howard Shore’s soundtrack to The Lord of the Rings? Not likely. But it’s there, and for a good reason.

Thomas Shields, who composes live soundtracks as accompaniment for silent films at the University of Victoria’s Cinecenta theatre, is one who would notice. He has assembled a bank of synthesizers, sequencers, drum machines and other instruments for his upcoming performance, an original score for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, a 1920 silent film from German director Robert Wiene.

Shields started with the premise that no sound is too strange or too small for inclusion. He even constructed some instruments for his 75-minute score, including a “hunk of wood” to which several interesting objects are attached.

“It’s got some contact microphones in it and a whole bunch of things that make crazy sounds,” he said. “A door stopper, a Slinkee, a thumb piano.”

Shields will have the invention with him when he performs at a screening of the film at Cinecenta on Wednesday.

When it’s struck, the sound his “hunk of wood” creates goes through a pitchshifter, which enables Shields to increase or decrease the pitch of the audio by three octaves. The resulting sound then goes into a device that triggers a series of electro-mechanical motors, creating a complex loop of music.

“I have good knowledge of the movie, so I know exactly what’s coming up,” Shields said. “There’s a lot of improvisation, but I always know what mood I’m going for and what I’m going to do at a certain part. It’s just how I execute that which varies.”

The film, about an insane hypnotist who convinces a man to commit murder, is widely regarded as the world’s first horror movie, and its glorious set decoration has inspired legions of filmmakers. With a cult following in expressionist cinema circles, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari has become fodder worldwide for several score treatments similar to the one Shields is doing.

The practice is not new to Shields. Over the past decade and a half, the co-founder of local electronic duo Righteous Rainbows of Togetherness has written and performed original scores for silent films Metropolis, Nosferatu, Battleship Potemkin and The Passion of Joan of Arc, among others.

He tackled The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari a few years ago, but with a four-person ensemble. He’ll go at it alone on Wednesday, which is not nearly the daunting task it was years ago, when he was forced to lug all sorts of bulky gear into Cinecenta.

The advent of digital technology has eased the burden, both in terms of the amount of gear Shields uses and the availability of silent films suitable for scoring. “When I first started out, there was a choice of about four silent movies available. We had to find film prints and the prints would show up with scenes missing. The film would break. Now, everything’s available — it’s just a question of sifting through them and finding ones that would be a good fit.”

That “good fit” has been limited to silent films that are dark and moody, but Shields hopes to one day be able to accompany movies by Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin.

“I still haven’t figured out how to do jolly and lighthearted yet. I’ve mucked about with a couple like that, but it just wasn’t really gelling. It’s not the movies, it’s me. I guess I have a limited emotional palette to deal with.”

mdevlin@timescolonist.com