I often bring rugelach from Zabars as a professional gift. People really like it, and Zabars is 8 blocks away from our building. When I tossed bags of the stuff to Frank Santopadre and Gilbert Gottfried while unpacking my keyboard… Read More »Rugelach and Gilbert Gottfried: the Gifts that Keep on Giving
Ever slam your hand in a door? This is what we played with in the last of the five videos. There’s a way to do this safely and make it look real, using the ersatz sleight-of-hand of the speed-up of… Read More »Exploring the Speed of Silent Comedy Film – test #5
One of the facets of silent film, and silent film comedy, is that since the film overall is being projected faster than taking speed, you can take individual shots at different speeds. When run together, the viewer won’t see the… Read More »Exploring the Speed of Silent Comedy Film – test #4
There are a few sequences in Chaplin’s “The Pawnshop” (1916) where Charlie and co-worker John Rand engage in slapstick hitting fights. It’s almost a running theme throughout the film, and they’re executed with precision by two clowns who really know… Read More »Exploring the Speed of Silent Comedy Film – test #3
One of the gags I’ve seen in silent comedies many times that’s really something you’d typically see in an animated cartoon. The trick is in creating the illusion of someone weighing a fraction of what they actually do. Usually one… Read More »Exploring the Speed of Silent Comedy Film – test #2
One of my fascinations with silent film is with how it is that it is shown faster than the speed at which it was shot, but doesn’t look it. Once I figured out that the secret is in adjusting the… Read More »Exploring the Speed of Silent Comedy Film – test #1
I discovered this little nugget about film projection speed in a January 1916 issue of Moving Picture World, a trade magazine published throughout the silent film era. It’s rare to find mentions of a film’s running speed in the trades,… Read More »“Her Painted Hero”, Shot Through a Projector
The possibility of releasing on Blu-ray without the required huge costs and the risks of unsold discs that come with pressed product will be here in 2021. What does that mean for me? And what does that mean for you?… Read More »To Blu or Not To Blu – Some Final Thoughts
In July 2018, one year after I released the restoration of When Knighthood Was in Flower on Blu-ray and DVD, I received an email from CreateSpace, Amazon’s manufacture-on-demand outfit for books, DVDs and CDs. Its subject line read “Important announcement… Read More »Physical Media: “I’m Not Dead Yet”
The advent of Blu-ray wasn’t the sea-change that CDs were for vinyl or that DVDs were for VHS. Similarly there isn’t a one-size fits all scenario as far as consumers’ opinions and uses of the format. This is part of… Read More »For Some Fans, the Step Up to Blu-ray Means Replacing the Fridge