Author: Ben Model
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Where is the Hollywood Series?
On April 13, 2019 at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, Kevin Brownlow was presented with the 2nd Robert Osborne Award. Last year’s recipient was Martin Scorcese. The ceremony was held on the Saturday night of the 10th annual TCM Classic Film Series, before a screening of a new digital restoration of Brownlow’s film It Happened…
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Bringing the Movie Palace Sound To A Theater Near You
Some shows I do are B.Y.O.O. — Bring Your Own Organ. Perhaps I should say “bring my own organ”, as it’s usually my idea to bring a portable Wurlitzer to your theater. Who thinks of that? Usually, the request is “can you bring a keyboard?”. But thanks to virtual instrument software and some basic MIDI…
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Called On The (Red) Carpet
This was my second time doing the red carpet event on opening night of the TCM Classic Film Festival. Why was a silent film accompanist invited to walk down the red carpet? Who knows? It was part of the invite for the opening night, and — once again, like last year — I figured…”what the…
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When A Loveseat Is Not a Sofa
There is a warning that appears at the beginning of many Scott Joplin piano rags. I remember seeing this in high school when I was learning a lot of the pieces. It is a note from the composer himself, admonishing pianists not to play the piece fast, that it is never correct to play ragtime…
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Beating Someone To the Punch With an Edit
Some years ago, I made a project of deconstructing Buster Keaton’s The Goat (1921) in a series of undercranking studies that I posted to YouTube. In one of the segments, I’d pointed out a moment where an elision of time occurs through a very tidy edit, one where the sleight-of-hand of the undercranking speed-up in…
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Kovacs and Kapusta Puppets by Larry Berthelson
Ernie Kovacs must have had an inkling that his viewership on the half-hour comedy-variety show he did late mornings on NBC in 1955-1956 would include children. Why else would a puppet show have been a staple of the program’s regular sketches right from the start? Kovacs had certainly been no stranger to the mid-morning time…
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Scoring a Silent Film in a Vacuum
Recording a New Piano Soundtrack for The Bride’s Play starring Marion Davies, Aided by a Live Show Experience The hardest part of creating a silent film score for DVD/Blu-ray release is that you’re composing-improvising-performing the score in a vacuum. You’re not recording in the same environment that you perform in, the one where a factor…
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Improvising A Silent Film Score: Now, and Then
There was no one way all film was accompanied musically during the silent film era. There was a range. A wide range. Everything from a solo upright to a full symphony. Everything from fully written-out composed scores published, disseminated, rehearsed and performed meticulously…to a blind person with a friend or spouse seated beside them on…
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Scoring Something Good
Every once in a while, I’ll hear or be told about some new amazing silent film discovery being shown at some festivals I don’t get to play at. It happens, I would imagine, with some of my colleagues, as well as with fans who don’t live near those festivals. I’ve learned to tell myself, “That’s…
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Will the Real Reelcraft Main Title Please Stand Up?
One of the bits of restoration work that went into The Alice Howell Collection DVD set was creating new main titles and credits for some of the films. Where possible. And that happened in varying degrees, depending on the studio. I was able to access frame grabs of Century Comedies from 1920 to use as…