Ben Model’s blog

The unique form of Silent Film allowed the performers, directors, scenarists, gag writers and stunt performers to unleash their imaginations. The medium became for them a jumping off point into what turned out to be the universe of Silent Film,… Read More »From Stage to Silent Screen

Buster Keaton said in interviews that one of the challenges of moving into feature-length was that you couldn’t do “impossible gags”. Everyone had to give this up when sound came in. Keaton was referring to gags that didn’t have to… Read More »“Impossible” Gags

I’m not sure exactly how this happens, but the pauses the performers insert so that “one thing and one thing only must be done at a time”, as Sills describes…disappear. A magician will practice a move or moves over and… Read More »Ironing Out Wrinkles

The “deliberate tempo” Milton Sills writes of was one of two things I picked up on when I began watching silent comedy film sequences at cranking speed. The other performance facet was one that reminded me of something I learned… Read More »Physical Commas

Milton Sills was a huge star of the silent era. His name and face may be unfamiliar today but he would have been an ideal “get” for Encyclopedia Brittanica to write about screen acting techniques for its 14th edition, published… Read More »Adopting a More Deliberate Tempo

I’d been waving a “smoking gun” I’d been alerted to verifying the concept and technique of acting for an undercranked camera for some time when I was alerted to another one. A much earlier one. The one I’d been jumping… Read More »“Slow Motion Acting”

Once I discovered or realized this notion that people making silent comedies, and Silent Film in general, were aware of the difference between “taking” and projection speeds, I became fascinated with pulling back the curtain to see what this looked… Read More »Adjusting Performance for Silent Film’s Speed-Up

I’d always been fascinated with and puzzled by the way silent movies are shown faster than they were filmed at and yet does not look like film that’s sped up. Pulling apart this gag in Chaplin’s “A Dog’s Life” pulled… Read More »Silent Comedy Sleight-of-Hand

There was something slightly unsettling about the employment office sequence I saw in the “The Chaplin Revue” (1959) of “A Dog’s Life”. It wasn’t just that it felt like it was running too slow. An easy call to make but… Read More »The Camera-Performer Collaboration of Silent Film