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
When you work in a niche-market end of the arts – and a niche-within-a-niche-within-a-niche market, at that – you dream of building a huge audience for what you do. It’s easy to think it may be easier to do now,… Read More »Marketing Lesson: Tending the Garden
The silence in Silent Film can be selective. It’s not just the fact that there were no microphones during filming. The characters onscreen could be selective about the absence of sound or a particular sound. And as the audience, we… Read More »Cows? What cows…?
I thoroughly enjoyed presenting and live-scoring Keaton’s Go West (1925) for the Cinema Arts Centre via live-stream last night! Our monthly series will continue online for the remainder of 2021, and possibly longer even after the CAC resumes in-person screenings.… Read More »Keaton’s “Go West” live-streamed
I’m trotting out this rare silent short for the holiday weekend. It’s “The Story of the Star Spangled Banner” (1921). Best I have been able to figure out is that it was released by Pathé Exchange and was made available… Read More »“The Story of the Star Spangled Banner” (1921)
What struck me and stayed with me for years was the scene in A Dog’s Life (1918) where Charlie is in an employment office. As presented in The Chaplin Revue (1959), the film was step-printed so that it would be… Read More »When Charlie Chaplin Isn’t Quite Charlie Chaplin
At some point when I was in college or somewhere in my 20s, I saw “The Chaplin Revue” at the Carnegie Hall Cinema, also known as the Little Carnegie. Lee Erwin accompanied the film on the theater’s Wurlitzer organ, and… Read More »Charlie Chaplin, Step By Step
In the same way that silent film can be over-sped, with variable speed projection as an option there’s also the possibility of a film being run a bit slower than it ought to be. This can be pretty subjective. But… Read More »Herky-Jerky Movements, Un-herked and Un-jerked