Buster Keaton had an astounding grasp of what works at what cranking speed and how best to compensate for these frame rates physically. It’s part of his comedic toolbox and was part of his filmic style. This is what makes… Read More »Battling the Elements at 16 Frames Per Second
On this episode Ben talks about meeting an audience’s expectations of a score when a certain piece of music or style is indicated onscreen, and in a rare case of a non-narrative film made after the silent era. Also covered… Read More »ep. 38: scoring for scenes that suggest or specify a piece of music, and scoring a film from 1948
On this episode Ben talks about: the annual Mostly Lost film identification workshop at the Library of Congress, currently postponed until 2021; underscoring a key scene in Keaton’s “The Cameraman” and noticing a parallel with “Singin’ In The Rain”, playing… Read More »ep. 37: Mostly Lost, Keaton’s The Cameraman and The General, an electric organ and Laurel & Hardy
On this episode Ben talks about: using music an audience may or may not expect to hear during a film in preparing scores for shows of Fairbanks’ “Robin Hood” and Raoul Walsh’s “Loves of Carmen”; using underscore to help smooth… Read More »ep. 36: scoring Robin Hood and a 1927 Carmen, using the orchestral and cartoony sounds of a theatre organ, more live-streaming
On this episode, Ben Model talks with co-host Kerr Lockhart talk about a cancelled gig at the Metropolitan Museum of Art turning into an online one, Gage County Nebraska and Hollywood, accompanying Russian silent films, scoring a French film for… Read More »ep. 35: Pottery at the Met, Behind the Door in Nebraska, Eisenstein in Bklyn, Clair on Long Island, plus FAQ
On this episode of the podcast, Ben Model discusses the creation of the Silent Comedy Watch Party and the response so far; talks about teaching his silent film course at Wesleyan using Zoom; shares an excerpt from his score for… Read More »ep. 34: the Silent Comedy Watch Party, scoring Hitchcock, “Intrigue” and Nell Shipman, plus FAQ
There are two things I often have to ask a theatre to adjust when I arrive at a new venue. One is that the piano be turned around so it’s not facing the audience, and the other is to turn… Read More »Live Accompaniment and Air Conditioning
There’s a reason a lot of home movies or home videos are hard to watch and that so many photos look like “snapshots”. Most of the time the person taking these isn’t thinking of how this will look to whoever… Read More »Hey…Your Eyes Are Up Here
Believe it or not, I have not been able to find answers to two basic questions about YouTube live-streaming. They’re issues I’ve been noticing for the last four weeks on the Silent Comedy Watch Party, and I can’t believe that… Read More »Over-scans and Purple-Green Bands
John Bunny enjoyed a popularity in his day that has evaporated with time. To some extent that process began right at the end of his screen career. The mid-‘teens saw the rise of slapstick in the manic Keystone comedies and… Read More »Revisiting the Films of John Bunny