Ben Model’s blog
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The crowdfunding phase of my Douglas MacLean DVD project just concluded. I like to refer to the process as “fan-funding”. It’s not so much a crowd that’s funding these projects, to me — it’s a loyal, enthusiastic and interested consortium of fans who are backing the Undercrank productions I’m undertaking.…
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Musty Boxes Wolheim to Save Harrison Ford’s Bacon
I should know if Harry Watson, Jr. and Marion Davies appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies together (alas, for the moment, I don’t). If they didn’t, Watson was certainly on Davies’ radar as he has supporting character roles in two of her features, films made half a dozen years after his…
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Charlie Chaplin and a Stationary Horizon
Something occurred to me during a screening of Chaplin’s The Immigrant (1917) that I was accompanying for a school group several years ago. I knew the scene at the beginning where the boat is rocking was shot with the camera on a sort of pendulum to create the illusion, so…
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Mail-Order Netflix – in 1912
Several decades before Netflix offered home viewers of Hollywood films the opportunity to order-rent them by mail on DVD, the same opportunity existed. 16mm versions of movies shown in theaters were offered in the 1920s and 1930s by the Kodascope Library, the Universal Show-At-Home LIbrary and others. There was another…
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Lee Erwin And…Nas?
A Silent Film Cue Played on a Wurlitzer Gets Sampled On A Rap Record Lee Erwin’s silent film scores are not that easy to find and listen to. Luckily the tracks he recorded for several Buster Keaton features are on the now out-of-print “ultimate edition” DVD and Blu-ray releases from…
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Playing The Audience In To A Film
I don’t remember how or when I started doing this, but I’m certain it’s something I picked up or learned from Lee Erwin. I start playing before the film begins. I’m pretty sure it’s a traditional way to begin a show that theatre organists use and have used since the…
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Who Wants to Watch a Lost Silent Film About Watches?
Back when my interest in film collecting had whittled itself down to trying to pick up silent comedy shorts in 16mm that no one was bidding on on eBay, I turned up what turned out to be a lost film. It’s the most viewed video on my YouTube channel. It’s…
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Accidentally Preserved by the Kinetophone
When the Thomas Edison Company set out to make its sound films in 1913, preservation wasn’t necessarily what they were going for. However, what survives of the Kinetophone films allows the viewer of today a very special window into the past. The system was complicated, at times fussy, and required…
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A Head Start on a Kickstarter
My current Kickstarter funded in 9 hours. This is not an anomaly for me. My last one funded in 8, the previous one in 12, and the one before that in 8. These, like all 8 of the crowdfunding campaigns I’ve done since 2012, were for DVDs of silent movies…
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Marcel Perez: One Name Behind the Camera
Marcel Perez kept revising his onscreen persona and his character’s name throughout his career. His years working in the U.S. Found him sporting three different character names, and a different costume and persona each time he changed distributors. But one thing remained constant throughout all of this. He is always…