Ben Model’s blog
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In July 2018, one year after I released the restoration of When Knighthood Was in Flower on Blu-ray and DVD, I received an email from CreateSpace, Amazon’s manufacture-on-demand outfit for books, DVDs and CDs. Its subject line read “Important announcement regarding CreateSpace and Disc on Demand”. I thought “Okay, this…
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For Some Fans, the Step Up to Blu-ray Means Replacing the Fridge
The advent of Blu-ray wasn’t the sea-change that CDs were for vinyl or that DVDs were for VHS. Similarly there isn’t a one-size fits all scenario as far as consumers’ opinions and uses of the format. This is part of what has complicated my decision to Blu-ray or not to…
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The Blu-ray Difference is Green
Selling pressed or replicated product comes with additional steps and mental labor. Depending on your level of patience or available time, it may be worth the trip. When you have no choice in the matter and have to go with door number two, the cost difference is a bit of…
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Being The Warehouse
In my last post I mentioned some of the basic technological differences between pressed and burned product, replicated and duplicated. With DVDs the choice between the two isn’t as large a financial outlay as it is with Blu-ray. But the cost and the order fulfillment hassle with pressed, for an…
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Pressed DVDs vs. Burned
In my previous post about my 3-year journey with a Blu-ray release, I mentioned two kinds of discs — pressed and burned. You may not be aware of these two kinds of discs and may not even know whether you’re watching one or the other. The difference is hard to…
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Why Isn’t This on Blu-ray? – a blog series
I get asked “are you going to release that on Blu-ray?” every time I do a Kickstarter. For the fan and consumer, the difference between DVD and Blu-ray is very simple: a few dollars more at the pump (if that) and the image quality is better. For the independent producer-distributor…
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Battling the Elements at 16 Frames Per Second
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 the second reel of The Boat (1921) something of an…
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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 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 are silent era mood cues and cue sheets, Marion Davies…
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ep. 37: Mostly Lost, Keaton’s The Cameraman and The General, an electric organ and Laurel & Hardy
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 for “Spite Marriage”, the challenge of introducing and presenting “The…
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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 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 over missing footage; playing the theatre organ like it’s an…