Ben Model’s blog
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MoMA’s Arthur Kleiner – Moods on Vinyl
When I was in college, I played for a silent film course taught by MoMA’s Charles Silver. Charles loaned me a few LPs to listen to, since I was new to this. One of the records was Musical Moods from the Silent Films, by Arthur Kleiner. When I gave the…
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“Silent Speed” and 16mm Projectors
There is a notion that silent films should be shown at what is often referred to as “silent speed”, or 18 frames per second. In the silent era, motion picture projectors were hand-cranked and, later, motorized but with rheostats. A question I’ve pondered for some time is: where does the…
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Story Structure, John Badham and Lajos Egri
When I was in graduate film school, different film directors or industry professionals would come to the school to screen a new film and talk about it. I got an answer to something that’s helped me many times with projects from a Q&A we had with director John Badham, who’d…
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Colleen Moore’s Earliest Surviving Feature
I’ve recorded a lot of scores for DVD releases, and it’s always interesting to me which ones stick in my mind, and which ones don’t…and everything in between. Creating is such a subjective process and it’s almost impossible to foretell the audience’s experience either during a show or with a…
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Cut To The Horse
Accompanying Keaton’s Our Hospitality this past weekend reminded me of a silent comedy trope I’ve become aware of. It’s one that may have hit my radar because of how it’s handled in the language of silent film, and because of my accompanist’s spidey-sense signaling there’s a laugh here than may…
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Keaton’s Leap to Features
Keaton’s Our Hospitality is one of my favorites of his feature films, and for the same reason One Week is one of my top picks for the shorts. It’s not just about the smartness of the gags or the overall structure or the physical stunts for me. It’s Keaton’s progression…
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Straddling Cutaways
There’s a moment in Vidor’s The Crowd that I handle in a similar way to a moment toward the end of Hands Up! with Raymond Griffith. The effect I like to think what I’ve done on the Vidor had is what prompted me to use it on the Griffith. It’s…