Ben Model’s blog
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It may be sacrilege to add music to the 1931 Dracula, and it might also be a great idea. It wasn’t until ten or fifteen minutes into a sound-check/run-through last year that I realized…hey, this is gonna work. The two shows I did last year at both the Library of…
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My New Vlog – And Theda Bara
I don’t know what possessed me to do this, but I’ve started a vlog. I may not have the patience or stamina to stick with it, and I value blogging. Making myself write on a regular basis has helped me a lot. But I wanted to see if doing something…
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Scoring a Chaplin Mutual –What’s in a Name?
In revisiting one of Chaplin’s best comedy shorts, one of my and many others’ favorites, I noticed something slightly unusual about its title. I wrote my first orchestral score for a silent film – this one – about twenty years ago, and it was time it got a gut-renovation. But,…
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A 1950s Baby Grand for 1910s-1920s Films
“It was Blanchette Rockefeller’s piano,” I was told when I was introduced to the instrument in 2003. This was at the Gramercy Theatre on West 23rd Street, and when I arrived was greeted in the auditorium by Ethel Shein. And by the Steinway baby grand. This was during the last…
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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…