Category: Undercranking

  • Charlie Chaplin and a Stationary Horizon

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    Ben Model
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    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 that both the boat and…

  • Natural Movement and Don Juan

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    Ben Model
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    One of the main reasons a silent film is often run at a more gooey speed is that a decision had been made that it should have “natural motion”. Usually a projection speed in the 18 fps neighborhood. Even without documentation or a time machine, there is an easy way to see if this was…

  • The Speed Is Mutual

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    Ben Model
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    My rule of thumb with projection speeds and silent comedy films used to be guided by whether there were audience laughs or not. Later, once I’d done a lot of research into the difference between taking speed and projection speed and what films were run at during certain years, that was the second factor.  What’s…

  • Beating Someone To the Punch With an Edit

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    Ben Model
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    Some years ago, I made a project of deconstructing Buster Keaton’s The Goat (1921) in a series of undercranking studies that I posted to YouTube. In one of the segments, I’d pointed out a moment where an elision of time occurs through a very tidy edit, one where the sleight-of-hand of the undercranking speed-up in…