Now Playing on Harpodeon

[dustin@harpodeon.com]

Wow! I did not know this.

Yeah, it shows how very little silent films were thought of until recently. And for some studios, even now. And it’s very little wonder — there isn’t a wide audience for silents. I peg the worldwide market at about 5,000. Some say that’s wildly optimistic and the actual consumer base and not just well-wishers is nearer to 1,000. A title that sells even a hundred copies is an unquestioned success and five hundred is cause to break out the champagne.

Different from the Others looked as good as it did because I ran a digital film cleaner on it. I don’t usually do that because it creates so much more work and I’m usually working alone. You wouldn’t think a digital cleaner would create work, being that it’s automated, but the simplified way they work is this:

They take adjacent frames and find the differences between them. They then see if those differences correspond to similar differences in the second next or second previous frame. If they do, they’re legitimate motion, and it leaves them alone. If they don’t, it considers them dirt on the film and paints them in with image data from other frames.

The thing is, it’s really hard for a computer to tell what’s legitimate motion. You can set them weak enough that they don’t erase anything they shouldn’t, but then they tend not to erase anything at all; or you can set them so they take out almost all the dirt, but then they tend erase any fast-moving objects.

The classic example of too aggressive digital cleaning was the first Criterion release of Citizen Kane, where the rainy scenes suddenly weren’t rainy anymore. What you’ve got to do, and what I did for Different from the Others, is set it to clean away the dirt and then go through the video, frame by frame, painting back in from the original video everything the cleaner took out by mistake. If I did that for every video, I couldn’t even try to do one a month.

I’m very late in posting this and there’s only eight days left, but the current video is Let’s Build (1923), the first episode of The Spat Family series, where newlyweds Angelica and J. Tewkesbury Spat with Mrs. Spat’s brother Ambrose build a house that’s finished in just 48 hours, but they may not have exactly followed the kit directions. A flagrant rip-off of One Week (1920). It’s sourced from a home movie abridgement from what was originally a two-reeler, although the plot is essentially unchanged.

[donnie]

Different from the Others looked as good as it did because I ran a digital film cleaner on it....What you’ve got to do, and what I did for Different from the Others, is set it to clean away the dirt and then go through the video, frame by frame, painting back in from the original video everything the cleaner took out by mistake. If I did that for every video, I couldn’t even try to do one a month.

Interesting information! Wow, does that sound labor intensive. How do you paint back in?

I’m very late in posting this and there’s only eight days left, but the current video is Let’s Build (1923)...

That’s an amusing one. With a distinctly odd ending! And a lot of trouble and expense for the collapsing house.

[dustin@harpodeon.com]

Interesting information! Wow, does that sound labor intensive. How do you paint back in?

In days long ago I used to be a programmer and most of the software I use I've written myself. The program I use for retouching films, in addition to sourcing from other frames in the sequence or "smart" recovering from the frame itself, can also load two frame sequences, one cleaned and one original. It's a fairly simple matter of stepping through the sequences, flipping back and forth between the two, and just selecting the brush size and clicking on the cleaned sequence the parts you want to copy from the original sequence. As I said, very simple, but time consuming.

[BettyLouSpence]

That was an entertaining little short. I think my favorite bit is at the beginning, where they're on the hammock and she slaps him to sit down, causing the hammock to fall. Simple but effective.

[dustin@harpodeon.com]

The Sawdust Ring (Kay-Bee Pictures, 1917)
Janet (Bessie Love) sets out to find her circus ringleader father, who her mother abandoned believing him to be unfaithful. Along the way, Janet and her friend Peter join Colonel Simmonds's circus, she as a trick horse rider and he as a clown, but Janet cannot help but wonder why she finds Simmonds so familiar.

Originally a feature-length film all that’s now known to survive of The Sawdust Ring comes from two home movie abridgements, here combined.

I find both of the abridgments curious for how they treat the fate of Janet’s mother. In the feature, she recovers and she and Coronal Simmonds are reunited. In the Spanish Pathé version, it’s left ambiguous. In the American Pathex version, she very explicitly dies and Janet is left to fend for herself.

[donnie]

I enjoyed seeing this. Bessie is a doll. I was especially glad to see this posted, because it's associated with one of our favorite movie magazine ads around here. Now I have the film to go along with the ad.

18268311_10212778693285604_3756167062638976358_n2.jpg (62.52 KiB) Viewed 523 times

I find both of the abridgments curious for how they treat the fate of Janet’s mother. In the feature, she recovers and she and Coronal Simmonds are reunited. In the Spanish Pathé version, it’s left ambiguous. In the American Pathex version, she very explicitly dies and Janet is left to fend for herself.

That is curious, indeed. That was my immediate question at the end, and makes this version feel very incomplete.

Another curious thing is how, uh, uneventful the children's act seems. They're cute, but I can't see what the crowd draw is. But I guess it's the same in the feature.

[dustin@harpodeon.com]

It certainly makes it different. In such a condensed form, though, it probably was a good decision to simply kill off the character.

[BettyLouSpence]

Just watched this. Very abridged, indeed; a pity more hasn't survived. I imagine there were more scenes of Janet and Colonel Simmonds wondering about each other. Perhaps they found that they have the same appetite for carrots.

I find both of the abridgments curious for how they treat the fate of Janet’s mother. In the feature, she recovers and she and Coronal Simmonds are reunited. In the Spanish Pathé version, it’s left ambiguous. In the American Pathex version, she very explicitly dies and Janet is left to fend for herself.

Interesting. So this is the Spanish Pathé ending, then?

Another curious thing is how, uh, uneventful the children's act seems. They're cute, but I can't see what the crowd draw is. But I guess it's the same in the feature.

Maybe their act had a little more variety in the feature version?

[donnie]

Perhaps they found that they have the same appetite for carrots.

I'd like to think so.

Maybe their act had a little more variety in the feature version?

I'd like to think so.

[dustin@harpodeon.com]

Interesting. So this is the Spanish Pathé ending, then?

The scene with the doctor and nurses taking Janet’s mother away to the hospital is from that Spanish print, yes. The American version of that scene is much shorter and amounts to the doctor simply telling Janet that her mother has died.

Oftentimes, Spanish Pathé, French Pathé, British Pathescope, and American Pathex releases are all very different abridgements and combining them yields a significantly more complete film. The Sawdust Ring generally speaking wasn’t like that. Both the Spanish print and the American print were, for the most part, the same series of shots. Each simply lasted longer in the 180’ Pathex version as compared to the 120’ Pathé version. There were a couple unique scenes in the American print and also a couple in the Spanish print.

Now playing is a Larry Semon comedy, Bathing Beauties and Big Boobs (1918).

It’s not what it sounds like — it’s using boob in the sense of a foolish, ineffectual person — although the bathing beauties part is exactly what it sounds like.